A Local Plan is as good or as bad as the housing target it’s based on.
Get it right and it delivers the appropriate level of housing for local people and is sustainable within the existing communities and environment. Get it wrong and it will blight the area for years and wreak irreparable damage.
We are therefore publishing our first views on what we believe to be an appropriate housing target in the next Basildon Local Plan.
Our full (but relatively short) paper can be found here: Numbers 2022
The highlights are as follows.
1. We consider that 8,000-10,000 houses across the borough over the next 20 years is appropriate and justifiable.
2. This is a target based on up-to-date population projections, the realisation that affordability uplifts achieve nothing, but more importantly hard evidence of population growth and housing provision over the last 10 years.
3. This proposed scale of housing can be delivered over the plan period with little or no need to release Green Belt through good and proper exploitation of the available brownfield, including the constant background in-fill development that takes place.
4. It is a target that allows the council to comfortably meet the 5 year land supply and housing delivery test metrics. These are important to fight off speculative development.
5. The benefit of a lower target is that there will be less pressure on existing infrastructure and much lower funding requirements to deliver new infrastructure for the increased population.
It’s a win-win for everyone.
We fully realise that we are proposing a housing target that is less than half the 20,000 that was proposed in the withdrawn Local Plan. A figure that the council will no doubt consider to be THEIR starting point next time based on the current Government algorithm. But across the country groups like us are seeing Local Plans based on at least twice the real local housing need so we are not alone suggesting a significantly reduced number. Evidence, not projections, back this up. Furthermore, some local authorities see the same issue and are pausing, revising or even withdrawing their plans as a result.
At this stage we are not considering how the target should be distributed around the borough, or any specific sites. That comes later. Getting the starting point right is the first step just now.
Get it right and it delivers the appropriate level of housing for local people and is sustainable within the existing communities and environment. Get it wrong and it will blight the area for years and wreak irreparable damage.
We are therefore publishing our first views on what we believe to be an appropriate housing target in the next Basildon Local Plan.
Our full (but relatively short) paper can be found here: Numbers 2022
The highlights are as follows.
1. We consider that 8,000-10,000 houses across the borough over the next 20 years is appropriate and justifiable.
2. This is a target based on up-to-date population projections, the realisation that affordability uplifts achieve nothing, but more importantly hard evidence of population growth and housing provision over the last 10 years.
3. This proposed scale of housing can be delivered over the plan period with little or no need to release Green Belt through good and proper exploitation of the available brownfield, including the constant background in-fill development that takes place.
4. It is a target that allows the council to comfortably meet the 5 year land supply and housing delivery test metrics. These are important to fight off speculative development.
5. The benefit of a lower target is that there will be less pressure on existing infrastructure and much lower funding requirements to deliver new infrastructure for the increased population.
It’s a win-win for everyone.
We fully realise that we are proposing a housing target that is less than half the 20,000 that was proposed in the withdrawn Local Plan. A figure that the council will no doubt consider to be THEIR starting point next time based on the current Government algorithm. But across the country groups like us are seeing Local Plans based on at least twice the real local housing need so we are not alone suggesting a significantly reduced number. Evidence, not projections, back this up. Furthermore, some local authorities see the same issue and are pausing, revising or even withdrawing their plans as a result.
At this stage we are not considering how the target should be distributed around the borough, or any specific sites. That comes later. Getting the starting point right is the first step just now.
