Houses on land like this will just force prices up
CALLS for thousands of homes to be built in the leafiest areas (Mail) show our politicians are out of touch. They concentrate on the number of houses with no regard to type, style, mix, location and infrastructure. In West Oxfordshire, half of any development above ten houses has to be social or affordable housing. As developers receive only the cost price for building these homes, they have to make their profit from the other 50 per cent and so build only four and five-bedroom houses. In my village, such new homes cost between £695,000 and £1.2 million. This means that the only two and threebedroom houses being built are social or affordable housing, but not all young couples or families meet the criteria. There are no bungalows suitable for down-sizing or to meet the needs of elderly or disabled people. Developers will build anywhere they can get land, so some new estates will not have public transport and the residents will have to rely solely on their cars using overcrowded roads. Despite representations to local planners, these issues fall on deaf ears. Planners are solely driven by Government quotas. Communities Secretary Sajid Javid’s proposal to force more unsuitable housing onto areas such as West Oxfordshire will have the unintended consequences of not only destroying Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, but will force up prices. Rather than have more pointless consultations to promote the Government’s desired outcome, Mr Javid should visit the places where he wants to impose development and talk to local people and parish councillors like me. He would learn more in a couple of hours than from countless papers presented by his researchers.
DAVID BROWN, Stonesfield, Oxon.