Reduced housing targets ‘still difficult’

FUTURE house building targets for the Valley will still be difficult to hit, despite a 40 per cent reduction, a council chief has admitted.

Rossendale council leaders say a government target of 5,000 new homes across the borough over the next 15 homes has been slashed to 3,180.

The figure represents a significant drop from that originally stated in the initial draft of the council’s Local Plan.

According to deputy council leader Coun Christine Lamb, government inspectors have reassessed the number of houses that need to be built in Rossendale, based on a new formula for calculating housing needs.

The latest draft of the plan will be based on 212 new homes being built per year for the next 15 years.

Coun Lamb said she and council leader Alyson Barnes met with government minister for housing and planning, Gavin Barwell to petition him to reduce Rossendale’s housing requirement.

She told the Free Press: “Our plan and other local authority plans are based over 15 years and we have to review every five years - giving an account of how many have been built and how many we expect to build.

“It’ll be difficult without going into the green belt - which is something we don’t want to do.”

Council officers are currently working on assessing the implications of the new figures on the plan - which will be released in mid-August with a six-week public consultation to follow.