Housing requirements and actualities

Over the last few months there have been many statements and letters about what the housing requirement for the Royal Borough is.

As this is again the subject of some discussion, I thought that your readers would appreciate the full story.

The housing requirement in the Borough Plan, which is now moving to final stage of inspection, is for at least 712 dwellings per annum.

Allowing for some double counting the actual potential number of houses in the plan is 790.

As a result of the Inspector’s decisions we know that a number of sites will not come forward and others will deliver a reduced figure because of the latest work on flooding by the Environment Agency which will bring us down to the target.

This housing requirement comes from the Strategic Housing Market Assessment of 2012. This assessment would have given us a target of 672 dwelling pa, but we increased it to 712 because of local affordability issues.

The recently published 2018 Household Projections are not in themselves a housing target. Were we to decide to withdraw our current plan then we would have to follow the Standard Methodology which would require 754 houses per annum.

The Government has recently published two consultations, the first is on a totally different way of undertaking planning across the country and the second, which will be implemented first is a new way of apportioning housing targets.

Under this plan we would be required to build 914 dwellings per annum.

If we have an adopted Borough Local

Plan in place it is likely that we will be given a period of grace of some years before we have to produce a new plan.

My very last point is about the alleged supply of housing for Slough.

In the Borough Local Plan there is only one agreement with Slough, and it was negotiated and signed by me.

It was that we would ensure that we achieved a minimum level of affordable housing so that people who worked in RBWM could afford to live here rather than put pressure on Slough and other areas.

There are discussions on housing across a much wider area which are not part of the Borough Local Plan but include East Berkshire, Surrey and South Bucks

Cllr DAVID COPPINGER Royal Borough lead member for planning, environmental services and

Maidenhead