Government rethink on housing welcomed
Sussex ‘played a big part’ in forcing a government rethink on future housing requirements, according to a countryside charity.
A consultation on a White Paper setting out proposed planning reforms closed back in October and these spelled out a huge increase in future housebuilding for the county.
Concerns were raised about how the numbers had been calculated with the Horsham district facing an annual requirement of 1,715 new homes each year.
However, the government has now signalled its intention to revise the proposals and these are expected to be published in the coming weeks.
Robert Jenrick, Secretary for Housing, Communities and Local Government, told MPs they were considering the consultation responses and he would make a statement on that ‘in the weeks ahead’.
He explained how the pandemic was having a substantialimpactoncityand towncentresandtheyneeded to look at opportunities for repurposing offices as residential and for turning retail into mixed use.
He believed this would lead them to a ‘ different approach to distributing housing numbers across the country’. The Sussex branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England ( CPRE) has praised the efforts of the county’s residents for writing letters protesting against the reforms and the lobbying of West Sussex’s MPs.
Kia Trainor, CPRE Sussex director, felt that arguments from politicians such as Arundel and South Downs MP Andrew Griffith in highlighting the ‘devastating effect of the mutant algorithm on the communities and natural environment of Sussex’ were paying off.
She added: “We want a system that will deliver the affordable housing and successful places that people need, not one which will undermine local plans and local people and force the loss of green spaces which have been so important for our health and wellbeing this year.”
The news was also welcomed by the Horsham Lib Dems who said the new method of calculating targets had produced ‘impossibly high targets’ in the South East. But they warned that Horsham’s local plan review would still result in a ‘ big jump’ in the district’s housing targets and the ‘threat remains of giant housing estates such as West of Ifield, and most controversially of all, Rookwood’.