Western Morning News (Saturday)
Town ‘let down’ on affordable homes pledge
COUNCILS across the Westcountry have been urged to ‘be brave’ and stand up for local families desperately seeking affordable housing.
The comments have been sparked by a row in the South Devon town of Modbury, where a scheme to provide homes for local families has fallen through at the last minute.
Parish council planning chairman Barry Keel – a former chief executive of Plymouth City Council – accused South Hams Council of lacking leadership and letting local families down.
South Hams deputy leader Hilary Bastone, however, said ‘heritage constraints’ around the site had meant it was not able to deliver for Modbury.
Cllr Keel hit back, saying: “It is all very well for SHDC to talk a good game when it comes to affordable housing, but local councillors and the council’s leadership need to back up those words with actions if they are to support the community they are supposed to serve.
“There was an opportunity here for our district council to show real leadership, instead of which they have scuppered their own plans and walked away.”
The row centres on land at Ayleston Park in the village, which had been earmarked to provide homes for local people.
The Modbury Neighbourhood Plan lists the land as a possible site for 40 homes. Twenty of them would have been ‘affordable’, and would have remained so in the future.
At a parish council meeting in August, Cllr Keel expressed concern that South Hams Council had withdrawn its support for the scheme on heritage grounds after ‘actively encouraging it’ for years.
A re-submitted plan would cut the number of affordable homes from 20 to 12 and would also scrap a proposed public open space. The parish council has responded by striking the housing out of the Neighbourhood Plan.
Mr Keel said local families faced being priced out of their own town. And, he said, around £30,000 of public money and two years of council officers’ time had been wasted.
The majority of the Modbury community made genuinely affordable housing one of their stand-out requests when the Neighbourhood Plan’s early consultations took place, he said. “It is very difficult for local people, particularly young people, to find houses in the South Hams,” he added.
“A lot of councils are saying they want affordable housing, but they have to stand up and be brave and strong in the face of opposition.
“South Hams Council was very keen on us developing a Neighbourhood Plan, and six years has gone into it. All of a sudden it changed its mind. There was huge support for this in the local community.”
Parish Council chairman Peter Watts added: “Our Neighbourhood Plan team has battled for over six years, diligently following the process, to give the people of Modbury what they asked for.
“We have been let down at the very last minute by SHDC.
“The people who will suffer are those who most need help. For SHDC to have wasted all this time, effort and public money, with nothing to show for it, is a disgrace.”
And Neighbourhood Plan Group chair Ann Turner said: “We now have to withdraw the muchneeded affordable housing and resubmit the Neighbourhood Plan with the housing excluded. It means yet another delay caused by SHDC in what has been a very long process.”
However South Hams Cllr Bastone said the district authority had helped the Modbury Neighbourhood Plan Group with the preparation of the plan, and with developing the Ayleston Park proposal.
It appointed consultants to carry out initial assessments of the site, and Cllr Bastone added: “It became apparent the heritage constraints did not allow the 40 dwellings required for the Ayleston Park site to be a suitable substitution site for the already-allocated Penn Park development to be achieved.
“We notified the group that this was the situation in March 2021.
“We know how incredibly hard the Modbury Neighbourhood Plan Group has worked to try and realise the vision of a site substitution and understandably there is great disappointment that it has not been achieved.
“Whilst a smaller scale, affordable-led scheme on the site identified in the Modbury Neighbourhood Plan may be achievable, this is not in line with the MNPG’s objective to substitute the Penn Park allocation and the council’s work to further progress the site has therefore ceased.” She said South Hams recognised it had raised expectations that could not be delivered. But she said the number of new homes to be built in Modbury would not be affected.
‘The district council have scuppered their own plans and walked away’ BARRY KEEL, MODBURY PARISH COUNCIL