Region ‘slow to explore’ community-led housing to counter homes crisis
NORTH YORKSHIRE has been slow to explore what community-led housing can do to relieve the affordable homes crisis in the countryside and is “missing out” on benefits being enjoyed from thousands of other schemes across the country, a rural charity leader claims.
The warning from Leah Swain, the York-based Community First Yorkshire’s chief executive, comes as one of the region’s MPs urged communities in the Yorkshire Dales National Park to seize the opportunity presented by the Government’s Community Housing Fund which launched last year.
As reported in The Yorkshire Post on Saturday, young families are being priced out of the national park, with a wider infrastructure crisis undermining the park’s economy and the viability of its communities.
A new five-year management plan will be published this month and community leaders have said they are determined to address the affordable homes crisis and a lack of superfast broadband as part of wider efforts to attract young families to live and work in the national park.
According to evidence papers supporting the national park’s proposed new plan, no improvements have been made to increase even basic mobile phone coverage across the Dales
since 2013. The Conservative MP for Richmond, Rishi Sunak, who was appointed Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government last month, said he believed that progress was being made to address a number of challenges in the national park, including the supply of housing.
Just one community-led housing development of three cottages has been completed in North Yorkshire to date, in Hudswell on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales National Park in November last year, but he said he hoped more projects would follow.
“We do need communities in the Dales to seize this opportunity, and I have faith in their ability to do this,” Mr Sunak said.
“I know other schemes are being considered and we need to bring those forward as quickly as we can.”
Mrs Swain said more parish councils should be thinking about community-led housing, adding: “There are thousands of schemes across the country especially in the South-West, it’s just to date it has not taken off in North Yorkshire at all and we are missing out.”
The average house price in the park is £253,000, about eight times higher than average salaries. In the highest-value areas, the average cost is £332,000.