Our Man in Westminster

As we all grind back into action in 2017 it is already clear that housing will be one of the big issues of the year – on a national level as well as locally. The permanent debate between two perfectly reasonable points of view, namely that we need new homes to meet demand but that we don’t want to lose any valuable green fields, will certainly continue. Finding the right balance is the eternal conundrum in this debate.

For Ashford, the facts and figures may surprise those who assume new developments are always in full flow.

The latest figures from the National House Building Council show that by the end of the third quarter of last year 315 new homes had been registered in Ashford.

That compares with a total of 390 for the whole of 2015.

There is always a higher number in the final quarter, so 2016 will certainly see a higher building rate than 2015, but it looks unlikely that it will match the building rate for earlier years.

Having made that point, it is also true that Ashford is certainly building houses at a faster rate than average.

That figure of 315 for the first nine months of last year compares with a UK constituency average of just 174. Translated to national figures, that means that while in 2015 155,461 new homes were registered, in the first nine months of 2016 the equivalent figure was 112,997.

It is visibly obvious that the Finberry estate (Cheeseman’s Green in old money) is being steadily developed. In the course of 2017, work will start on site at Chilmington Green, which is of course an even bigger development project which includes schools and a full high street.

It is not the headlong development some expected, and others feared, but it is proceeding steadily.