Housing Need and the Green Belt Few subjects have been the cause of greater consternation, confusion (and occasionally suspicion) in recent years than the Council’s position in relation to housing need and the proposed development of certain parcels of green belt. In answer to a question at a recent meeting of the full Council, Cllr. Ian Beardsmore, Chair-man of the Environment and Sustainability Committee and a member with vast experi-ence in planning, stated: “Prior to the Government’s requirement for local authorities to utilise the standard method to calculate housing need, there was no set methodology for assessing housing needs and local authorities were instead required to pro-duce their own methodology. In 2015, Spelthorne produced its Strategic Housing Market Assessment which inputted various local factors to determine Spelthorne’s objec-tively assessed housing need, including household growth projections, migration, and affordability. This identified a housing need of between 552-757 dwellings per annum. The local housing need figure derived from the standard method (currently 611 dwellings per annum) falls within this range, therefore it can be expected that an alternative methodol-ogy is likely to produce a similar figure. “Planning Practice Guidance states that where an alternative approach is used, this will be subject to close scrutiny at examination and the local authority will need to demonstrate how they face extraordinary challenges to justify the approach. Spelthorne is subject to many planning constraints that affect a large number of authorities in the South East, for example Green Belt and flood risk in combi-nation. As such, there are not considered to be extraordinary challenges to justify a different approach to calculating housing need once the Local Plan is examined by the Planning In-spectorate. Those few authorities that have attempted to utilise a lower housing number since the introduction of the standard meth-odology have failed, for example Seven-oaks and Chiltern & South Bucks. The number of Local Plans withdrawn or found unsound in 2020 was the highest in six years, highlighting the importance of having a sound strategy to guide development.” To illustrate his point, Cllr. Beardsmore gave three examples: Firstly, [In June] in Hertford-shire a predatory developer obtained plan-ning permission to build100 houses in a farmer’s field. It was opposed by the authori-ties concerned because the site was designat-ed Green Belt land. At the enquiry the plan-ning inspector, allowing the appeal, found the authorities were seriously behind on meeting their housing need and did not have an up to date, valid, local plan. It is a very scary judge-ment that has sent shockwaves through local authorities. Spelthorne is an authority that is also behind on meeting housing delivery tar-gets and does not have a local plan in place to tackle the shortfall. Secondly, in Hertfordshire again, the planning inspector wrote to the authority and said in very blunt terms, that if the authority did not release enough Green Belt to satisfy the short-fall in housing provision by 17 September 2021 he would declare their plan unsound. Thirdly, [and just recently], Spelthorne re-ceived the judgement on The Bugle site. The Inspector has allowed 31 houses to be built on this Green Belt site, which Spelthorne strong-ly opposed. In simple terms everyone who said you cannot build on Spelthorne’s Green Belt have been proved wrong. Collectively, and notwithstanding a possible government climbdown, these three rulings are a clear hardening of the Government’s position in their drive to build more housing regardless of the views of local residents and local authorities or the cost in Green Belt. We would be wise to heed these warnings howev-er distasteful we find them.
LoSRA Says
