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13
Nov
Housing target fears heighten in North Yorkshire
A senior North Yorkshire councillor has said he fears the government will not budge on trebling the county’s housing target to over 4,000 homes a year.
Cllr Mark Crane, Conservative executive councillor for open to business at North Yorkshire Council, told a meeting of the authority today he had met with a government housing minister about the plans this week.
As part of the Labour government’s housebuilding agenda, ministers have proposed to increase North Yorkshire’s housing need to 4,232 a year — it had previously been 1,361.
Cllr Crane said he met with Baroness Taylor of Stevenage on Monday to raise his concerns over the planned targets.
However, he told councillors it “wasn’t a positive meeting”.
He said:
I will be honest with members and say I think my missive fell on stoney ground and I am not anticipating the government changing those figures.
I made several points to her, which she took on board and promised to write back to me on a couple of them. But I think, colleagues, when we go ahead with the Local Plan unless something dramatic changes, we are going to be looking at building 4,300 houses.
Cllr Crane added that he suggested that the council could try to build between 3,000 to 3,500 homes, but was told that any shortfall in houses built would be added onto the following year’s target.
He said:
I’m afraid to say that this will impact upon nearly everybody’s ward in this council.
A dramatic rise
The concerns come as the government is currently consulting on its housebuilding drive at a time when the council is set to draw up a new Local Plan.
The Stray Ferret has reported extensively on the issue of housebuilding in the Harrogate district, including an analysis on what Labour's drive for housing targets will mean for the district.
As part of its consultation on a new National Planning Policy Framework, ministers proposed changing the standard method for calculating housing need.
The method is used to measure how many homes need to be built in an area in a year. Following a change in the algorithm, the government now wants to see 370,000 homes built annually — a rise from 300,000 under the previous system.
As a result, the proposed housing need for North Yorkshire has increased dramatically.
The Stray Ferret reported last month that the previous method showed 1,361 homes would need to built each year in the county to meet national guidance.
However, under Labour’s desire to ramp up housebuilding, this would sky rocket by 211% to 4,232.
By comparison, neighbouring Leeds would only see its figure increase by 4% — from 3,987 to 4,159.
Sir Julian Smith, MP for Skipton and Ripon.
The concern over the hike has been echoed by Harrogate district MPs.
Sir Julian Smith, Conservative MP for Skipton and Ripon, wrote to Ms Rayner to urge the government to work with North Yorkshire Council and Mayor of York and North Yorkshire to “find a solution” for housing in the county.
He added that the current projections were undeliverable and would require significant infrastructure upgrades.
Sir Julian said:
I do not think that the capacity to deliver such a large increase is available, nor required, to ensure local need is met. North Yorkshire is home to two National Parks, which develop their own local plans, and two further National Landscapes where development is restricted.
A significant amount of infrastructure upgrades would also need to take place and I am not convinced these could be completed at a pace that offsets the impact of development.
Meanwhile, Tom Gordon, Liberal Democrat MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough, told the Stray Ferret that he shared the concern over housing targets, which he described as “simply unachievable”.
Angela Rayner, Labour deputy prime minister, has been tasked with leading the government’s housebuilding agenda.
In her first two months in office, Ms Rayner unveiled a plan which included setting a national target to build 1.5 million homes over the next five years.
She went as far as writing to every council leader and chief executive in the country to tell them it was “not just a professional responsibility but a moral obligation to see more homes built”.
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