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15
Jan
North Yorkshire Council is lobbying government amid fears over “speculative” housing applications due to Labour’s housebuilding drive.
Richard Flinton, chief executive of the council, told business owners at a Harrogate District Chamber of Commerce meeting that the county had seen a “massive” uptake in the number of homes expected to be built annually.
He said there was concern that the national drive to build more homes was moving faster than the council's development of a Local Plan, which he claimed could leave the authority susceptible to "speculative" schemes.
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.
The move has been criticised by local Conservative councillors and the Liberal Democrat MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough, Tom Gordon, who described it as “simply unachievable”.
Richard Flinton, chief executive of North Yorkshire Council.
Mr Flinton said the council has since been lobbying government over a “transitional arrangement” while it draws up a Local Plan — the blueprint which will set out where new houses and commercial developments can be built in the region over the next 15 to 20 years.
He said there was concern around “speculative development” and the threat of planning applications being overturned on appeal without a housing plan being in place.
Mr Flinton said:
We are currently trying to lobby government because we want some transitional arrangements. When the new council was put in place, we were given five years to pull together a Local Plan.
Now we have a new government wanting housebuilding to get going more quickly than that Local Plan can be developed. We have a concern around speculative development if the Local Plan is not in place to bring the land supply forward that underpins that level of housing.
Mr Flinton added that due to the government’s housebuilding agenda, the council will come under pressure to approve more applications and build more homes.
He said there was a chance the council will have to go through a number of years without a Local Plan, which could make it difficult to "resist speculative applications".
Mr Flinton added:
My anxiety is that we want that plan-led approach. At the moment with the housing targets and where we are with the Local Plan, there’s a very real prospect that we have a number of years where we do not have a plan basis to resist speculative applications.
So they [the applications] would be made and maybe get turned down by councillors on a committee and then they’re appealed and we struggle to resist the appeal because of where we are in that process.
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 in October last year 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.
The concern over the hike has been echoed by Harrogate district MPs.
Tom Gordon, MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough.
Sir Julian Smith, Conservative MP for Skipton and Ripon, wrote to deputy prime minister Angela 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.
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.
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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