From the Leader: The Government's new housing allocation

That replacement is expected to cater for more than 1,300 new homes a year, rather than the 748 new dwellings per year in the plan now at examination.

The plan now at examination will, once adopted, protect us from speculative development for about three years. But in that three-year period, we are expected to draw up a replacement plan, which will facilitate the delivery of the higher numbers.

Two ambitions appear to underpin ministers’ insistence on increased numbers: first, a desire to stimulate growth in the economy to increase the tax take and address the public finance crisis; and second, a desire to make housing more affordable for those denied access to a home of their own.

There are good reasons to believe that the government is overoptimistic about relying on a massive increase in housebuilding in the Southeast to produce the rapid growth that it desires.

The constraints on delivery in our area are very real in terms of the availability of land and service infrastructure; and even the construction industry, which stands to gain, wonders how it can access the labour and materials needed, especially when many housing developments across the Southeast would have to be approved at about the same time.

The second objective – increasing the affordability of market housing – is highly unlikely to be achieved in an area like ours.

Recent experience in our borough tells us that building more market houses causes prices to rise not fall. Our proximity to London means that migration from the capital sustains ever higher prices, while local need often remains unmet.  Movement out of London has of course been going on for generations, but it’s increased greatly since the pandemic and the arrival of new methods of working from home.

A more general clog on delivery on the scale and at the pace that the government wants is the operation of the housing market.

Around a million new homes across the country have planning permission but have not been built because developers have no interest in seeing prices fall.

While no one can deny the need for new housing to meet future needs, market housing will not in itself solve the problem of affordability. I therefore welcome the government’s commitment to funding the building of more Affordable Housing – that is, discounted market homes, shared-ownership schemes, affordable sub-market rental properties, and homes for social rents, which provide the most truly affordable housing.  I also applaud the government’s commitment to facilitating the building of more council houses on council-owned land.

We in Wokingham will be seeking to ensure we contribute our share to delivering this kind of genuinely affordable housing for those who are priced out of the housing market.

But we will continue to make the case that the government’s attempt to cram unsustainable levels of market housing in the Southeast risks irreparably damaging the character of our area without successfully delivering the government’s own ambitions.

My plea to ministers is to be truly bold and develop a national housing strategy, which directs housing to where it is most needed rather than falling back on the time-honoured approach of expecting ever greater numbers to be delivered in the already-overstretched Southeast.