Liberal Democrat Council Leader, Nigel Hartin has slammed the Ludlow M.P., Philip Dunne, for his naivety on affordable housing. The M.P. had commented in the local paper on how bad he thought the affordable housing policy of the old Liberal Democrat South Shropshire District Council was. This despite it being hailed nationally as an example of outstanding practice and then being adopted by the Tory County Council in Shropshire……
Nigel commented “The problem is clearly huge! – The 2008 Strategic Housing Market Survey showed that 1,585 affordable homes are required to meet demand in Shropshire each year! Whilst I obviously agree with his comments that we need to do much more to “unlock the increasing need for housing in rural areas where few parents can afford to bring up families where they themselves were raised”, I would point out that we are indeed working very hard ‘cross party’ at the Council to tackle this and his comments are not helpful as he seems to have got his facts confused again! Far from “unravelling since introduced” as he puts it, almost all of the affordable housing policies of the old Liberal Democrat led South Shropshire District Council (which were so successful in delivering affordable housing across its district) have now been incorporated in the Unitary Councils Affordable Housing policy. There have also been additional new policies to help speed up rural housing delivery!
“His quote, ‘£60,000 per dwelling tax for a planning consent’, required in South Shropshire appears to give the impression that this was required for any planning application in South Shropshire! In fact only in a few locations was a contribution to the affordable housing pot requested and this was from those lucky enough to have a single plot to build on. Those affected were people who wished to build an open market house & make what, at the time, could have been a handsome profit selling on, rather than an affordable house available for local people.”
“Times have moved on as we know and I wish Mr Dunne would resist making cheap political statements (anybody would think there was an election next year!) and concentrate on working with the Unitary Council in its efforts to deliver more affordable housing for local people. I would remind Mr Dunne that the Councils new affordable housing policy, (which attracted cross party support!), seeks to maximise the opportunities for the delivery of affordable housing by:
• Private individuals building their own affordable home on land which would not normally obtain planning permission
• Housing associations, community land trusts (such as the one in Bishops Castle which he highlighted) and others.
• Developers as part of mixed development using an ‘open book’ accounting approach to negotiating the proportion of affordable housing sought to reflect the current economic viability of sites.
I am sure that either Cllr Malcolm Price (Cons) as portfolio holder for Housing or Cllr Roger Evans (Liberal Democrat) as Affordable Housing Champion would be able to assist Mr Dunne with a copy of the new policy document or indeed help him out on a one to one basis to make sure he is fully up to speed!