The National Housing Federation has warned that Conservative plans to require a 90% positive vote by local people for affordable village homes to be delivered through local housing trusts (LHTs) could hand a veto to rumps of local Nimbys.
The Conservatives are proposing the creation of LHTs, which would be new community-led bodies with planning powers to develop local homes for local people. However, they say that LHTs would only be able to build new homes where there is strong community backing, which they have defined as 90% support in community referenda.
While the Federation supports the Tory proposals for the setting up of LHTs it says the 90% threshold is far too high. And says that recent opinion polling conducted on behalf of the organisation shows the majority of rural dwellers believe the level of local support required for new affordable housing should be far lower at around 50-70%.
In the poll of 800 rural dwellers across England, 54% said that a threshold of 50-70% support for affordable housing should be sufficient for the new homes to get the go-ahead, whereas just 4% said 90% was the right figure.
The Federation believes that the building of new homes in rural areas is crucial because of a growing rural housing crisis – with a lack of affordable homes in villages and market towns driving thousands of young people and families from the countryside to urban areas every year.
As a result of this process, many villages are increasingly becoming populated by older people, wealthy commuters and second home owners – with record numbers of services and amenities coming under threat because of a decline in their traditional customer bases.
The lack of lack of new homes in rural areas has led to a record number of 750,000 people putting their names on waiting lists for an affordable home in villages and market towns.
Federation Chief Executive David Orr said: "We believe the Tory proposal for LHTs could be an excellent way for ensuring the building of desperately needed affordable homes in rural areas – but we fear that a requirement for a 90% vote in favour of new homes will effectively provide a veto to a rump of local Nimbys.
"There will always be some people who oppose the idea of building any new homes and if the threshold for a vote in favour of new affordable housing is set as high as 90% then we believe that small groups of local Nimbys will virtually always be able to block the proposals."
Peter Moore, Director of Cornwall Rural Housing Association – the housing association which has pioneered the Community Land Trust model the LHT proposals are based on – said: "We’ve proved in Cornwall that we can use this model to produce affordable housing with community support. The Local Housing Trust proposals could enable other communities to benefit – but to make that happen, we need a lower support threshold and dedicated support for communities who want to do this."
Steve Cook, Chief Executive of the Havebury Housing Partnership, added: "I support an approach which better equips rural communities to be self-sustaining but a 90% vote in favour is far too high. Something closer to 50% would be much more realistic."
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Subscribe to this comment's feedNO, LET'S ALL STOP TAKING ADVICE FROM PROFITEERS
People with common sense, and who care for the landscape and environment, realise that:
- the "demand" for new housing is based on outdated figures that were anyway inaccurate. Now loads of migrants have gone home because it's too tough here, and much of the peak pressure has eased
- most developments are planned for the south of the UK, which is already overcrowded, and whose infrastructure (schools, roads, water supplies, drainage, public transport) simply cannot cope with any more demand. But the builders can charge more in the south, so that's why they want to build here.
To resist this lunacy is not "nimbyism". Before we build any more housing that will just stand empty or bring down rents and sales prices through oversupply, how about local councils refurbishing the vast stocks of empty housing already on their books? And how about scheduling all future developments for under-utilised areas such as the north west, where land prices are cheaper, and building costs are lower?
Government should stop listening to lobbyists working for people who have a commercial axe to grind, and start talking to normal people who really know what is going on. The Conservatives are absolutely right to insist on a high level of approval before permitting development. If we left it to Labour and the Lib Dems, our country would disappear under concrete and tarmac.
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