Summary
There is frustration that the Government is not budging on a huge housing target which “risks changing the character of the Cotswolds “. Council chiefs are in the process of creating a new blueprint for development in the Cotswold district after being tasked to find land for around 18,650 to 18,900 new homes to be built over the next 20 years.
Details
Cotswold District Council’s target has more than doubled from under 500 to more than 1,000 a year. And their draft proposals will see 90 per cent of this housing built in ten strategic sites and will deliver major expansions to existing towns and villages alongside the creation of new settlements.
The proposals are hugely controversial in the affected areas and would lead to a roughly 40 per cent increase on the 44,000 homes in the district today. Want to see more of the stories you love from GloucestershireLive? Then make us your preferred source on Google.
To add GloucestershireLive as a preferred source, simply click here House prices in the district are around 14 times average earnings and since the target changed, the district’s five-year housing land supply has dropped from 7.3 years to 1.8 years. And the council believes this has opened the door to speculative applications.
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More than 80 per cent of the district lies within the Cotswolds National Landscape, so planners are suggesting that most new development must go into the remaining 20 per cent, of which four per cent includes flood plain and cannot be built on.
But South Cotswolds MP Dr Roz Savage and council leader Cllr Mike Evemy (LD, Siddington and Cerney Rural) have been calling on the Government to lower the housing target for the Cotswolds. They met recently with Baroness Taylor of Stevenage, the minister for housing and local government, to argue that point. However, they said the target still stands.
In her written reply and at the meeting, the minister said that her quasi-judicial role in the planning system meant she could not comment on the specifics of the Cotswold Local Plan. She said the Government expects every area to play its part in tackling the housing crisis. Any case for a lower figure, she said, must be made with evidence to the independent planning Inspector when the plan is examined.
“I’m disappointed,” Roz Savage said. “My constituents have been clear that 18,000 new homes is too many for a district where four-fifths of the land is protected landscape, and I took that message directly to the minister. She listened carefully, but the Government has not moved on the number.
Report source: Gloucestershire Live
