Affordable Housing Summit - now we must go for 50%

Last Friday I was able to go the the hugely informative Affordable Housing Summit at Ebley Mill. It was chaired by Ian Mean, editor of The Citizen and had as it's key speaker Elinor Goodman, former Political editor on Channel Four News (1983 - 2005), who has just chaired the Government's Affordable Rural Housing Commission. There were also various other speakers.

It really is great news that the Council is prioritising this issue and they must be applauded for putting on this excellent conference.

One key fact that Elinor Goodman noted at the Summit was that developments should be 50% affordable - this is good news and inline with what Greens have been pushing for locally. Hopefully this will add weight to the call for Stroud to increase it's proportion, although sadly this will probably be too late for developments like the Lister Petter site in Dursley.

Stroud already has a figure for 30% affordable housing in new developments with over 15 houses. This is good compared to many but some other Gloucestershire areas have higher, 40% and 50%. I also have concerns that too many developments are planned at 14 houses to avoid the affordable element.

The Affordable Rural Housing Commission said in their report that a minimum of 11,000 cheap homes per year should be built in the rural settlements (under 10,000 people), the equivalent of six houses every year in each rural English ward. In other words a huge increase in the amount of affordable housing in rural areas with the aim of stopping villages becoming dormitories for the rich. It is certainly true that the lack of affordable homes is killing off the vitality of villages. One extreme example is the 150-home island settlement of Lindisfarne off the Northumberland coast, where no house has been purchased by a local resident since 1995.

Affordable housing has always been a strange term to me - affordable to who? Any housing is affordable to someone. To see what we are talking about go to the report at:
http://www.defra.gov.uk/rural/housing/commission/

"Freezing all development may preserved the status quo in terms of bricks and mortar but, paradoxically, it can accelerate social change by making it increasingly difficult for those on lower incomes to live there. Without housing which people on lower incomes can afford, rural communities will increasingly become dormitories for the better-off who work elsewhere, or places where people go to retire or visit for the weekend, rather than places where people live and work." Elinor Goodman

The challenge of course with this is to ensure the extra homes can be provided without ruining the character of the English countryside. Many villages can absorb some more houses, as long as they are in scale and character and maintain the identity of individual communities. This can be done but we need local authorities to be tougher and more consistent with developers. This is where Parish Design Statements and Parish Plans can play a part.

There is also a huge question about some of the figures of homes needed that the government are using - do we really need so many? Many commentators disagree. Another critical issue is the completely unbalance economy - we rip down thousands of houses up north because they are empty yet build in the SE more and more because that is where the demand is being created. The Commission doesn't satisfactorily address these issues as Greens would like to see a far greater emphasis on development being encouraged in a more balanced way - plus a return to much more Social/Council housing.

We welcome the Commissions restrictions on the right to buy council homes in rural areas to protect dwindling supplies of cheap rural homes - but this doesn't go far enough. The "acute shortage" of rural affordable housing has been made much worse by the right to buy. In rural districts only 13% of the homes are available at affordable rents, compared to 22% of urban districts, it pointed out.

The Commission also concluded that across England as whole the effect of second homes was modest, but it was a severe problem in holiday areas. It supported second home taxes but again didn't go far enough - George Monbiot wrote a passionate piece in The Guardian recently about this issue:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1780879,00.html

Monbiot notes for example villages where 60% of housing is now second-homes and that in England and Wales there are 250,000 second homes. In England there are 221,000 people classed as single homeless or living in hostels or temporary accommodation.

The Commission also recommended the money from second-homes should be ploughed into housing: currently Stroud who charge second homes only 90% of Council Tax doesn't appear to use all the money for that - I am trying to find out the reasoning behind that.

It will now be interesting to see how much of this the government takes forward. The government currently only has plans to build 3,000 affordable homes in rural areas rather than the 11,000 recommended. The commission has called for extra public money to increase this total, but also should be met by extra affordable housing on new private developments. In the meantime there is growing support amongst councillors of all political persuasions that a 50% target for affordable housing is not at all an unreasonable requirement.