Housing Bombshell
At the start of the year Cornwall Council had a Local Plan and a Five Year Land Supply. These are important documents which set out how many houses we’re going to build up to 2030, where we’re going to put them and that we have the sites (land supply) to support this. These are particularly important documents if the Council refuses a planning application.
The Developers can appeal to the Planning Inspector and the first question he asks is do you have an up to date Local Plan and a Five Year Land Supply? If you don’t, there’s a presumption in favour of development, and the Council is more than half way to losing the appeal.
Up to the 1st January we could have confidently answered yes. Our target is 2,707 houses per year, and we have the sites for them. We don’t always manage it, there are lots of variables beyond our control like availability of builders, finance, etc. but we’re ok. Or we were. During January the Government in London dropped what one Councillor described as ‘a nuclear bomb’ on us. They announced, without warning that our new target would be 4,421, with immediate effect. That means our Local Plan is out of date and we no longer have a Five Year Land Supply.
This puts Cornwall completely at the mercy of speculative developers. It doesn’t matter how many people object or if our Planning Committees vote to refuse the application, the Inspector will say if there’s no Local Plan, there’s a presumption in favour of development. The last Local Plan took four years to prepare. I asked ‘Can’t we just cross out 2,707 and write 4,421 and be compliant?’ But of course it’s not that simple.
We have to have the land to put these extra houses on, and we don’t.
The answer seems to be higher density, going up, three or four storey blocks. Nobody wants that, but we’re scrabbling about for solutions at the moment. I’m not against development, our young people need somewhere to live. If the Government was giving us grants to build affordable rentals for young people, or social housing, I’d be there. But what they’ve done is usher in a Wild West where speculative developers will be jumping on land that wouldn’t have been considered for development as recently as December. And your local Councillors didn’t vote for this, it’s come from London, and shamefully some of our local MP’s put their hands up and voted for it. The next step is that at the end of the month Cornwall Council will put out a call for sites, and the wrangling will begin!
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Going “skywards” isn’t what Cornwall is about. We need houses but for whom ? Locals ?
Londoners ? Migrants ? Locals have very little chance of securing affordable accommodation via our council. If priority was given to locals I might agree with it. If it is for others, I am not. Our local MPs seem to be out of touch with the feelings of local people. Unless and until local views are taken seriously, little will change.
I agree with Paul Caruana! This is thoughtless wanton destruction of our county. Surely the local authority has to consult with the people of Cornwall. There are already hundreds of houses being built accross the County, none of them are council housing. Affordable housing is a joke, they are only affordable once, then they are subject to market forces, so the only people who benefit are the developers! Inferstructure has to be the main priority before considering new housing. Truro is gridlocked most of the time, there is a shortage of doctors, dentists, care facilities, nurses, builders, so building more houses is a waste of time and will only compound the situation we are already in!
This is such an awful decision, I doubt any of these houses will be affordable to local families. As for our local MPs they are towing the party line with no thought for our community
We have 35,000 empty or under used properties in Cornwall and (in addition) empty spaces in town centres and upstairs from shops. Tearing up green fields which we need for food and biodiversity is madness. In the period 2004-24 almost 60,000 more houses were delivered in Cornwall (DCLG figures) yet homelessness has now gone up to a record 27,000. This proves that you simply cannot build your way out of a housing crisis. Some Labour MPs (Fred Thomas and Anna Geldard) appear to be suggesting that Cornwall will not get any more funding or house building unless it signs up to a Devonwall Mayor. On the house building that sounds like yet another good reason not to agree to it.
We seriously need to see what infrastructure is going to be built to support over 4000 houses a year. We will desperately need more Hospital, Dentists and Doctors. Ask our local MP’s what support will we get from the Government. 75% of these house must be for local people with a financial structure created to allow young people to meet the cost