Bucks Council leader fears increase in Labour housebuilding targets will harm the county

As people pack for a summer break, they may have missed probably the most significant announcement that will affect their communities and environment for many years ahead.

Released just as many go on holiday it is no exaggeration to say that the changes to the Planning system are cataclysmic for Buckinghamshire.

We all understand that, with the growth in the country’s population we need more houses. Our Bucks population has been growing fast, with massive house building, particularly in the north of the county around Aylesbury and Buckingham.

As we prepare our new Local Plan our policy has been ‘Brown Field first’, including reuse of redundant council office sites. With a third of the county Green Belt and an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty we have also argued that mathematical targets need to be modified to take this into account.

The new proposals sweep all of that away. We now have non-negotiable mandatory ‘top down targets’. These are not the 300,000 in the Labour Manifesto but now increased to 370,000.- the Liberal Democrats want 380,000! In addition,these have not been distributed in line with the previous methodology but weighted away from the big cities, such as London where the housing need is greatest and towards the counties such as Buckinghamshire.

It won’t escape anyone that London has a Labour Mayor who is failing in his housing targets, whilst Buckinghamshire has a Conservative council.

Coincidence? I will leave you to judge.

Our Housing target increases from 2912 to 4122 each and every year. A 42% increase on an already very high number. But it doesn’t end there.

We also have potentially to absorb housing from other areas such as Slough or Luton. On top of that we also face theprobable imposition by some anonymous Committee of a large new town, potentially as large as Milton Keynes.

These extra housing numbers will be on top yet again. Importantly, the government does not commit to the funding for the doctors, schools, roads, parks and drainage systems etc. that big new housing estates will need.

To accommodate all this new housing, we will be forced to rush through a new Local Plan. This must review the Bucks Green Belt for ‘Grey Belt’, a completely meaningless term created by Labour. It is important to remember that the Green Belt is about openness, not being parkland.

It is designed to prevent the merging of towns and villages and provide a lung for London. There may well be exceptional circumstances to release Green Belt but these should be exceptional. The Green Belt is not the landbank for developers that Government now see it as.

Needless to say, the Government’s objective is to force local councils to take all the really difficult decisions being forced upon it. They want the council to be unpopular, not the Government. I hope that residents will respond to the short consultation being undertaken on these proposals. It is on the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government website.

Importantly, this is not about nimbyism – it’s about protecting our communities and our environment from inappropriate sprawl and directing new growth to areas where growth can be properly planned with good well-funded infrastructure. Let’s see the new government rise to that challenge.

Martin Tett, Leader, Buckinghamshire Council