Council leader bids for 'flexibility' to reduce housing numbers

The leader of the council has written a letter to the Secretary of State for housing asking for more ‘flexibility’ on housing targets – despite the Borough Local Plan being already in motion. The move has been lambasted by the opposition.

In December, it was announced that by Michael Gove MP the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, that he would be making a number of changes to housing targets.

If effect, these were going to be relaxed, switching housing targets for local authority areas from mandatory to advisory.

This was written into the Levelling- Up and Regeneration Bill (LURB) which is currently progressing through the House of Lords and could soon receive the Royal Assent, passing into law.

In a letter to Mr Gove, council leader Andrew Johnson has said he is ‘grow[ing] increasingly concerned’ that it the council has been required to adopt a plan that ‘feels out of step’ with Government’s new position.

He said that past rules had effectively forced the Borough in having to allow development at ‘densities and heights which many residents find excessive’ and to develop on greenbelt sites

The Borough is now ‘out of kilter’ with councils which did not have an adopted local plan when the changes were announced – and were able to delay their plans to factor in the new guidance.

Speaking to the Advertiser, Cllr Johnson said:

“Put simply, we don’t think it’s fair that we have played the game and now we’re going to be penalised,” he said.

He said that at the time when the BLP was adopted, this option to request some leeway from Mr Gove’s office was not on the table.

Instead, there were ‘hard targets’ on housing numbers and ‘penalties’ for not meeting them.

Cllr Johnson said the local plan based was adopted based on existing set of national requirements and Mr Gove hadn’t given any indication of those targets becoming advisory.

As such, he has requested ‘an urgent meeting’ with officials from the department to discuss how the Borough’s housing numbers can be aligned ‘towards a much lower number.’

“I’m keen to see what flexibility there may be,” he said.

“The [BLP] sites have been put forward – but it may be that we’re able to reduce the number of units on those sites.”

He added that developers looking to build on the sites could be encouraged to shift their focus onto larger homes, or more small homes rather than flats.

Cllr Johnson expects developers will be ‘open’ to this, as they are already not bringing maximum number of units they could on each site.

As an example, the number of homes planned for Maidenhead Golf Course by developer CALA Homes is set to be reduced from 2,000 homes to 1,800.

Though Cllr Johnson feels the golf course is ‘still a logical site’ for homes, he hopes there is flexibility to improve proposals on the site further.

He acknowledged that the sites in Cookham and Woodlands Park are ‘less sustainable’ and it would be a positive if there was a possibly to reduce the number of homes planned there.

Overall, he wants to see a rolling back of ‘a huge pipeline of flats’.

Increased flexibility from Mr Gove will allow the council to ‘start pushing back’ against developers, said Cllr Johnson.

“We don’t want to see any more loss of our industrial sites,” he said. “We’re losing a lot of our commercial employment space to flats. I want to push back quite hard on that.”

Because the changes to housing targets are not in legislation yet, Cllr Johnson thinks this is the right time to make an approach.

“We need to have a conversation sooner rather than later, to ask the question: Where do we stand?” Cllr Johnson said.

“Regardless of who gets elected, we need some clarity on this.”