| MP TELLS OF CONSTITUENTS WEEPING OVER HOUSING NEEDS |
| Monday, 22 October 2007 | |
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John Pugh in cross examining Housing Minister, Yvette Cooper in the Commons during a Select Committee* hearing told of constituents weeping because their prospects of decent, affordable housing were so poor. He pointed out to the minister that people on low wages cannot risk moving out of town to be housed away from their family and social networks. The minister responded by saying that planning guidance which restricts housing development in Southport in order to encourage people back into the cities needs to "catch up" and has been "slow to respond ". In another promising development it has been revealed that discussions between the council and the government are taking place about releasing land already earmarked for housing between the council and the government.It could be released much earlier than expected as a mixed development with an element of affordable housing (according to a report going to the the Council's Regeneration Scrutiny Committee this Tuesday). Plans for building on the old Leaf and Infirmary sites will also include an element of affordable housing. According to the MP: " The pressure for housing our young families is increasing all the while but having campaigned for solutions for some time I am glad to see that there is a growing chorus of voices now demanding action- including the minister! It's a long term problem but one where we need to get developers, planners, council and government pursuing the same strategy and working relentlessly at it. It is good to see that since the Housing Summit I called in September there is some more flexibility from the Government Office." *TRANSCRIPT OF EXAMINATION OF HOUSING MINISTER (17th OCT) Dr Pugh Minister, what if targets are not high enough? I have a constituency where the housing needs assessment shows that not only will current very grievous demand not be sourced but future demand is nowhere near being sourced and there is a limit on how much can be built. I have people weeping in my surgery at the prospect of finding decent, let alone affordable housing. Part of the complexity of my area is that I have a pathfinder area 15 miles down the road which is not suitable for this high demand. What has gone wrong with that sort of circumstance? Is it that regional planning guidance is not sufficiently fine-grained enough to allow for local circumstances? .....The issue in my constituency is that people on low wages are being asked to move out of their area in order to get housing, to move away from the jobs they have and the support networks they have and so on. It is no comfort to them to know that you are doing something about another area, not to address the problem in their area. Ms Cooper (Housing Minister): The level of growth of housing demand, particularly across the northern regions, has been much faster than a lot of planners realised was happening, and so I think the planning system, frankly, across the North has been too slow to respond to the fact that, as you rightly say, you will have other areas where in fact demand has been growing and demand has been growing very fast, and, as a result, you get serious affordability pressures in those areas, and the fact that 20 miles away is an area which has low demand is therefore used to see a much wider area as having a low demand problem when it is no longer the case. My personal view is that the regional plans for sometime ago from the northern regions really did not catch up with and reflect the rising economic growth but also rising household growth in a lot of our northern regions and it is really important that they do so now. Where you have areas of high demand and low demand literally next door to each other ---- |