Agenda item

Public Questions is an opportunity for people who live, work or study in Buckinghamshire to put a question to a Select Committee. The Committee will hear from members of the public who have submitted questions in advance relating to items on the agenda. The Cabinet Member, relevant key partners and responsible officers will be invited to respond.

Further information on how to register can be found here: https://www.buckinghamshire.gov.uk/your-council/get-involved-with-council-decisions/select-committees/

Two Public Questions had been received.

Question from Andrew Douglas

Today’s report on damp and mould in rented housing states the lack of available housing as one of the contributing factors. A recent Bucks Free Press article states that Buckinghamshire now has 678 fewer social homes than it did 10 years ago and that includes the 16 built last year. Clearly the present system is failing to deliver the warm, dry, cheap to heat social homes that are so desperately needed. What does Buckinghamshire Council intend to do to ensure this decline is reversed so that in the future  damp and mould free social homes are available to all those who need them?

Response from Councillor Mark Winn, Cabinet Member for Homelessness and Regulatory Services

The Council is committed to maximising the delivery of additional good quality affordable rent housing. During 2021/22, nearly 500 additional new rented social housing properties were delivered in Buckinghamshire by Registered Providers working alongside the Council. (The difference between the figure in the Bucks Free Press Article quoted in the question of just 16 is because they were referring only to properties that were available at the social rented level, whereas the majority of new Registered Provider rented properties are delivered using the Affordable Rent model. Hence we had 500 new properties delivered overall).

In 2022, the Council adopted an Interim Position Statement on Affordable Housing which set out the Council’s broad approach and immediate commitment to working with house builders and Registered Providers to maximise the delivery of general needs affordable housing. This included a commitment to bring forward a development on a Council owned site that could provide affordable housing, potentially with an element of specialist affordable and key worker housing, and this is now being explored on the former Sports and Social Club site at Stoke Mandeville and other sites are being investigated in Horns Lane High Wycombe Tatling End in Denham. The Council’s recently adopted accommodation strategy may provide further opportunities for exploring sites that could include affordable housing. 

The Interim Position Statement is underpinning the current development of the Council’s new single Housing Strategy which will provide the framework going forward for the Council’s approach to maximising the delivery of new affordable homes. The initial draft of the strategy is currently being finalised and will be brought forward for public consultation in due course. Alongside this, the Council’s Planning Policy approach to securing affordable housing will be a key consideration in the current work developing the Buckinghamshire Local Plan for adoption in 2025.

Question from Councillor Mark Cole JP, Chairman of the Planning Committee, Buckingham Town Council

Although Buckingham currently has no unmet housing need under VALP, can the Select Committee give an indication how much housing need it forecasts under the emerging Local Plan for Buckinghamshire, bearing in mind that the Secretary of State for Levelling Up Housing and Communities stated on 6th December 2022 that he has conceded that the 300,000 pa national housing target is being dropped, and local authorities will be allowed to build fewer homes if they can show that hitting centrally imposed targets would significantly change the character of their area?

Pushing more houses up to North Bucks would have the same despoiling effect on its rural and agricultural nature as it would have on South Bucks Green Belt/Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in terms of significantly changing its character.

Response from Councillor Peter Strachan, Cabinet Member for Planning and Regeneration

There is still considerable uncertainty about the approach Buckinghamshire should take to assess the need for housing here and how growth should be distributed across the Council area. This is because the government is going through a process of considerable change to the planning system and because evidence being prepared for the Local Plan is at an early stage.

One of the four ‘tests of soundness’ which local plans need to pass at their independent public examination is for them to be ‘consistent with national policy’.  That is defined as enabling the delivery of sustainable development in accordance with the policies in the government’s National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) and other statements of national planning policy, where relevant.

The current July 2021 version of the NPPF is under review.  The government is consulting on some proposed changes to the NPPF which it says will be confirmed in a new interim version of the document that it will publish in spring 2023.  National planning policy is therefore in a state of flux.

National policy as it stands is that councils that are preparing local plans should determine the minimum number of homes that are needed over the period of their plan.  This process should be informed by a local housing needs assessment, conducted using the government’s ‘standard method’, a statistical formula for calculating local housing need – unless exceptional circumstances justify an alternative approach which also reflects current and future demographic trends and market signals.  In addition to the local housing need figure, any needs that cannot be met within neighbouring areas should also be taken into account in establishing the amount of housing to be planned for.

Applying the government’s ‘standard method’ to Buckinghamshire gives a figure of 2,861 homes needed each year over the 10-year period 2023 – 2033.  This represents an unconstrained assessment of the number of homes needed without reference to any environmental constraints or policy designations.  It is also merely the starting point for establishing a housing requirement figure (or housing target) in the local plan and preparing policies to meet this, such as housing site allocations.  It is not mandatory and should not properly be regarded as a centrally-imposed top-down target.

Work on the Local Plan for Buckinghamshire is at an early stage.  The Council’s Planning Policy team is shortly to begin the site assessment process for the 1000-plus sites which have been gathered through the three ‘call for sites’ consultations and through other sources of data.  This assessment will inform a Housing and Economic Land Availability Assessment which will consider the suitability (environmental constraints), availability (when) and achievability (any viability issues) of the sites. 

Until this assessment is completed, which is likely to be after the government has published a revised version of the NPPF, there will be no reliable, up-to-date evidence in place on the amount of land, and its capacity to accommodate new homes, in Buckinghamshire that is both available and suitable to be considered for potential inclusion within the Local Plan.  Without this evidence, it will not be possible to determine the Local Plan’s response to the theoretical level of housing that is assessed as being needed over the plan period.