Last week, I met with Hyde in Chichester, one of the UK’s and Chichester’s largest social housing providers. We discussed concerns raised by constituents and their move to provide clearer communication for their residents. I was pleased to hear that Hyde intends to expand its social housing provision locally and hope it can work closely with Chichester District Council to deliver housing solutions that truly serve our community.
Figures from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government show that over 2,000 families in the Chichester area are currently on the waiting list for social housing. These are families that have been priced out of purchasing or privately renting, due to the high prices in the Chichester area.
I have used this regular column to talk before about the failures of our planning system and the national planning policy framework, which puts power in the hands of developers and not in communities. With 1.5 million unbuilt homes in England and Wales with planning permission, it could be argued it’s not a housing crisis we have, but a building crisis.
A development of 11 homes or more should deliver 10% of those as social and affordable homes, but both Chichester District and Arun District Council request that sites deliver 30% social and affordable housing in their developments. Arun District Council’s planning committee recently approved a contentious application of 2,200 houses to the West of Bersted on the grounds that it was identified in the local plan as a strategic development site that the previous administration approved. This was met with genuine disappointment from the community, not least because of real concerns about a lack of infrastructure in the local area, but also because this large-scale development will only provide 10% social and affordable housing, as the developers deemed the site to be ‘commercially unviable’ at a higher percentage.
This is unfortunately not an isolated incident in our area, with high land prices and even higher housing targets to meet, meaning local planning authorities are often fighting with their hands tied behind their backs.
I recently wrote to the government to highlight the self-sabotage that their planning system creates and participated in debates on the standard method of housing targets and also on flooding, planning and developer responsibilities.
Everyone deserves access to a safe, secure and genuinely affordable homes. This must remain a national priority, but currently the government are failing to address the broken system, favouring tinkering round the edges and serving nobody.