Object

Representation ID: 21854

Received: 12/03/2020

Respondent: Hempnall Parish Council

Linking affordable housing targets to overall housing targets has potentially damaging consequences. This is because the delivery of necessary affordable housing then becomes reliant upon large housing targets. Developers can make a case for needing higher targets in order to provide the required level of affordable housing.

Hempnall Parish Council believes that ideally, affordable and social housing should be provided where needed as a stand-alone provision, and not be connected to private developers’ housing targets. We support rural exception sites as a means of supplying needed local affordable and social housing. An approach based on the provision of stand-alone sites such as these, in our opinion is a far better method for addressing affordable and social housing needs.

Where affordable housing is expressed as a percentage of the housing to be provided on a site, it is essential that the requirements of draft Policy 5 are followed when progressing applications for housing on sites of 10 dwellings or more. It is to be hoped that government policy will change further regarding viability tests so they become more transparent, so that it would be less easy for developers to evade their responsibilities to deliver affordable homes. More central government intervention is required if these needed homes are to be built. Lessons must be learned from the history of poor delivery of affordable homes, to ensure that the policy to provide 28% or 33% affordable houses must be enforced.