Support

Representation ID: 21998

Received: 16/03/2020

Respondent: Ms Carol Sharp

SNGP supports the affordable housing policy within Policy 5 – Homes. It is essential that the requirements of this policy are followed when progressing applications for housing on sites of 10 dwellings or more. Any policy which encourages the building of a greater proportion of affordable homes should be adopted.

Ideally, affordable and social housing should be provided where needed as a stand-alone provision, and not be connected to private developers’ housing targets. 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. 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.

Developers who use viability assessments to try to argue down their affordable housing contribution should be required to show that they have explored options for redesigning schemes that do not impact on the level of community benefits to be provided. These viability assessments should be open to public scrutiny, and should be published online early enough for meaningful scrutiny to take place.