Housing strategy will affect future generations

Today (Friday) is the first day residents in Warwick district can take part in a consultation shaping future development in the area.

Their response will shape how many - but not where - houses are built around the towns over the coming 15 years. But Warwick District Council chief executive Chris Elliott is urging people to look beyond the numbers.

He said: “If this is simply brought down to a debate about numbers, everyone has missed the point. This is about the future of this area and future generations.”

The consultation sets out three scenarios, one of little growth with around 250 new homes a year, another with 500 and another with 800, based on economic growth at its peak early in the last decade.

Mr Elliott said the numbers were the end product of the process, not the starting point. Where houses will go will be the subject of a second consultation. Mr Elliott declined to comment on possible sites but said most building nowadays took place around towns.

He contrasted choosing no growth, which would lead to less money to tackle a shortage of affordable housing and improve services, with high growth and its likely effects.

He said: “Whatever choice you make there are consequences. There is lots of information that will tell you there is an enormous unmet housing need, but people will argue that the environment needs to be protected.

“This is the opportunity for the community to exercise that choice, but the responsibility has to be more than trying to protect the view from your window.”

And he warned that the Government’s ‘Localism’ Bill would not be the simple redistribution of power to the grass roots that many imagine.

Although it removes regional housing quotas, Mr Elliot said it created far more bureaucracy at a local level, with independent examinations for parish plans, which would also be subject to approval by referendums.

Warning that “bureacracy tends not to be something that gets communities engaged” he added that although parishes would have some say on detail, the overall strategy would remain with the district council.

And he warned his authority could not wait for parishes and towns to produce plans, but would need its own policy in place to act as protection against developers who might take applications to public inquiry.

The Government is ‘pro-growth’ in other respects. It has endorsed developers paying towards local services and its ‘new homes bonus’ pays councils the band D council tax rate for every new home for six years, with supplements for affordable housing and filling empty homes.

Mr Elliott stressed his authority would not be relying on this for money given the unpredictability of the housing market, but repeatedly drew the link between growth and resources.

He added: “We might be taking decisions now but they are effectively on behalf of future generations.”