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Saturday, October 11, 2008, 10:00
The Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) wants 592,000 homes to be built across the region over the next 20 years – 29,600 per year – to address the growing housing crisis in the South West.
But the South West Regional Assembly (SWRA), which met yesterday in Exeter, said that the figure, included in a revised Regional Spatial Strategy (RSS) for the economic and social development of the Westcountry, was based on "no clear evidence" that it was justified.
It believed no more than 23,000 homes needed to be built every year, 460,000 over two decades, and had "major reservations" about the region's ability to accommodate the infrastructure changes – to roads and services like education and health – the extra houses would create.
One assembly member said the Government was living in "cloud cuckoo land" if it thought its plans were a good idea.
Chris Lewis, a Conservative on Torbay Council, said: "If we could build even half that number, we wouldn't be believed. The 23,000 figure has evidence behind it, the 29,600 figure does not."
In a statement to the Government, to accompany more detailed findings, the Regional Assembly, which has a role as the regional planning body (RPB) for the South West, said it was "concerned that no clear evidence had yet been presented to justify the Secretary of State's proposal for 29,600 new homes".
"We have major reservations about the ability of the South West region to accommodate the scale of change proposed," it added.
A report prepared for the meeting said that the CLG had based its new figure on an assumption that the regional economy would grow by 3.2 per cent a year. This, the report said, was "flawed", with a figure of 2.2 per cent growth per year closer to the truth.
Assembly member Steve Jordan added that "everything that happens has to have infrastructure first" and that with the construction industry currently in dire straits, that would lessen the chances of this happening:
"There is no way that the prediction of 3.2 per cent is going to happen in the real world," he said.
The revised figures for housing in the South West were introduced into the RSS last year by the Government, after local authorities spent the previous two years analysing the level of housing needed by the region.
The planned increase has been opposed by other groups on grounds including fears of over-developing rural areas, and the ability of the region's roads, schools and other services to cope with the added increase in population.
The increase was opposed by MPs of all parties with constituencies in the South West.
Other groups have also been trying to have the house numbers reduced, with the county council calling the plans "a charter to develop Cornwall into oblivion".
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