The government officially announced today it is has scrapped the regional targets for housing. This means that councils like Rochford now longer have to allow the number of houses that the previous Labour government was insisting on.
The government minister Eric Pickles said:
?Communities will no longer have to endure the previous government?s failed Soviet tractor style top-down planning targets ? they were a terrible, expensive, time-consuming way to impose house building and worst of all threatened the destruction of the Green Belt.
?I promised to get rid of them and today I?m revoking regional plans with immediate effect ?
Our council will now have to decide how much housing it does want. The government also said that:
“Local planning authorities will be responsible for establishing the right level of local housing provision in their area, and identifying a long term supply of housing land without the burden of regional housing targets.
“Some authorities may decide to retain their existing housing targets that were set out in the revoked Regional Strategies. Others may decide to review their housing targets.
“We would expect that those authorities should quickly signal their intention to undertake an early review so that communities and land owners know where they stand.”
We’ll do a bigger update on this over the weekend. In the meantime Hawkwell Councillor John Mason explains his view on the situation here.
Much aas I welcome a review of housing strategies, I can’t help but remember Eric Pickles’ embarrassing appearance on Question Time, when he was trying to justify his travelling/overnight stays in London expenditure. A quick look on You Tube is well worth it- I promise!
Oh yes Alison, ’embarrassing’ is a very polite description. Absolutely toe-curling 🙂
You can see it at http://www.libdemvoice.org/at-last-its-the-eric-pickles-cockup-on-youtube-13013.html
Analysed the issues a bit further and distilled the results at http://bit.ly/9llwXI
entitled “Could there be a Reduction in House Building Targets in Rochford District?”. I think that I have finally got the bottom of this now and even if our Council does now wake up as the OnlineFOCUS Editor suggests I don’t think it will be a busy day !! John