Impact of a new town on Fleet and Church Crookham

Posted on December 8, 2015January 2, 2016

Impact of new town on Fleet and Church Crookham

I have a great deal of sympathy for residents of Fleet and Church Crookham who have suffered a great deal of development in recent years with insufficient investment in infrastructure. However, a new town in Winchfield, Hook and Hartley Wintney parishes is not the panacea for Fleet residents that that many of the Hart Councillors would have you believe.
There will be negative impacts in 4 main ways:

Starvation of infrastructure funding
Extra traffic and congestion
Lack of affordable homes
Destruction of amenity space

Infrastructure Funding

Hart Council currently has a £78m infrastructure funding deficit, much of it in Fleet, Church Crookham and Hook. This does not include healthcare where there is a forecast £47m funding deficit in five years time. A new town will need about £300m of infrastructure spending to make it work, but a realistic assessment of developer contributions is £40-50m. This leaves a further gap of ~£250m. There are already complaints about long waiting lists at doctors and lack of other amenities. It is clear that a new town will be under-funded with consequent impact on other parts of Hart District, where there will be no spare money to address the deficit that already exists in all areas of Hart including Fleet and Church Crookham.

Congestion

Where Hart Residents Work, SHMA Figure 13

Let’s have a look at where Hart residents work, using the evidence of the Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA).

A bit less than half of them work in Hart – 45%. So of the 12,500 new people in a new town, 45% of those of working age will work in Hart. The biggest employment centres are in Fleet and Hook. So a significant proportion of the new town workers will go to work in Fleet. They are not all going to work in a new supermarket in the new town.

A significant proportion will also work in Rushmoor (Farnborough and Aldershot), Surrey Heath (Camberley) and Waverley (Farnham) – some 18% in total.

The most obvious travel to work route for many of these people will be along Pale Lane, through Elvetham Heath/Fleet or along Chatter Alley, through Dogmersfield, Crookham Village and Church Crookham. But these roads are narrow and a difficult to upgrade due to bridge constraints, so maybe a new road out of the new town on to Hitches Lane will be required.

A big portion – 6.2%, will use the train to go up to London from a station that is already full, on a line that is operating at or above design capacity.

Another group will go to Hook directly, or through Hook and/or Hartley Wintney to get to Reading or Bracknell adding to existing peak time congestion on the A30.

Pretending a new town will have no impact on congestion in Fleet and the Crookhams is plainly wrong.

Surely much better and more sustainable to direct housing development to the east of Fleet at Ancells Farm, Bramshott Farm and Pyestock (some of them brownfield sites) with a cycle route to Fleet station and a cycle route to the Cody Tech centre or the Farnborough airport complex.

Affordable Housing

Admiral House, Harlington Way, Fleet, Hart District, Hampshire

As of 26/11/15, the cheapest 1-bed and 2-bed new homes available within 1 mile of Fleet are available at prices of £215,000 and £235,000 (Rightmove). Median household incomes for Hart are £40,200 per Figure 4.8 of the SHMA. This means that the cheapest new homes are between 5.3 and 5.8 times median incomes and out of reach for the average household, so something should be done.

The SHMA calls for 60-70% of new build to be 1 and 2-bed properties across the Housing Market Area. The developers are going to want to do what they always do, that is to build 3-5 bedroom detached houses in the new town which will be no doubt attractive to those moving from London, but will do nothing to meet the needs of ordinary people living in Hart.

Surely, it would be better to build smaller, starter properties on brownfield sites such as Ancells Farm, Fleet Road, Harlington Way in Fleet and Bartley Wood in Hook to give younger people a more affordable first step on the housing ladder. This iwll do far more to meet the actual need outlined in the SHMA, and be more sustainable for our environment.

Destruction of amenity space

The Heart of Hart, the area around Winchfield, is used as an amenity area for walking, cycling, watching wildlife and other recreation. Concreting it over and joining together Hartley Wintney, Winchfield and Hook into a giant Hartley Winchook conurbation will lead to lack of amenity for everyone. Hart Council is yet to report on the consultation it ran earlier this year on how we value our amenity space.

If you are concerned about the impact of a new town, we have created two guides to responding to the consultation that are available on the downloads below. The comments are designed to be cut and pasted into the boxes provided. It will be very powerful if you could edit the comments into your own words. Please do find time to respond to the consultation and play your part in saving our countryside.

Full version:

Responses to Local Plan Consultation

Download Now!440 Downloads

2-minute version:

Respond to Local Plan Consultation in 2 minutes

Download Now!424 Downloads

Independent Expert says we are being asked to build too many houses

Posted on November 13, 2015December 2, 2015

Time to celebrate we don't need so many houses

Time to celebrate: Hart, Rushmoor and Surrey Heath don’t need so many houses

An independent expert, Alan Wenban-Smith has taken a look at our housing needs assessment and concluded that Hart District is being asked to build too many houses. He says that the overall house-building rate for the combined area of Hart, Surrey Heath and Rushmoor should more than halve from 1,180 dwellings per annum (dpa) to 558 dpa, and that for Hart should fall from 370 to 268dpa. This would reduce the overall housing need for the housing market area from 23,600 to 11,160 and that for Hart from 7,500 to around 5,500. This calls into question the validity of carrying out a new “Housing Options” consultation now when there is serious doubt about the accuracy of the housing numbers we need to deliver. Please do get involved with this consultation and respond to it using our guide on our dedicated page about this consultation here.

This is very good news in that if this analysis is upheld at inspection it should lead to the following conclusions:

We can meet all of our remaining housing need from brownfield sites alone.

We definitely would not need a new town in Winchfield or anywhere in Hart, nor would we need any urban extensions.

The risk of needing to build 3,000 houses to cater for the unmet needs of Surrey Heath and Rushmoor should fall away.

There may be an opportunity to ask Surrey Heath and Rushmoor to build more houses for Hart, so we could keep our beautiful countryside.

Mr Wenban-Smith’s full report was commissioned by We Heart Hart and Winchfield Action Group can be downloaded here:

Critique of Hart SHMA

Critique of the Hart, Rushmoor and Surrey Heath SHMA by Alan Wenban-Smith

Download Now!288 Downloads

The summary of his argument, together with the implications is discussed below:

The starting point for assessing housing need in Hart used the 2011-based population projections from the Government and then made a series of changes to extend those projections out to 2031; adjust for higher inward migration estimates and for smaller average household size. These 2011-based projections have been superseded by more recent 2012-based figures that already make projections to 2031 and already include the adjustments made above. The effect of this is to reduce the start-point considerably.

Hart has already commissioned a review of the Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA) to take account of these latest Government figures and so should include this reduction. We should know the results of this work early in 2016. However, this does call into question the validity of conducting a new consultation now when the numbers are subject to such a large degree of change.

Then Mr Wenban-Smith challenges the jobs forecasts in the SHMA, concluding that the level of jobs growth we achieved in the period 1998-2008 would be a “good result” and the increases in jobs and houses needed to support economic growth should be reduced.

Finally, he then goes on to say that the level of house need shown in the SHMA cannot be delivered by the market. If the amount of land required to meet the need is allocated by the council, then this will lead to housebuilders cherry picking the best sites and building at a rate that gives them most profit, not at the rate required to meet the needs. So, he concludes that the level of housing proposed is unsustainable, and therefore contrary to the NPPF and should be reduced. This is in-line with current guidance about SHMAs from the Planning Advisory service that says:

Based on these reasons, we conclude that the OAN should be principally understood as a measure of future demand rather than aspiration. Accordingly we propose a working definition as follows:

‘The housing that households are willing and able to buy or rent, either from their own resources or with assistance from the State’.

Housing targets systematically over-stating housing need

Posted on November 8, 2015November 13, 2015

Is this what we want our countryside to turn into?

A review of a sample of Strategic Housing Market Assessments (SHMAs) across the south of England has indicated that on average, local planning authorities are being asked to plan for 41.9% more houses than the needs identified by DCLG population projections. The consequence of this is it is likely that far more green field land is being allocated for housing than is necessary to meet our housing need.

Regular readers will know that for some time we have been concerned about the overall level of housing Hart District is being asked to deliver. To this end, we have been analysing our Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA), and together with Winchfield Action Group (WAG), we have commissioned an independent look at Hart’s SHMA.

However, we have also been inspired by the work of Alan Wenban-Smith criticising the Vale of the White Horse SHMA. This has led us to take a look at a number of SHMAs around the area, comparing the starting point of the official Government population and household forecasts to the end point of the recommended housing need after taking into account a number of additional elements like additional inward migration to the area, affordable housing, changes in average household size and jobs forecasts.

The findings are quite alarming and lead to a number of conclusions, some of which should be relevant for national planning policy.

We have looked at 6 SHMAs covering large areas of Hampshire, Berkshire, Surrey and Oxfordshire. Overall the total “starting point need” for these areas is 272,200 houses, and the end point “need” is 386,286 houses, or an uplift of 41.9%. This is shown in the table below:

SHMA Area	Loca Authorites covered	Author	Starting year year	End point year	Starting point "need"	Ending point "Need"	% Uplift over starting point	Notes
HRSH	Hart, Rushmoor Surrey Heath	Wessex Economics	2011	2031	15800	23600	49.4	Starting point is 2011 DCLG and SNPP projections
South Hampshire	Portsmouth, Fareham, Gosport, Chichester, Bognor Regis, Southampton (West Centre), Southampton (East), Winchester, Eastleigh, Lymington, Totton, Havant	GL Hearn	2011	2036	87105	131611	51.1	Starting point is 2011 DCLG and SNPP projections
East Hampshire	East Hampshire	Nathaniel Lichfield & Partners	2011	2028	8105	9605	18.5	Start point 2010 SNPP
Waverley	Waverley	GL Hearn	2011	2031	7670	9400	22.6	Start point 2011 SNPP and CLG projections
Berkshire	Bracknell Forest, Reading, West Berks, Wokingham, Slough, South Bucks, RBWM	GL Hearn	2013	2036	95772	112010	17.0	2012-based SNPP
Oxfordshire	Cherwell, Oxford, South Oxon, Vale of White Horse, West Oxon	GL Hearn	2011	2031	57748	100060	73.3	2011-based projections
Total					272200	386286	41.9

The DCLG population and household forecasts “are statistically robust and are based on nationally consistent assumptions“, so the net effect of adjustments across all SHMAs should be close to zero. If this sample is indicative of what is going on across the country, then councils will be planning for far more houses than we need and as a consequence will be allocating for development far more green field land than is necessary to meet our housing requirements, with disastrous consequences for our countryside. Current housing delivery is around 150K per annum, and the DCLG figures suggest an underlying need of 220K per annum. If my analysis of this sample is indicative of what is going on across the whole country, councils will end up planning for about 312K houses which would be a big waste of national resources.

We would like to see this analysis repeated on a national basis. However, an FOI request to the DCLG has not been successful because they don’t collate this data at a national level. For a Government that wants to focus on brownfield development, this looks to us to be a reckless omission.

The SHMAs on which this analysis is based are:

Hart, Rushmoor and Surrey Heath, here.

South Hampshire, including Portsmouth, Fareham, Gosport, Southampton, Eastleigh and Havant, here.

East Hampshire, here.

Waverley, here.

Berkshire, here.

Oxfordshire, here.

Fog descends on the Hart Local Plan

Posted on November 1, 2015November 1, 2015

Fog descends on Hart Local Plan

A number of new developments are emerging on the Hart Local Plan, that show that the overall process is confused and murky.

First, we understand that a new Housing Options paper is being produced that will go to a special meeting of Hart Council Cabinet on 18 November. This paper will then be offered for consultation, although the consultation period is not clear. Usually, six weeks are allowed for consultation, but there is some suggestion that this period will be reduced.

Second, it has emerged that the Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA) is being revisited to take account of changes in the population and household forecasts. We hope that this work will also take the opportunity to take a fresh look at the outlandish jobs forecasts in the current version of the SHMA. We believe that this work should result in an overall reduction in the housing allocation for Hart and the rest of the housing market area that includes Surrey Heath and Rushmoor. This would be good news and should remove the threat of Surrey Heath and Rushmoor asking Hart to build 3,000 houses for them. It is understood that this work will be completed early in the New Year.

Third, Hart District Council is embarking upon a process to identify additional brownfield sites across the district by consulting with town and parish councils. It is unclear how long this process will take, but it is fairly clear it will not be complete by the time the Housing Options paper is due to be completed. The council has still not committed to creating a proper register of brownfield sites across the district.

Finally, Rushmoor are still working on the results of the consultation they ran over the summer and are planning to publish a revised Local Plan for consultation early in the New Year, presumably taking account of the revised SHMA.

Pulling all of this together, it appears we are going to be consulted again on Housing Options which is to be welcomed, but the number of houses we need to accommodate will not take account of the latest thinking in the revised SHMA, nor Rushmoor’s revised plan nor will it take account of the total brownfield capacity in the district. It also seems odd that the council is seeking to force through a new consultation on a compressed timescale in the run up to Christmas, which is a time most residents will be focused on other things. All in all, a very murky process.

Housing allocation for Hart, Rushmoor and Surrey Heath should reduce by 6,560 according to new DCLG figures

Posted on October 15, 2015October 16, 2015

Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG)

The housing allocation for the combined Housing Market Area (HMA) of Hart, Rushmoor and Surrey Heath should be reduced by by 27.7% or 6,560 houses, taking away the risk that Rushmoor and Surrey Heath will ask Hart to build 3,000 houses for them and ensuring Hart’s own requirement can be built on brownfield sites only according to new population projections that have been released by the DCLG.

Hart Rushmoor and Surrey Heath SHMA Appendix F Figure 2

Figure 1: Hart Rushmoor and Surrey Heath SHMA Appendix F

The SHMA worked by taking as a starting point earlier Government figures that showed the combined population of the HMA would be 307K (PROJ 2 circled in Figure 1 above) and this was inflated by increasing the assumptions on inward migration, average household size and jobs growth to arrive at a final figure of 322K (PROJ 5 circled in Figure 1 above).

Hart Rushmoor and Surrey Heath SHMA Appendix G Figure 1

Figure 2: Hart Rushmoor and Surrey Heath SHMA Appendix G

Interestingly, revised population forecasts were published by the Government as the SHMA was being finalised that showed that the start point population forecast should be reduced to 295K (circled in Figure 2 above), but amazingly these changes were not used to reduce the assessed housing need. If they had been used, the total amount of housing that would be required for the HMA would have reduced by 208 per annum (see Figure 3 below), or a total of 4,160 dwellings out of a total objectively assessed housing need (OAHN) of 23,600.

Hart Rushmoor and Surrey Heath SHMA Appendix G Figure 2

Figure 3: Hart Rushmoor and Surrey Heath SHMA Appendix G

Now the latest DCLG figures (Table 426) have reduced the population forecast for 2031 for the whole HMA down to only 289K, a reduction of 6,000 people, which equates to a reduction of a further ~2,400 houses (@2.5 people per property).

Taken together these reductions in population forecasts would reduce the whole housing need for the HMA by 6,560 houses of the 23,600 or a reduction of a stunning 27.7%.

We wonder when Hart Council, Rushmoor and Surrey Heath councils will take these new figures into account in the Local Plan.

Hart household projections fall according to new figures from DCLG

Posted on October 10, 2015October 10, 2015

Cows in Winchfield, Hart District, Hampshire

Do we want to lose our cows to concrete?

In a piece of good news, revised population projections published by the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) show that Hart will have fewer households in 2031 than were assumed in the Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA). This should have the effect of reducing the housing requirement being imposed on Hart District as part of the Local Plan. This might reduce the remaining 2,900 houses left to grant permission for and make it more likely we can meet all of the remaining need from brownfield sites.

Local Authority	2011 households	SHMA start point for 2031 using 2011-based population projection	New projection for 2031 using 2012-based population projection	Change between 2011-based and 2012-based projections	SHMA end-point for 2031
Hart	35757	42220	40618	-1602	43291
Rushmoor	36559	40830	42362	1532	46381
Surrey Heath	33632	38170	38321	151	40689
Total	105948	121220	121301	81	130361

However in other news, the same new figures for Rushmoor and Surrey Heath show higher projections for households up to 2031 than were assumed in the SHMA. This might increase the housing requirement for Surrey Heath and Rushmoor and they may ask that Hart builds those houses for them.

What is clear is that the SHMA then makes several dubious adjustments to the baseline DCLG projections that add a further 9,000 or so houses to the total for the housing market area that need to be challenged.

The DCLG figures can be found here and here. The SHMA can be found here.

If SHMA adjustments were applied nationally we would be building too many houses

Posted on October 10, 2015October 10, 2015

Figure 1: Hart Surrey Heath and Rushmoor SHMA adjustments applied at national level

Evidence presented at the examination of the Vale of the White Horse Local Plan has demonstrated that if the adjustments made to the baseline DCLG housing projections were applied on a national basis, they would increase the national output of housing to double the DCLG estimate of what is needed and triple the recent output of housing.

Applying a similar approach to the Hart, Rushmoor and Surrey Heath SHMA shows that on a national basis, we would be delivering 54% more housing than we need on a national basis, see Figure 1 above. Surely it cannot be right that we are being asked to build at a rate that would lead to a surplus of housing.

Figure 2: England housing delivery actuals and projected 1946-2031

The baseline DCLG projections for the combination of Hart, Surrey Heath and Rushmoor call for 790 houses per annum (SHMA Figure 7.3). This equates to the DCLG projection of 220,000 houses per annum nationally (see figure 2 above). This compares to recent performance of around 150,000 houses per annum.

The final SHMA, after taking into account past under-delivery, amount to a total of 24,413 houses (see table below), or an increase of 54.6% over the DCLG baseline figures. The duty to cooperate might mean that Hart District has to build more houses than either Surrey Heath or Rushmoor as part of our Local Plan.

	Hart District	Surrey Heath Borough	Rushmoor Borough	Total Housing Market Area
Original SHMA	7,534	7,057	9,822	24,413
Proposed Transfers	3,022	(1,400)	(1,622)	0
New Total	10,556	5,657	8,200	24,413

If the same 54.6% uplift were applied to the DCLG projection, we would be building over 340,000 houses per annum nationally, more than double recent performance.

In recent years Hart has built more houses than it has been required to do and built at a rate above regional and national averages (SHMA Table 5.11). It is beginning to look like the total of the local SHMAs are much larger than the overall requirement as defined by the DCLG. Surely it cannot be right that we are being asked to build at rate more than 50% higher than the DCLG suggests we need to meet overall demand.

Latest jobs growth figures well short of SHMA estimates

Posted on October 8, 2015October 8, 2015

Hart Surrey Heath and Rushmoor Jobs Growth rates 1998 to 2013 compared to SHMA

The Government have released the revised BRES job numbers for 2013 and these show that the jobs growth rate we have achieved since the recession ended in 2009 is still much lower than the jobs growth rate assumed in the SHMA for the period 2011-2031, during which period it is inevitable we will experience at least one more recession. This comes at a time when the UK is creating more jobs than the rest of the EU put together, so can hardly be described as a normal set of circumstances.

The flawed jobs growth rate in the SHMA adds 5,100 extra houses to to the overall housing allocation to the combined Housing Market Area of Hart, Surrey Heath and Rushmoor. The impact of this is that it pushes up Hart’s own allocation and forces Surrey Heath and Rushmoor to ask Hart to become a sink for 3,000 extra houses for them. Furthermore, these jobs forecasts lead to over-estimates of the amount of employment land we need and so constrains the amount of land that might be made available for housing.

Hart becomes Housing Sink for Surrey Heath and Rushmor

Hart becomes sink for 3,100 houses from Surrey Heath and Rushmoor

If these errors in the SHMA growth rate were corrected the threat from Surrey Heath and Rushmoor would evaporate and Hart’s own housing allocation for the Local Plan would come down from 7,534 to around 6,750, which would definitely mean the remaining requirement could be made from brownfield sites alone.

How long before the penny drops with Hart District Council and the other Hampshire boroughs that they need to revise the SHMA to a more realistic number?

Ranil says no to Winchfield new town and yes to brownfield

Posted on October 6, 2015October 15, 2015

Ranil Jayawardena says no to Winchfield new town and yes to brownfield development

In a very welcome move, local MP for Hampshire North East, Ranil Jayawardena has come down strongly against proposed large scale green field developments such as Winchfield New Town, and asked Hart Council to produce a register of brownfield sites and be more active in using Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPOs) on brownfield sites that are suitable for housing.

In a week where Conservative MP’s have been spat at on the streets of Manchester, I think the only risk to Ranil after publishing his article is that he will be showered with kisses from his local constituents.

In response to questions from his constituents, Ranil has set out his views on planning and development. Ranil has also set up a petition saying brownfield development must be more strongly prioritised by Local Planning Authorities and Neighbourhood Plans must continue to be respected, both in the absence of Local Plans and by Local Planning Authorities when devising Local Plans.

Sign Ranil's Petition

The key passage from Ranil’s article is re-produced below:

I believe unused and redundant commercial buildings should be brought forward for regeneration before any more greenfield sites are allocated anywhere in North East Hampshire. That includes Grove Farm, Hop Garden, Winchfield, the Urnfield – and any other greenfield site for that matter – unless a locally-led Neighbourhood Plan wants to build homes to meet local needs.

I’ll go further. I’m against these developments – indeed, this sort of large-scale top-down volume-led development generally – as I do not believe they are necessary to deliver the housing we need in our area. Looking at Hart District specifically for a moment, as the largest part of the constituency, I believe that the local housing demand can be met on brownfield sites. This has the massive advantage of, often, improving an area; instead of vacant office buildings on Fleet Road, for instance, why not have modern apartments for young professionals who can’t otherwise buy a home in our area?

In July 2015, the Chancellor set out in the budget that, to reinforce our commitment to making best use of brownfield land, legislation will grant permission in principle for housing on suitable sites identified in the new statutory brownfield register. (Interested folk might recall that Hart District Council was previously asked to create a register, but chose not to. There will now be one.) Brownfield redevelopment will also be supported by strengthened advice for authorities on the release of land earmarked for employment purposes where it is no longer needed. Whatever your politics, I hope you’d agree that the Government – while still protecting the rights of local Councils to determine the future of their own area – is being clearer than ever that brownfield land must be prioritised.

I’d even suggest, perhaps unusually for a Conservative, that Councils should be more active in their use of Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPOs) where brownfield sites exist and it is clear that it would be a good site for housing, but the landowner is standing in the way of development, or the site as a whole is currently in multiple ownership. Not only would this deliver properly thought through regeneration, maximising the potential of brownfield land but, done right, it would also be good for local taxpayers, as the receipts from such a scheme on the eventual sale or rental of properties would help to keep Council Tax low in future…

Of course, the National Planning Policy Framework has always made clear that “planning policies and decisions should encourage the effective use of land by re-using land that has been previously developed (brownfield land)” and that local Councils “may continue to consider the case for setting a locally appropriate target for the use of brownfield land”. I’ve spoken with Government Ministers and others about this policy, which applies across the country. I was pleased that the Prime Minister included a £1billion ‘brownfield regeneration fund’ in the Conservative Party manifesto, which will help make more brownfield regeneration happen, while now requiring Councils to bring forward 90% of suitable brownfield sites for housing by 2020, both of which will help protect our countryside.

Needless to say, We Heart Hart is delighted by Ranil’s article as it reiterates many of the points we have been making for some time about brownfield capacity and the need to establish a proper database of brownfield sites as part of a different approach to the local plan.

It remains to be seen whether Hart District Council’s Conservative administration will heed the advice of its local Conservative MP and the express wishes of the Conservative Government when preparing the forthcoming coming consultation paper on housing options for the Local Plan.

Of course, Ranil’s intervention also increases the pressure on Rushmoor Borough Council who are needlessly protecting 96 hectares of brownfield land when there is a massive surplus of employment land whilst at the same time asking Hart to build 1,600 houses for them.

Local NHS budget gap of £47m per year adds extra pressure to infrastructure funding

Posted on October 4, 2015October 4, 2015

Frimley Park Hospital

Get Hampshire has reported that Leaders of the North East Hampshire and Farnham Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), the body responsible for the NHS in our area, have said that demand for services is rising much faster than their budgets and that in five years time there will be a funding gap of £47m per year.

This comes on top of Hampshire County Council’s £1.9bn infrastructure funding gap and Hart’s own £78m budget shortfall. We have estimated the costs of the infrastructure required for a new town at £300m, based on Hart’s own ideas of what new infrastructure will be required compared to around £40m that might be expected as developer contributions.

It is simply astonishing that as part of the Local Plan, Hart District is being asked to build over 7,500 houses and Rushmoor Borough Council over 9,800 houses (Rushmoor itself has an £80m funding gap) to increase congestion and add even more pressure on infrastructure and health services when it is clear that there simply isn’t enough money to fund even current demand let alone the new demands from the extra housing.

This is contrary to NPPF para 177 that says there must be a “reasonable prospect” of delivering the required infrastructure alongside housing:

“It is equally important to ensure that there is a reasonable prospect that planned infrastructure is deliverable in a timely fashion. To facilitate this, it is important that local planning authorities understand district-wide development costs at the time Local Plans are drawn up. For this reason, infrastructure and development policies should be planned at the same time, in the Local Plan”

Surely it is time to put a moratorium on any further major developments unless and until the infrastructure funding issues are resolved.