Fenland District Council and MP Steve Barclay join forces over objections to planning system changes
Fenland District Council is calling on the Government to re-think proposed changes to house building targets which it says are "ridiculous and completely unachievable" for our area.
The Government is currently consulting on its Planning for the Future White Paper, which aims to streamline the planning process nationally, and will also introduce a new method of determining targets for building new homes.
But Fenland's leader Chris Boden says the Government's "one size fits all" approach means the new target is totally unachievable for Fenland.
Essentially the new algorithm will mean Fenland needs to increase the number of homes built each year from the current 538 to 884 - that's a rise of 57 per cent.
And Councillor Boden, who has submitted a statement to the government alongside the council's written responses to a series of questions about the proposed policy, said: "Over the 20 year target period, we will be expected to deliver 16,880 new homes, which is equal to three and a half times the current number of homes in Chatteris.
"We just cannot squeeze in a further three and a half towns the size of Chatteris into Fenland without building in areas of high flood risk and without massive government funded infrastructure to support those new homes."
He said the proposed policy does not consider local circumstances and constraints, such as flood risk, poor infra-structure or local economic factors, which impact on development viability.
Coun Boden said: "The proposed algorithm makes no allowance for the fact that 83 per cent of the land area of Fenland is in flood zones 2 and 3 - the areas most susceptible to flooding - and that much of our land area in the less flood-susceptible flood zone 1 is already quite heavily developed.
"The proposed algorithm makes no allowance for the fact that residential development in Fenland is, at best, marginally financially viable."
Another source for concern is the plan to replace existing Section 106 agreements - the method which determines developer contributions for things like education, social housing and play areas - with a new flat rate Community Investment Levy.
Coun Boden said the change would make developments "mostly unaffordable" in Fenland.
He said said: "The combination of a significant increase in our housing delivery target with the potential imposition of a national uniform Community Investment Levy (which will be mostly unaffordable in Fenland) will, quite simply, set up Fenland District Council to fail to meet its planning targets for new homes, as we will be being asked to achieve the impossible."
Local MP Steve Barclay, who has been working "behind the scenes" to put Fenland's concerns to Government ministers, has been copied in on the council's reply.
The council hopes he can continue to put pressure on the Minister for Housing Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) to get the changes Fenland says are needed.
Coun Boden told him: "Your actions in supporting Fenland District Council's concerns about the proposed changes to the Housing Needs algorithm are very much appreciated, and I trust that you will be successful in encouraging MHCLG to bring development viability and flood risk areas into the calculation of expected housing delivery numbers for local authority areas around the country."
And he concluded: "These proposed housing targets are ridiculous and completely unachievable in Fenland. We physically can't squeeze three and a half more towns the size of Chatteris into Fenland without building in areas which the national planning guidelines state have an unacceptably high long-term flood risk. We're all grateful that Steve Barclay has taken this issue up from within Government on our behalf."
