Councillors are calling for higher housing targets imposed on Wokingham to be scrapped as they warn it will ‘change the character and nature of our borough forever’.
Wokingham must build some 560 more homes per year under new housing targets set by the Labour government, taking the total from 748 to 1,308.
Conservative councillor Charles Margetts has introduced a motion for next week’s full council meeting calling for a cross-party campaign to reduce the targets which he has called ‘not deliverable’.
The ward member for Finchampstead said: “If it happens, that’s obviously a massive change to the borough. Every last area of green land will be prepared for housing, or we’ll see more high-rise housing in the town centre.”
He added that he ‘doubts its even practically possible to deliver the number of houses’ outlined in the government’s ambitions for Wokingham.
Councillor Margett’s motion, set to be debated on Thursday, October 24 says: “The council opposes this vast increase in housing which will change the character and nature of our borough forever.
“We believe the Labour government should review the need locally and arrive at a much lower figure.”
Environment campaigners have also warned about the scale of housebuilding proposed for areas like Wokingham are ‘excessive and unsustainable’.
The chairman of Berkshire’s Campaign to Protect Rural England said the plans were ‘far more than we can cope with’, proposing ‘the wrong sort of homes, in the wrong places’.
It comes as Labour Councillors are calling for greater communication with residents over the progress of large housing projects.
Councillor Nagi Nagella has put forward a motion claiming that the authority’s communication with residents is ‘still not right’ despite more than a decade of significant development across Wokingham.
The ward member for Norreys would like the authority to publicise a schedule for each plan outlining key details and dates.
When the higher housing targets were announced, leader of the council Stephen Conway said: “The council will point out to the new government, as we did to the last, that our area has experienced large scale housing development over the last decade, yet prices have risen relentlessly.”
The Liberal Democrat has written to the government saying that there is ‘nowhere near enough previously developed land in the borough to accommodate the housing required’.
A final decision over the housing targets will be taken by the end of the year, with consultation with councils currently underway.
Councillor Margett’s motion will be debated and voted on by members at the upcoming full council meeting on Thursday, October 24.
