By Cllr Pauline Jorgensen
Development is a hot topic on the doorstep and in my inbox. Residents are rightly concerned about the potential loss of greenspaces, like Hall Farm, and our semi-rural character.
The Labour Party have promised an historic shake up of planning laws in order to “get Britian building again”.
I know, if you live in Wokingham Borough you may well be thinking “when were we not building?” and this is exactly the point.
The Leader of the Labour Party has also said that he would “choose the builders, not the blockers” – throwing his support behind the developers rather than local people. And he has further plans to allow building on the Greenbelt, thereby diluting one of the great reforms of post War Labour Government of Clement Attlee.
The failure by Wokingham Borough Council’s Liberal Democrat administration to produce a new Local Plan has resulted in a number of unsuitable planning applications being recommended for approval to the Planning Committee.
The National Planning Policy Framework requires local authorities to outline a supply of specific sites to meet housing needs. Wokingham Borough has a low land supply, making the whole Borough increasingly vulnerable to developers.
Last year a site at 6 Johnson Drive, in a rural area of Finchampstead, was recommended for approval to the Planning Committee, having previously been defended by the Council for many years.
Another developer won an appeal to build 32 houses on a rural site off Nine Mile Ride in Finchampstead, where the density of new houses was out of keeping with surrounding area. The reason the appeal was won was the absence of an adequate land supply.
In October 2022, five months into the Liberal Democrats’ leadership of the Council, officers warned “The Council no longer has a five-year housing land supply and so an increase in appeals for speculative housing development is expected.”
The Liberal Democrats’ lack of action on this issue has caused these inappropriate applications to be successful.
During the previous Conservative administration, we had meetings with the Secretary of State for Local Government, Housing Ministers, and our local MPs to press the case for cutting Wokingham Borough’s housing numbers. At the same time, we worked with other councils to campaign for a cut in numbers whilst being honest with residents about what was achievable. This strategy worked.
We got the Government to slash the Borough’s housing targets in half.
I want young people to enjoy the same opportunities of home ownership as previous generations.
I support the delivery of new homes but only in the right areas.
In our manifesto the Conservatives are committed to a record number of homes each year on brownfield land in urban areas. We also want to raise density levels in inner London to those of European cities like Paris and Barcelona.
I believe it is important to increase wealth and employment beyond London and the Southeast. By spreading employment across the country people will no longer be forced to move into the over-heated South East for work.
To help people get on the housing ladder we are making a manifesto commitment to ensure the vast majority of first-time buyers pay no Stamp Duty at all by increasing the threshold from £300,000 to £425,000 and increasing the threshold at which first-time buyers can access Stamp Duty relief.
Together with our new Help to Buy scheme, this clear plan will secure the future of homeownership for thousands more first-time buyers.
By contrast under Labour, some first-time buyers would pay over £11,000 more in Stamp Duty.
Labour’s scrapping of important planning regulations and disregard for local communities will lead to unsuitable housing and in the wrong places. The character of our area, the built environment around us, will almost certainly be permanently lost by Sir Keir Starmer’s incoming Labour Government.
The only way to stop it is to vote Conservative on July 4.
Cllr Pauline Jorgensen is the leader of Wokingham Conservatives on Wokingham Borough Council
