We continue to work to reduce the housing numbers imposed on the borough by this Conservative government.
Everyone recognises the need to have enough new housing to meet local needs.
Our children and their children should have the opportunity to live in the communities in which they were brought up.
As we live in an area with high house prices, despite the last 30 years or more of intensive development, those in our community who are struggling on low incomes are priced out of the housing market.
We must make sure they have a decent home by increasing the proportion of social rental and affordable housing in the total housing stock in the borough.
But most residents share our view that the borough cannot accommodate the rate of new build dictated by the Conservatives targets without highly damaging consequences – the destruction of much of our beautiful countryside, the clogging up our already congested roads and the altering the character of our area forever.
Wokingham is a semi-rural area and we want it to remain that way.
We have therefore been lobbying the government to put the case for revising its target downwards.
We seemed to be getting somewhere when Michael Gove was the Secretary of State for levelling Up, only for him to be sacked by Boris Johnson and replaced by a new secretary of state.
We are lobbying him as vigorously as we did his predecessor.
We have met with and agreed a common approach with the borough’s MPs and most recently we have written to neighbouring southern councils to work together to present a united case.
Partnership – the central theme of the new Lib Dem administration at Wokingham – is the way forward here as it is in so many other areas of the council’s activities.
We will spare no effort to get our message heard by the government.
Our case is a strong one. It rests partly on arguments that apply particularly to Wokingham.
The borough has over-delivered on new housing in the past, and we are seeking to have that over-delivery recognized by a deduction from the new target.
But our most fundamental argument against the government’s housing allocation applies to many other council’s in our region.
We all want to see changes in how the government sets its target.
If the levelling-up agenda is anything more than rhetoric, it ought to involve encouraging more house building in the North, where jobs and investment are much needed, and not encouraging more and more people to move from the North to the crowded and South-East.
Cllr Clive Jones is the leader of Wokingham Borough Council and Lib Dem ward member for Hawkedon
