THE leader of the Liberal Democrats has given his backing to a call for residents to get behind the council over Wokingham’s housing numbers.
At a meeting of Wokingham Borough Council last night, leader Cllr Julian McGhee-Sumner announced plans to hold a consultation after the local elections designed to show Government the strength of feeling among politicians and residents over the borough’s housing commitments.
He said he had wanted to have held a referendum but couldn’t do so.
Instead, he said: “We will pose a question in that consultation asking if [residents] support the government inflicted housing numbers in a simple yes or no manner. We want as many residents to respond so we can go back to government to say to them, ‘Look, all these residents cannot be wrong” – you have to do something about these overly high housing numbers’.”
And Cllr Lindsay Ferris said that his party would back the planned consultation.
He said: “We on the Liberal Democrat side are more than happy to support this suggestion.
“Our area cannot support the volume of houses that are being projected for our area: 894, or 854 houses per year for 20 years is far too many and these houses would destroy our area for ever.
“This is the last chance we have to keep the character and environment of our borough.”
He continued: “The actions of some of the developers has been an utter disgrace and this has to stop.
“We have also recently launched a Govt petition on this topic at http//petition.parliament.uk/petition/237564 where we are asking for a change in approach to housing numbers.
“In particular if an area has already taken a large number of homes in the current local plan this should be taken into account when future demand is taken into account.
“Wokingham Borough has already taken over 13,500 homes within the current local plan. At present no account whatsoever is taken of previous housing, This is unacceptable.”
Cllr Ferris stressed that the party was ready to work with other parties “as we have already done in my area where residents have made it very clear they do not want large number of houses built on our Green Belt”.
He added: “We have to retain as much of our environment as possible for the next generation. We have to stand up to these unwanted activities now, otherwise it will be too late. We would also suffer gridlock as it would be almost impossible for people to travel about the area.”
The consultation cannot be launched this side of the local elections due to strict rules as the council now enters a period called purdah.
Whatever the results of this year’s local elections, Wokingham Borough Council will still be a Conservative-led council as only a third of seats are being contested and the party will still have a majority even if opposition parties won all of the contested seats.
Cllr McGhee-Sumner tried to make it clear at the council meeting that this was not a political party issue.
“When I took on this role of Leader, I said I would do things differently,” he said. “I hope everyone will agree that this move is a bold and strong move to put our residents centre stage on this battle to get the Government to be more reasonable in their demands on us to build more and more and more houses.
“If we can come together, residents and all councillors with a single aim to get the government to listen we just might get some movement.
“If we do not work together it is highly unlikely, we will get anywhere. I cannot guarantee we will be successful, but we will try with all our strength to get the government to listen and change the numbers.”
