I read Neil Coupe’s opinion piece in last week’s Wokingham Paper ‘We should be proud that developers want to invest in Wokingham‘ with interest.
It is nationally recognised that we desperately need more housing, but it should also be noted that it is not in the interest of developers to solve the problem.
Once housing demand is met, house prices fall and so do developers profit margins. Developers want to build here because of the high level of house pricing we have in the area (more profit), but the rate of building is at a level that keeps house prices high.
We have to build currently 850 houses per year which is an increase of over 40% from our previous 600 target, so I dispute Mr Coupe’s claim that this is not a very big increase.
This quota though could be 850 one-bedroom apartments, or 850 six-bedroom houses – it does not specify.
There is more profit for developers in larger properties, but is this what Wokingham really needs?
I accept Mr Coupe’s point that having people move to our town is a good thing: this is good for our businesses, our diversity etc. However, we must also cater for our own population, and this is something that has been greatly overlooked.
We have a large influx of big properties and not enough smaller properties for our children to move to and for our retiring residents to downsize to.
While we may be attracting people to Wokingham, we will also be losing many of our residents who move elsewhere, and that balance needs to be redressed. I therefore do not feel that sense of pride Mr Coupe describes.
I, along with my Liberal Democrat colleagues, want our council to take more control over our house building and ensure that the type of properties we need are built, not the type the developers want. Wokingham Liberal Democrats have a clear housing policy that would tackle this imbalance which can be found at www.wokinghamlibdems.org.uk under Local Manifesto.
I also want to challenge some other points Mr Coupe raises.
In the South East, we do have areas of green space. How this can be used to justify continuing to concrete over vast areas of Wokingham I do not know.
Mr Coupe also compares our population density with other towns, in particular Reading. Yes, our population density is lower than a number of towns across the country, but we have to respect that we are a market town without the infrastructure to sustain large levels of population increase and a semi-rural borough which I fear is being lost.
We have congestion issues on our roads, poor air quality due to this, very limited access to schooling (unless you go private), difficulty getting doctors appointments, this list goes on. Our town and infrastructure was not built to accommodate the high increase in population that we have already seen.
Regarding our housing quota, a methodology is used to determine what figure should be given to us. The methodology is clearly flawed as our high levels of house building do not seem to have been taken into account.
Therefore, I have set up a petition calling on central government to redesign the methodology https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/237564.
However, I have also been informed by MP Jake Berry, Minister for the Northern Powerhouse and Local Growth, that “a housing need figure is not a target.”
Mr Berry states that local authorities use the quota as a starting point to help them make an assessment and consider “whether the need is more appropriately met in neighbouring areas.”
The housing crisis is a national one, not a local one.
The system needs a redesign.
Cllr Sarah Kerr is the Liberal Democrat member for Evendons Ward on Wokingham Borough Council
Tony Johnson is away
