Landowners, developers and others are invited to suggest sites in Wokingham Borough they believe have potential for new homes.
Wokingham Borough Council is in the early stages of developing a new Local Plan which will set the tone for development up to 2045.
The first stage is for landowners and others to suggest sites where new homes could be built.
In a Local Plan, councils try to devise a ‘five-year land supply’ for sites in their respective areas.
If a council is unable to demonstrate that supply, a developer is more likely to win an appeal to the government’s planning inspectorate to build on sites of their choosing.
A consultation for the ‘call for sites’ has been published on the Engage Wokingham website, which closes at 11.59pm on Tuesday, September 1.
This is separate from the Local Plan Update, which involves changes to the existing plan, which was largely triggered following the death knell for a project to build 15,000 homes in Grazeley.
The ‘Grazeley Garden Town’ was favoured by Wokingham, Reading and West Berkshire councils, but was effectively vetoed when the Ministry of Defence extended the emergency nuclear planning zone to cover the village.
The update proposes around 3,930 homes for a ‘Loddon Valley Garden Village’, shifting the core of development in the borough east of Grazeley and outside the emergency zone.
The government’s planning inspectorate announced the Local Plan Update is on track for approval on August 11.
The process has taken years, beginning under the Conservative administration in 2021 and carried forward by the current Liberal Democrat administration.
Sites suggested during the Local Plan Update process could re-emerge, such as the Berkeley Group proposal for 2,500 homes in Ruscombe, called ‘Twyford Gardens’.
Stephen Conway (Liberal Democrats, Twyford, Ruscombe & Hurst) told the Local Democracy Reporting Service the borough faces major challenges in meeting the housing need in the borough.
He said: “The only way to remedy that is to have a new Local Plan.
“For the current Local Plan, the inspector has made recommendations for modifications, and we’re very happy with the process to move forward as quickly as possible.
“We need to get back a five-year land supply protection against speculative development, then begin another local plan.
“We’re obliged to start work on that even before the local plan update process has finished, as we’re not being left much breathing space.”
Pauline Jorgensen (Conservative, Hillside), the leader of the opposition, argued the housebuilding pressure put on the borough should be redirected to the capital.
She said: “At the beginning we worked with the Lib Dems to lobby for central government to reduce the targets; we were all pushing in the same direction.
“For years we built more houses than we had to.”
The council has stated that since 2006 more than 2,000 homes have been built over and above the borough’s housing requirement.
During 2018–2021, 4,006 homes were completed against a target of 2,125 —an overdelivery of 1,881 homes.
Councillor Jorgensen added: “The Labour government is putting up the housing targets for Wokingham.
“What they should be doing is building on brownfield sites in London.
“The councils in London are not meeting their housing targets.”
She then cited a Centre for Policy Studies article which stated that work on 4,170 new homes was started in London last year, down 72 per cent on 2023/24.
Councillor Jorgensen said: “Builders prefer greenfield sites as they are easier to build on, but they need to be forced to build in London.
“The targets are tough in rural and semi-rural areas like ours, whereas London councils are missing their housebuilding targets.”
