Council 'pushing back' on housing target

Councillor Elissa Swinglehurst said the targets were putting a lot of pressure on Herefordshire Council

A council has said it was "pushing back" against government proposals to increase the number of new homes by more than 40%.

They would add over 10,000 to the number of new homes to be built in Herefordshire over the next 20 years.

In a 42-page response to proposals, Conservative-led Herefordshire Council described targets as "too high" with the market "unlikely to deliver" 1,375 new homes every year.

Tory councillor Elissa Swinglehurst said targets added an "immense pressure on the council, and we are pushing back against that".

Councillor David Hitchiner, independent, said there was neither the building capacity nor the land supply in the county to meet such targets.

In the response, the council stated that a mandatory increase of 43%, from 16,100 new homes in the county to 27,500 over 20 years "is too high, and the market is unlikely to deliver it".

The government aims to build 1.5 million more homes in the next five years, helped by planning reforms, the release of greenbelt land and the reintroduction of mandatory housing targets for local authorities.

"We'll get shovels in the ground, cranes in the sky and build the next generation of Labour new towns," Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said.

The council has been told to build more than 10,000 new homes over 20 years under the plans.

Herefordshire Council said the target would be “a very significant increase" on previous trends, given the county's average figure for new homes over the past 10 years had been just 675 a year.

It said the county would "simply not deliver the growth" that the government wanted because the market for new homes "may not be there".

“Herefordshire has greater need for affordable than market housing, [and] increasing the total housing is not going to solve that issue,” it said.

This news was gathered by the Local Democracy Reporting Service which covers councils and other public service organisations.

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