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Protecting Shropshire for Sixty Years

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This letter published in the Shropshire Star on 18 May 2009 sets out our views on affordable rural housing.

• Printed version

CPRE Shropshire
Bear Steps
Shrewsbury
SY1 1UH

14 May 2009

Dear Sir

As your leader "Literally, a rural retreat" (11 May) makes clear, there is an affordable housing crisis in rural Shropshire. Young people who work in the countryside too often cannot afford to live there, or they live in accommodation that is cramped and substandard. This problem must be solved but it is naive for politicians to think it can be solved through lower house prices, or by building large estates of affordable houses in rural towns such as that planned at Ashbrook in Church Stretton.

Young people who work in rural communities breath life into them. They keep our schools alive and help manage our farms and landscapes. They staff the services that holidaymakers and those that retire here need. We need to build houses for them but we can no longer rely on developers of market housing to foot the bill. Government funding is the only practical solution for the majority of affordable homes and these houses should be built to rent, not to buy.

Houses must be built where there is local need and that means near to where people work. It also means building housing for the children of families in the villages and hamlets where they live. The way to tackle the affordable housing crisis is through a lot of very small developments of a few houses, not large estates such as Ashbrook.

These houses need not, and must not destroy the character of the countryside. They need to be tucked into the hamlets, farms and villages of our landscape and built in local styles.

This is an urgent agenda. If we are to protect the beauty of the countryside, we must also protect the life of its communities.

Yours Sincerely

Andy Boddington
Vice Chairman
CPRE Shropshire