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"The new housing projections in draft unitary authority plans do not stack up." That's the view of CPRE Shropshire in response to topic papers issued by the Implementation Executive for the unitary authority. Analysis by Roger Carlyle for CPRE shows that projections for new houses in Shropshire are far too high and conflict with existing regional plans. It could lead to damaging and unnecessary loss of countryside.

Scale of Housing Growth

One of the key aims of the Regional Spatial Strategy is the regeneration of the Major Urban Areas: as such they are identified as the “main focus for development and investment.” The housing numbers set out under 3.19 and based on the Strategic Housing Market Assessment 2008 Final Report – Table 98 seem totally incompatible with the key aim of the RSS. Table 98 aggregates housing requirement from various sources. One of the sources is the following tabulation of population change and its implication for household growth.

Source: West Midlands West Housing Market Area Strategic Housing Market Assessment 2008

The annual growth rate has been added in the right hand column of the table. The proposal that Shropshire population growth and housing growth from 2006 to 2026 should be projected at an annual rate of 0.32% and 0.82% respectively whilst similar growth figures for the Major Urban Areas should be 0.16% and 0.63% is totally at odds with the key aim of the Regional Spatial Strategy. Putting this another way, the Strategic Housing Market Assessment 2008 Final Report, Executive Summary, para. 44 predicts a growth rate for the number of households in the West Midlands of 13.6% between 2006 and 2026. Over the same period Shropshire is predicted to have a growth rate of 20.8%. How can this be reconciled with the key aim of the RSS which seeks to concentrate the majority of development in the Major Urban Areas to encourage their regeneration.

Having made this fundamental observation we offer the following additional comments

1.4 Aims to “address a range of social, environmental and economic considerations…” However, environmental considerations seem to have been totally ignored.

Local and central government have demonstrated their commitment to economic expansion very forcibly over recent years with apparent disregard to the undesirable side effects.

Overall demand for housing seems to be led primarily by net immigration which increased dramatically around the millennium and has only recently begun to show signs of falling back to lower levels. Government housing projections are based on the recent period of high net immigration; this is unlikely to continue.

Any increase in the rate of house building is totally negative from an environmental point of view; it will lead to:

• Increased energy consumption
• Increased air pollution
• Increased water usage
• Increased refuse
• Increased traffic congestion
• Increased parking problems
• Loss of green space
• A reduction in the quality of life for the majority of the community
• A loss of character in both towns and the rural areas of the county

Public Opinion seems to have been totally ignored. It is quite clear from the public response to developments throughout the county that Shropshire residents do not carry the same conviction as do central and local government that economic expansion is more important to people’s lives than preservation of the character of the area. Anyone regularly reading the letters page of the Shropshire Star and Shrewsbury Chronicle can have been left in no doubt of that fact.

Evidence from the Strategic Housing Market Assessment 2008 Final Report prepared for the West Midlands West Housing Market Area, is the basis for estimating the annual new housing need for the county as 1,585 (3.19). One asks whether this is the result of an independent and balanced survey. A check of the attendees at the July 2007 Stakeholder Seminar suggests very clearly that it is totally dominated by the house building industry. There appears to be no representation whatsoever from environmental groups.

In May 2006 Shropshire County Council were responding to the Section 4(4) Consultation of the Phase 2 Revision of the RSS. They put forward their “Fourth Way” proposal based on an overall build rate for the county of 1163 dwellings per annum. SCC also made the point that “a higher figure for the county could not be accepted because of constraints from land supply, environment, landscape, biodiversity, infrastructure, water supply.” Are these restrictions not equally valid now as they were in 2006?

Little has changed over the last 25 years. In a review of The Shropshire County Council Structure Plan in 1983 the following comment appears. “Since 1951 10,000 new dwellings have been built on about 1000 acres of open land. The built up area of the town, about 1 1/ 2 miles across in 1900 now stretches to some 4 miles across. The Urban Area Local Plan publicity exercise attracted many comments; the most often repeated complaint relating to the “apparent” need to continually expand the town.” Is it not time that Local Government paid greater attention to the views of those who elected them?

Roger Carlyle, CPRE Shropshire September 2008

Further Information

• Unitary Authority: Planning
• Housing