By Cllr Stephen Conway
Wokingham Borough Council is working on the final stages of its Local Plan, which will shape the future of the borough for the next 15 years or more.
The Local Plan is the means by which the council must meet the government’s new housing allocation, calculated according to a means determined by the government. The council has no choice over the total number of new homes it is required to approve in the Local Plan period.
Opposition councillors suggest that we can meet the government’s housing requirement by using ‘brown-field’ land – land previously occupied by buildings such as offices, factories, and other commercial activities.
How I wish that were true.
But it’s not true, as they know full well from when they drew up the current draft Local Plan, which included many green-field sites. There is nowhere near enough brown-field land available to meet anything like the government’s housing allocation for the borough.
It grieves me that the council has no choice but to agree to the use of green fields; if we could avoid it, I know all councillors – of all parties – would wish to do so.
We are faced with unpalatable choices, with no answer that is going to satisfy everyone.
We have been assessing the options carefully. Scattering small-scale development across the borough, as some suggest, might deliver the number of houses that the government demands (though it would require a very large number of smaller sites).
But it would certainly not deliver the infrastructure to support them.
Infrastructure can be paid for by developers only when they generate sufficient profit to make it possible; smaller sites don’t generate the profit of larger ones.
To secure the infrastructure, then, a significant amount of the new housing must be in one large new settlement. We have been carrying out detailed work on the larger sites promoted by landowners and developers to see which is the best in terms of making communities, infrastructure delivery, and sustainable development.
The draft Local Plan we inherited from the Conservatives identified a major development site.
They had worked with the landowners and developers to produce a detailed masterplan. Now in opposition, the Conservatives have irresponsibly decided to oppose what they previously supported.
They have compounded their irresponsibility by offering no alternative.
We have sought to improve on the draft Local Plan that we inherited from the Conservatives, adding important new protections for valued green spaces in or on the edge of settlements and for areas of valued landscape character.
We are also developing policies to promote energy-efficient and environmentally sustainable new homes.
We will do our duty, as we must do, and produce a sound Local Plan to protect the borough from speculative development.
If we do not, the government will impose its own new Local Plan, which may have even higher numbers than the one they require us to produce and may include sites that no local councillor thinks suitable.
Cllr Stephen Conway is the leader of Wokingham Borough Council and ward member for Twyford, Ruscombe and Hurst
