Local knowledge of need for homes

He’s delighted with it. “Very, very warm,” he enthuses. “I mean it’s smaller than what I’m used to, but it’s very cosy. I turn my heating off in March and it maybe won’t come on again till October.”

Dave was was born at his grandparents’ house which is four miles away at remote and picturesque Sedbusk. He moved to Bainbridge at the age of three weeks and has been living there for most of his life.

He was forced to move to a flat in Askrigg a few years ago when his marriage broke up. Buying wasn’t an option for him at the time. “I remember when you could buy a three or four bedroom house for forty or fifty thousand pounds round here.

“And then all of sudden they just shot up, and this being in a National Park, that adds a little bit as well. Then there’s the Herriot thing. It was filmed at Askrigg and prices shot up then as well.”

His home now is part of a project built partly because of the need for affordable housing for local people.

“There were 19 which were built and opened in 2007,” says Yvonne Peacock the local Richmondshire District councillor, and a member of the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority. “Part of those are for rent, for shared ownership and there are two on the ‘local needs’ market.”

The need for housing for local people was identified in a housing needs survey which happens every five or six years.

“It’s actually called a SHMAR – a Strategic Housing Market Assesment Report,” says Councillor Richard Foster, a Craven district councillor and chairman of the North Yorkshire and York Strategic Housing Board.

This brings together the district council housing departments in North Yorkshire, housing associations, and the county’s two National Park Authorities. The survey identifies those in housing need and also those who potentially want to move and have the ability to pay to move and it’s sent to 160,000 homes across the county.

“It will show if there is a need for those houses,” says Cllr Foster.

“Especially in the National Parks where you can only really build for local people – you have to show the local need. What we try to do in this survey is take it down to parish level, so the the parish will actually have an idea of whether they three houses, five houses, etc.

“If there’s no housing need and a planning application goes in, then it’s going to be very difficult to justify.”

This can be particularly important in areas where there is local opposition to building of new houses.

“We built some in Grassington which is in my ward,” says Cllr Foster. “When they were being built I got quite a bit of opposition.

“But as soon as they’d been built even the most ardent complainers realised the people who had moved into them were actually in housing need.”

In Bainbridge, Cllr Yvonne Peacock says, “It’s so important to have that information. Sometimes two or three houses in one village can make a huge difference to the viability of a village school.”

The survey closes at the end of this month, and can be completed online up to the 28th.

Unfortunately the picture it presents is not complete because three-quarters of locals never bother to reply. The last time Craven did one they had a response of 23 per cent.

An analysis of Government figures by the Commission for Rural Communities led it to predict a rise in the next 30 years of 35 per cent in households in rural districts, 13 per cent greater than the increase in inner city areas.

It says that up to 2031 there will be 356,000 new households added every five years in rural areas.

The most isolated rural areas will increase by an average of 189,000 households every five years.

This would need an annual supply of 250,000 homes nationally including at least 70,000 in rural districts.

The issue is especially acute in National Parks where incomes tend to be low and the demand for pretty cottages pushes prices sky high.

On the North York Moors the average house price is 13 times greater than the average income. Even these figures can hide the nature of the disparity, especially for young people in the area who are just starting out.

Dave Alderson is certainly convinced of the value of the housing survey.

He filled one in when he was living in Askrigg and the survey was was crucial his house being given the go-ahead.

“It made people aware that you wanted one, that you were looking for somewhere. This is where I always wanted to be. Back into Bainbridge.”

The survey is at http://www.housingneedsurvey-nyshp.co.uk/*