Plans inspector criticises council over affordable housing ‘failings’

Kirklees Council yesterday withdrew its draft “core strategy”, a key planning document, after the Government’s Planning Inspectorate raised a string of concerns over whether it would pass legal tests.

In a highly critical letter, planning inspector Roland Punshon told the council it should be providing enough land to meet local housing needs and it was up to developers to decide whether or not to go-ahead and build houses.

He warned “the impact of constraining the release of housing land to levels well below what is required to meet need is likely to simply drive house prices even higher in a district where affordability is already identified as a ‘major challenge’ and to force more newly-forming households to migrate to other areas which are more affordable and where a greater choice is available”.

Mr Punshon said if Kirklees Council tried to push ahead with the document in its current form, the authority would have to justify why it had put forward green belt land for housing when other land was available and whether its plans for brown field sites would deliver the housing numbers it was predicting.

He also criticised the council for not doing enough to consult with neighbouring authorities over its plans.

The letter said: “It is not clear what, if any, co-operation was undertaken in the preparation of the core strategy before its contents were finalised.”

The core strategy is one of the key documents used by councils to justify their decisions on planning applications.

It sets out how much development the council thinks is needs and broadly where it should be in the district.

Councils without a core strategy document in place are considered more likely to face costly appeals over planning decisions from developers.

Core strategies are drawn up by councils and then put forward to be independently examined to make sure they meet laws and Government guidelines.

Kirklees Council was effectively told that if it pressed ahead with the document in its current form it was likely to be rejected.

The inspector said Kirklees Council should make “a pragmatic and realistic assessment” over the likelihood of the document being approved and suggested “the council may wish to give consideration to withdrawal of the core strategy”.

The council yesterday confirmed it would not press ahead with the document it submitted in April.

The joint cabinet member for place, Coun Peter McBride, said: “After studying the options available the best course of action looks to be the withdrawal the core strategy and agreeing a replacement.

“If we continued with our submission and it failed at a later stage we would be even further behind than taking the decision to withdraw now. This is an important piece of work and it is imperative that we get it right.”

York Council withdrew its core strategy last year in a similar move after a planning inspector raised concerns about its “potential soundness”.

It is currently consulting on a new Local Plan which has triggered fierce debate over the possible building of 22,000 homes in the city.

The warnings over the impact on affordability if Kirklees Council fails to make more land available for housing come just a week after the National Housing Federation released figures suggesting young families are being driven out of Yorkshire’s rural areas by rising prices.

According to the NHF, the number of people aged between 30 and 44 has fallen by 10 per cent in rural parts of the region in the last 10 years.