On 24th November, Housing and Planning Minister Brandon Lewis called on councils to prioritise the development of brownfield sites to enable more homes to be built whilst protecting the countryside.
It appears that in order to keep up with population growth in England we need to build around 230,000 new houses every year. The Campaign To Protect Rural England claims to have identified enough brownfield land in England to build 976,000 new homes - sufficient to cover over four years' worth of England's new housing requirements. Mr Lewis's sensible approach supports the arguments we made in our recent blog post when we compared the debris strewn Station Road brownfield site to the proposed greenfield site in Fairfield Road and we must hope that the minister's words carry weight with our district councillors when the Taylor Wimpey application is considered in the near future.
At present there are in the region of 22.1 million households in England. 230,000 new houses per year represents a growth of 1.04% per annum. If Framlingham was to grow at this rate we would be looking at around 14 new houses in the town per year - a sensible and manageable figure. Few would complain about growth at this level but there are planning proposals agreed or under consideration that would result in Framlingham increasing in size by almost 30%. This is one of the reasons why we object to the Taylor Wimpey proposal. If you agree please write to your local councillors:- you can find their names and addresses and a template letter by clicking this link.
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