News and Events

News from the Newsletter
Select Articles from the Menu below

Regional Perspective

By Gerald Kells Regional Planning Officer

Worcestershire will be in the firing line if plans for increased housing are rolled out across the West Midlands region.The Government, obsessed with reaching housing targets, has been putting pressure on the Regional Assembly to increase its housing provision over the next 20 years to near 380,000 as part of the second phase of the Regional Spatial Strategy revision.This is much higher than the 285,000 that CPRE believes we can accommodate on brownfield land, with the emphasis on affordable houses.

To achieve this increase, the Assembly is concentrating on what it calls growth areas, where it believes new housing can sustainably be located. One of those isWorcester, for which it is promoting 10,500 houses, but with 7,300 built in the

adjoining districts ofWychavon and Malvern Hills.This would require substantial greenfeld development, along with new business parks in the countryside and the promotion of a new bypass. Although the aim is for sustainable communities, it is unclear where the funding would come from for improved transport to make the new settlement cohere with the city, or how other environmental constraints would be addressed.

Another growth point would beRedditch, which would get 6,600 new homes but with 3,300 built in Bromsgrove District.This would cause the loss of some Green Belt as well as green field land.

Despite all this, the Assembly remains committed to a strategy centred on the regeneration of the Major Urban Areas.Birmingham's housing numbers go up, as doCoventry's, albeit with extensions into the Green Belt, but one cannot

help thinking that volume house builders will find it easier and more profitable to build on open fields, and that those citizens with the means to do so will move out of the region's core towns and cities to these new houses and commute back to the conurbation.

And there is the question of do we need all these houses?The Assembly's own risk assessment warns that over-provision is more dangerous than under-provision, leading to a spiral of environmental and social problems.We can, after all, increase the numbers if predictions turn out to be under-estimates, but we cannot'unbuild'the new estates.

In December we anticipate a Preferred Option for the new strategy, followed by an Examination in Public in the autumn of 2008. CPRE will be there, arguing that we need a balanced approach to housing, not'numbers driven' but sustainable and fully justified. And it is vital that we do, for the House Builders' lobby is never satisfied.They are always arguing for more.

Go to National News Releases

The Campaign to Protect Rural England exists to promote the beauty, tranquillity and diversity of rural England by encouraging the sustainable use of land and other natural resources in town and country.