Object
Draft Local Plan
Representation ID: 13640
Received: 23/03/2016
Respondent: Mr Sasha Millwood
Up-to-date evidence is important, which is why the Council should spend more time updating its policies.
For example, assumptions about appropriate housing density are based on a report dated October 2011. Since then, the market has changed, such as higher-density development would be perfectly tenable, and flats would be perfectly reasonable beyond town centres. I therefore call upon the Council to spend a bit of time reassessing this issue, since it is evident that a higher density of housing is appropriate and expedient, and would obviate the need to destroy even one square metre of green belt.
If up-to-date evidence is really so important, why is the Council using recession-era studies for housing density? And, if anything, the importance of evidence would imply that the Council should be SLOWER in coming to a conclusion, and not cut corners, as it seems so keen to do at the moment.
The Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment Main Report is dated October 2011. §3.17 in particular seems a bit out of date. Although it may have been reasonable to rule out flats as a viable development in 2011, the housing market has picked up since then, so it is no longer tenable to argue that 'in the current climate such units [flats/apartments] are not proving to be popular'. This assertion, which I consider out of date, is significant because it informs the criteria for what density of housing should be adopted. Specifically, Table 3/1 is incredibly biased against high-density housing: it effectively rules out terraced housing in 'All other villages [that is, other than Brentwood/Shenfield/Ingatestone centre/W. Horndon centre/Doddinghurst centre], including sites adjoining the edge of villages'. It also effectively rules out having flats outside of the 'Brentwood centre, Shenfield centre plus sites on the main roads coming out of these centres'.
All of these assumptions above are contrary to the evidence that flats and terraced houses ARE highly sought-after in Brentwood, even when located outside town centres. Consider the Clement's Park/former Warley Hospital site, which has many flats, yet is an incredibly popular neighbourhood, despite many of the housing units being completed during the recession (as observed by the report on Objectively Assessed Housing Needs, which points out that recent completions are bucking national trends, and thus may have given an overestimate for future need, see §5.28).