LETTER: Developers put in the driving seat

The UK house building shortage continues at around 100,000 per annum, despite a doubling of indiscriminate development on green field land, because the Coalition’s housing policy failed.
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That development was permitted despite a promise that councillors would be put back in charge of planning, accountable to residents via the ballot box - in the context of ‘Localism’.

Instead developers were put in the driving seat, leaving the Planning Inspectorate to over-ride the judgement of councils.

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So, we might have expected Tory Ministers to be punished for their failure to deliver Localism, at the ballot box – but they were not. One wonders why not.

Clearly more houses are needed to cater for a relentless rise in population levels, over which we have little control. That includes many low paid workers who pay little if any tax, are on in-work benefits and need affordable houses, which have not been budgeted for.

Do we really want more indiscriminate development when developers are clearly not going to fund the missing affordable houses from their profits? It is surely time to end the spin and deception.

The question is, why did so many residents vote for more of the same in both the national and local elections - or were their concerns (often expressed in the WSCT) simply over exaggerated?

NEIL WHITEAR

Chairman, UKIP Horsham Branch, Timber Mill, Southwater

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