Dame Caroline Dinenage, Member of Parliament for Gosport, has today penned a letter calling on the Government to rethink its ‘impossible’ top-down housing targets for Fareham and Gosport Borough Councils.
Alongside Shadow Minister for Housing and Hamble Valley MP Paul Holmes, and MP for Fareham and Waterlooville Rt Hon Suella Braverman, Dame Caroline noted that the two local authorities that cover her Gosport constituency are seeing a fivefold increase in their housing targets.
Those Councils are currently adding an average of 211 houses every year, but are required by Labour’s updated National Planning Policy Framework to jointly add 1242 houses annually. According to Annex 1 in the revised Framework the target will come into effect on 12 March 2025.
The letter compares the fivefold increase in housing targets in the Gosport and Fareham jurisdictions with Labour-controlled Southampton City Council’s housing targets, who have seen a 12% reduction as a result of Angela Rayner’s consultation.
Gosport in particular is extremely overdeveloped, with only the Strategic Gap, that Caroline has campaigned to maintain, standing in the way of total development. According to Gosport Borough Council’s draft Local Plan, the Borough is ‘over 80% built on’. The Strategic Gap currently serves to keep communities separate, maintain green space, and alleviate air pollution.
However, under the proposals of the revised National Planning Policy Framework, if Councils are unable to verify a five-year supply of houses, decision makers are expected to approve development. An article from October stated that Gosport has “no idea where to build ‘extra’ new homes for government housebuilding targets”, prompting fears that the likely failure to hit inflated housing targets will result in a housebuilding free-for-all.
Dame Caroline Dinenage said:
‘I am incredibly concerned about what the Government’s new housing targets mean for people in Gosport, Lee on the Solent, Stubbington, and Hill Head.
‘There is very little land supply locally that these new houses can be built on. Utilising our brownfield sites may go some way to satisfying these monstrously high targets, but there is a long way to go to get these fit for development. In the meantime, I do not want to see our vital Strategic Gap bulldozed and tarmacked as an offering to this Labour Government – whilst Labour authorities get off scot-free.
‘Our services are stretched, our roads are busy and polluted, and our towns lack green space. This number of new homes would be a catastrophe for local communities.’
Paul Holmes, Shadow Minister for Housing and Member of Parliament for Hamble Valley, said:
‘At the heart of these reforms is a deeply concerning trend: the sidelining of local authorities and communities. The Government promised in their manifesto that local authorities would have a central role in planning decisions. Yet, we are now seeing a shift away from this commitment.’
Rt Hon Suella Braverman, Member of Parliament for Fareham and Waterlooville, said:
‘Fareham Borough Council has rightly committed to delivering more than their fair share of houses through the Welborne housing development. Once completed, the Welborne project will have provided 6,000 homes for families in Hampshire—but this Labour government couldn’t care less. Local authorities are at the behest of Labour’s myopic plans to destroy our communities and concrete over the countryside through imposing unrealistic, rushed housing targets.
‘On behalf of my constituents, I strongly oppose Labour’s arbitrary top-down housing targets for Fareham Borough Council.’
ENDS
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