A window of opportunity

At tonight's meeting, Horsham district council's development control committee voted to defer a decision on the application from Berkely Homes.

This is almost entirely due to the efforts of Horsham Labour party, who have campaigned extensively to prevent the council allowing this application to proceed with anything less than the 40 per cent allocation of affordable housing specified in the council's own strategic plan.
Horsham Labour party's chair, David Hide, said that this was a triumph for Horsham Labour party, and added that:

Through our campaign and our decision to alert the Secretary of State of the need to call in the Berkely Homes application, we have created a window of opportunity for Horsham district council to renegotiate the West of Horsham development with both Berkely Homes and Countryside.

The council has been handed a second chance.  It should seize this opportunity to do the right thing by the people of Horsham and deliver a minimum of 40 per cent affordable on this development.

Rest assured Horsham Labour party plans to keep up the pressure, as we believe passionately in the need for affordable housing.

Members of the party recently quizzed some estate agents about recent developments in the district and asked who they had sold properties in those developments to. The answers were that nearly all properties had been sold to:

• People moving into the area to retire
• People moving from the London area, who intend to commute into London
• People buying buy-to-let properties
• People moving into the area because they have moved to a job in the area, usually at Gatwick airport.

Nobody in these categories would have been on the council's list of those in need of housing, so those developments would not have been addressing the area's housing needs at all: only the affordable element of a development actually addresses housing need.