The housing numbers game

I have read so many comments from Swale Borough Councillors with regards to housing numbers and sites such as Stones Farm being forced on us by central government, that I feel compelled to displace this myth once and for all.

Here are the actual figures: -

Initial target of Swale Local Plan   7,500
Increased by KCC to                   9,100
Currently proposed by Swale     10,874
 

Swale suggests that a staggering 1,612 of these houses won’t get completed during the course of the Local Plan period which ends in 2016. Well the answer is obvious to anyone with a degree of common sense, “Don’t include them in the plan”.

To do so enables the delivery of a housing number far in excess of anything that is required of Swale or needed by the community and there will nothing that Swale can do to stop every single one of these houses being built.

Andy Hudson
Chairman FPOG