Housing Numbers

Housing Density

Housing Design


The numbers of houses we build are important. Because the population is increasing and households are on average getting smaller there is a genuine need for new housing. The Government claims we need 3 million homes nationally by 2020 but we believe their assessment, which is based on uncertain premises, could well be too high. The growth in the number of housholds depends on a wide range of economic, social and demographic factors which cannot be accurately predicted over a fifteen to twenty year period. We believe it is sensible to plan for new dwellings we know we will need rather than ones we might need.

The danger of allocating too much housing through the planning process is that local authorities are forced to release green field land for housing or allow building on other environmentally undesirable sites, such as urban open space or back gardens. Once such housing is allocated the market will tend to favour those sites over urban regeneration projects.

This will not only damage the environment, it will increase commuting and congestion and undermine urban regeneration, leading to an increase in social polarisation, with rising depivation in urban areas and loss of countryside in rural areas.

There is little evidence that building more dwellings will make housing more affordable given the strength of demand-side factors, such as the buy-to-let market and the major banks’ lending policies. Our report ‘Planning for Housing Affordability’ explains this in more details.

The Regional Spatial Strategy review is examining housing and the Regional Assembly proposals submitted to the Government propose providing 365,600 extra dwellings in the next twenty years. West Midlands CPRE believes a figure of about 285,000 would strike an appropriate balance between meeting genunine need and other important objectives such as urban regeneration and environmental protection.

The Government has been asking for 380,000 dwellings but in January 2008 wrote to the Assembly saying it wanted the West Midlands to provide between 408,000 and 460,000 dwellings over 20 years, in line with advice from the recently set-up National Housing and Planning Advice Unit. We believe that development on this scale would be disastrous for the region, both in terms of urban regeneration and protecting the countryside.

We also do not believe the current proposed Regional Policies would be strong enough to ensure housing was built first on previously developed land or to counter the current admitted over-provision of housing in the South and East of our region.

The impact of this new housing on the region would vary. Some would be in our major urban areas, provided the builders continue to support those projects. However the majority of new dwellings would be built outside these areas, further weakening the urban regeneration effort. There could be large-scale urban extensions to places like Coventry and Worcester and other towns across the region would have to release land around their periphery. The West Midlands Green Belt would be seriously eroded in a number of areas.

The Government is also promoting additional ‘ecotowns’. CPRE supports improvements to building design but there is a danger that this will become a device for the Government to impose even more housing on the region. However, we argue that the way to counter climate change emissions is through a widespread improvement in house building standards rather than focus on a few new towns in the heart of the countryside.

Click Here to see our Press Release dated 17th January 2008

Click Here to see our Press Release dated 21st September 2007

16.02.08