Roger Mortlock, CEO of CPRE the countryside charity
said:
“CPRE welcomes the changes to policy on five-year land supply
as current policies have done little or nothing to provide
the genuinely affordable homes needed to tackle the housing
crisis. Speculative development has wreaked havoc in our
countryside, bypassed local democracy and led to unsustainable,
unaffordable, car-dependent executive homes. It’s right to
say that we can build the homes we need and protect the
countryside and valuable farmland and nature around our cities at
the same time.
“We need a brownfield-first policy with teeth, coupled with
targets on social-rent homes to deliver genuinely affordable
homes close to where people live, work and go to school. Our
research shows that 1.2 million new homes could be built on
brownfield land. We believe at least 60% of all new housing
should be targeted on brownfield land and the government has
missed the opportunity to set a meaningful target to deliver
this.
“If we want the right development in the right place, we need to
stop planning for land use in separate boxes and introduce an
integrated, spatial framework that tackles climate change,
nature’s recovery, housing, energy, roads and other
infrastructure. The long-awaited Land Use Framework from Defra
should be introduced and scaled across government departments. It
makes no sense to build new homes in Cambridge for example,
unless the issues around water stress are also addressed.”
