Housing & Eco-towns

The Government has announced plans for a big house building programme. As part of its proposals the Government is looking for sites for 10 so called "eco-towns", towards which they will contribute funding.  Each town will house between 5 & 20,000 people and the developments are supposed to be carbon neutral.  Although some government funding is on offer it is envisaged that the towns will be built by private developers.  Fifty seven sites have already been proposed, including two in Leicestershire, both on greenfield sites. This is despite the Government having originally said that their proposed "eco-towns" would be built on brownfield sites.  Some of the suggested developments are very exciting, in terms of the many environmentally friendly features that they promise, but we do not believe that large scale greenfield development is neccessary and we remain opposed to it being a first resort, even with an "eco" lable.

1. Better use needs to be made of our existing housing stock, by introducing restrictions on second homes and by taking over empty properties in areas of housing shortage. In addition more should be being done to address economic imbalances between different areas of the country and we should be trying to counteract the trend towards smaller households, by encouraging and making it easier for people to live together, where they wish to.  An example of a policy change that would help towards this would be the abolition of the cohabitation rules currently applied to benefits;

2. Where new development is necessary brownfield sites should be developed first.  To facilitate this derelict private land should be taken over;

3. All new development should be to the highest environmental standards, not just a few token projects;

4. All new developments need to be near to jobs and services and have good public transport links.  We do not want new commuter towns leading to more car miles;

5. Subsidizing private developers is not the best way to ensure value for money, decent affordable housing for all, or the highest environmental standards.  We need a much bigger public role in housing provision.

"Why not use 420 thousand empty homes to solve the housing crisis" - Times online