Surrey County Conservatives

Conservatives reveal housing growth in South East could rocket under Government Plans 14th February 2006

Conservatives on Surrey County Council’s Executive have revealed that the level of housing growth in the South East could be much higher than previously thought under draft proposals being drawn up by the South East England Development Agency.

Under proposals laid out in the draft Regional Economic Strategy (RES), which is the government’s blueprint for the region’s economic development over the next ten years, overall housing numbers in the south east, and Surrey in particular, look to be significantly higher than those agreed last year in the draft South East Plan and are likely to be beyond the capacity of urban areas to accommodate. The draft RES sets out a target for the provision of an average of 35,000 additional homes per annum – 32,000 p.a up to 2011 and 36,000 p.a afterwards, an average which far exceeds the 28,500 houses per year agreed by SEERA last July.

Conservatives warn if the government pushes ahead with the plans laid out in the draft RES the higher housing allocations to Surrey could only be delivered through building houses in the Green Belt or building at a significantly higher density in Surrey’s urban areas.

The report also does not make clear where the additional resources for providing the infrastructure for the higher levels of house building will come from and issues regarding water provision, which is already a growing problem in the region, are not adequately addressed.

Commenting David Munro, Conservative Deputy Leader said:

“I was more than a little surprised at the inclusion in this draft regional economic strategy of a much higher level of house building across the region than that agreed by SEERA last July. This flies in the face of all the work done by the Conservatives on the assembly to bring down the rate of housing growth in the south-east plan to a more sustainable level, and the only way in which the targets proposed in the draft RES could be achieved would be by building on Surrey’s green belt, or cramming more houses into our already over-crowded urban areas.

He added:

Despite the proposed increased in housing numbers, the strategy does not make clear where the additional funding for infrastructure to support these developments will come from, the region already needs an investment of £36.7 billion to address the needs of the housing requirement laid out under the south-east plan.