The Government imposed target of 17,100 homes to be built in Mid Sussex over the next twenty years could mean around 5,000 new houses for Burgess Hill. However no additional Government funding has been promised for the necessary infrastructure to allow such large scale development to go ahead – and with house prices falling, the funding from developer contributions is likely to be much reduced.

Liberal Democrats have called on Gordon Brown to suspend the regional housing targets upon which this unrealistic proposal is based, and instead to give local councils the power to decide what is best for their own communities. Labour’s proposals are based on a ‘predict and provide’ assessment that bears no relation to current economic circumstances or employment prospects.

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg says “Let’s build our national housing target from local targets that reflect need on the ground. Bottom up. That means trusting people who know best rather than picking numbers out of the air. Central Government’s job then becomes one of avoiding national housing bubbles like the one that has just burst…”

It is also important that the quality of new housing is not sacrificed to achieve these targets, and Mid Sussex District Council should use the Core Strategy currently being developed; to impose strict guidelines to ensure new houses achieve proper standards of sustainability, such as high insulation standards. We cannot afford to leave loopholes in the local planning requirements that might allow developers to build substandard housing to meet these top down standards.

See also previous articles … http://simonhicks.mycouncillor.org.uk/2008/12/30/mid-sussex-council-must-not-allow-developers-to-cherry-pick-new-housing-sites/ and http://simonhicks.mycouncillor.org.uk/2008/07/18/mid-sussex-housing-target-increased-to-17000/