Affordable Housing
A statement summarizing the position on Affordable Housing by Cllr Debbie Peace on behalf of the Parish Council, was issued in May 2008
"The Parish Council was approached by First Step Homes in September 2007, having noted in our Parish Plan that some time ago the Council would possibly support an application for a small number of affordable homes within the parish. We were asked to hold this meeting in private, which was refused and notes in the minutes can be found to this effect. The site they were interested in, was at the junction of Wellington Road and Spout Lane. The Parish Council did not favour this site, and it was put as an agenda item for the next meeting to discuss other potential sites if the company proceeded with their plans.
At this October meeting, representatives of First Step Homes gave EXACTLY the same information to parishoners as they had the previous month to the Parish Council. At this point, parishoners had the same information as the Parish Council.
Being an agenda item, potential sites were raised. It could be reasonably assumed that as several members rejected Spout Lane and expressed concerns regarding the other two sites, and several members flatly refused to discuss any sites due to their concerns over the use of greenfield land, then (A) Spout Lane would never be supported and (B) the remaining potential sites would need much more debate, discussion and thought. As a consequence of this, no motions or resolutions were put forward at this time.
It had been agreed by the council that a housing needs survey should be done as the council, in wishing to represent the views of ALL members of the community, had no insight as to any potential needs of parishoners regarding this issue.
As there was need to rush this issue, the Parish Council concentrated its efforts on the coal-mining application, so in effect put the issue of housing on the back burner.
Having agreed to do the housing needs survey, we called on the expertise of Telford and Wrekin officers who are fully familiar with the correct procedures, and sought advice on best practice; they were non-biased, non-judgmental and indeed agreed to look at and discuss our survey before distribution to assess that we had asked for appropriate information, and were not including questions that would lead to a biased result either way.
They had agreed to fund and distribute the survey, which would be returned directly to the Parish Council when it would be assessed and findings made public; a similar process was successfully adopted with the coal survey.
The Plan had always been, and should remain to be, to ascertain any short fallings in provision of a service within the parish.
If there was a recognised need, and if developers were to go ahead with a planning application, then we would have looked at it, as a community in a public meeting to see how best they could serve the parish.
All the questions and issues raised to the council were no different from what we as a council had thought and questioned ourselves. Unfortunately we are unable to pre-empt all possible scenarios that might or might not happen, and that relates to the coal-mining as well. We have to react to the issues that are presented to us; now obviously forward planning goes hand in hand with that, but it would not be an effective use of the Parish Council's time to try and deal beforehand with issues that may not happen anyway.
By the time we had our March 08 meeting, it had been six months since the initial enquiry was made by the developers, the coal-mining objection had been submitted, and we had gained some insight into how to carry out a housing needs survey. What we needed to do now was to ascertain, due to changes in the housing and financial markets, and the fact that the land owner was now not willing to sell the land on the junction of Spout Lane and Wellington Road whether the developers were still hoping to pursue a planning application or not.
At the Parish Council meeting on 14th April 2008 it was announced by Cllr Roberts that at this time they would not be selling the land, so as affordable housing was now not currently an issue, it was decided by the council that the housing needs survey would not be carried out at this time.
Cllr Debbie Peace
