Save our Villages Campaign mirrors SNUB's views on dispersed growth

The National Housing Federation held an event at the House of Commons earlier this week to highlight it's Save our Villages Campaign. One of the speakers was a young woman from Fakenham who spoke about being unable to live in Brancaster,the village where she grew up, due to the high prices of homes in the area.(see EDP article)

According to Sue Chalkley the chair of the National Housing Federation’s Rural Alliance “The average rural house price in England is now more than twelve times the average salary of people living in rural areas. In order to obtain a mortgage, a person living and working in the countryside would need to earn £66,000 per year. As we all know, the average rural salary is far below that – in fact, it is around £20,000.

This affordability gap is pricing our children out of the villages they grew up in. It also has grave consequences for the services we rely on, like the local school, shop or pub. A lack of young families means fewer people requiring their services, and makes their existence less viable.”

Stop Norwich Urbanisation has always urged local councils to adopt a more dispersed strategy for the building of new homes and work places thereby allowing villages and towns to flourish and grow. The proposed Rackheath eco-town (oops, low carbon community) and nearby new developments in the so-called Growth Triangle will be built at the expense of Norfolk’s villages and towns and also of future generations who would prefer a more rural way of life. Planners might prefer to attempt some social-engineering to satisfy their aspirations and the developers certainly will not make as much money from these much smaller developments but the villages themselves will prosper which is surely more important.

2 comments:

  1. Hear ,Hear, you've said it all.

    Come on BDC,forget your grand ideas and give your public the housing it needs, in the villages and towns, where it will do some good,rather than in the North East Triangle where it will do the developers some good but not help the local communities.

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  2. There is a genuine argument that concentrating development makes it easier to provide public services. Many who hold this view are genuinely concerned but for some they really mean cheaper.

    It is a breath of fresh air to hear that someone is able to see that the viability of rural communities is being threatened by this policy.

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