OPINION: Why new house building is working - Harrogate Borough Council leader Richard Cooper

I have never been contacted by anyone asking for houses to be built near them. So in this month’s column I want to get to the nub of why councils plan for housing growth despite the fact that no one wants it.

Actually people do want housing.

They understand why we need it. They just don’t want it anywhere near them.

And therein lies the problem. Councils simply cannot find brownfield sites for 3,000 homes in a location where no one will notice or care.

Housing in fact solves many problems which is why councils plan for it.

Parents and grandparents often want their children to stay in the district. And when house prices are seventeen times the annual salary that isn’t easy.

Developers are asked to make a proportion of the homes on any site affordable, generally between 30 and 40 per cent of the total which still allows them to make a profit.

The complaint generally from residents nearby such developments is that there are no affordables.

Long gone are the days when you could tell just by looking which houses are affordable and which aren’t.

They are often spread throughout a site. In fact Harrogate Council has, to date, hit its targets for affordable housing on major developments.

Every time a development sparks worries that the roads cannot take the additional traffic.

Ignoring the fact that houses don’t causes congestion: cars do, and that over half of all journeys locally are of last than a mile and a half let’s just unpack this a bit more.

Rush hour sees Leeds Road and Wetherby Road jammed.

People who work in our low salary hospitality industry can’t afford to live in our high cost housing.

So they drive from Leeds or Bradford.

Providing affordable housing close to where people work should reduce those polluting journeys and increase the chances that those people will go to their now nearby workplace without their car.

Another common call is ‘where is the infrastructure to support the developments?’.

Each site in a Council’s Local Plan is assessed for things like the impact on road networks, schools, doctor’s surgeries and the like.

We may disagree with the outcome of those assessments for sites near where we live but the fact is that the assessment is done.

New infrastructure is planned when the assessment deems that it should be.

From the villages I often hear that the bus service has been axed, the village shop is threatened with closure or the familiar story about how the village used to have two pubs and now there are none.

This is because, for whatever reason, those villages can no longer sustain those facilities.

A modest boost to the number of houses in a village can help secure them.

The space is limited even though there is a lot more to say.

So I will end where I began.

Like all councillors I know that no one wants development anywhere near them.

So I expect people to read this and if they live near a Local Plan site to think what poppycock I have spouted.

My meagre ask is that, like councillors of all political parties who voted for our own Local Plan, we agree that development can be positive even if people don’t like to see it happening near them.

I learnt a new acronym some time ago; BANANA.

This is a variation on NIMBY and stands for Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone.

The many of us who own our homes surely don’t want to end up being described as such by those young people unlikely to enjoy the same good fortune and comparative wealth throughout their lives that we have had through ours.

By Harrogate Borough Council leader, Councillor Richard Cooper