Berkshire will be the first real-time example of housing policy failure. Put plainly, what happens when long term spatial thinking, to identify actual locations for new homes can no longer be ignored by local leaders? Here is the answer.
Stantec, planning consultants appointed to advise Slough, South Buckinghamshire and the Windsor and Maidenhead councils where to put their council areas’ housing shortfall of 13,500 units by 2039 have sparked conflicts between the leaders of Slough and RBWM. One immediate target for attack by the Royal Borough’s leader, Coun. Andrew Johnson is the option to put more than 10,000 units in the open countryside at Paley Street, a remote rural cluster about halfway between Maidenhead in the north and Bracknell in the south. Knowing the local roads well, it is indeed a strange choice.
Regardless of the location, Coun. Johnson says he will have to be dragged kicking and screaming if asked to provide land for Slough’s surging housing demand. He is very honest, saying
”If Slough come knocking, the response will be: ‘That’s your problem, not mine. I’m not releasing any of my greenbelt land to build your houses on, sort your own problems out”.
He has a point, most of the Royal Borough’s open countryside is greenbelt. Its flat, or gentle slopes hardly warrant more statutory protection, unlike Buckinghamshire’s beeches in the north; Surrey’s Hills in the south or West Berkshire’s and Oxfordshire’s Chiltern’s in the west; all rightly ANOB. Of course the meandering River Thames through east Berkshire is a wonderful asset for residents very close-by but most of this gorgeous countryside is privately owned. It is trepass territory and therefore out of bounds to all except owners, bar some public footpaths and stretches of river tow-path.
Coun. James Swindlehurst is Slough council leader has a different view.
”The fact is that the Royal Borough’s supply problems stem in large part from his own administration’s past political decisions – or lack thereof- in relation to meeting housing need”.
Thinking ahead is not Coun. Johnson’s comfort zone, nor the PM’s as my last blog shows, nor local MP ex-PM Theresa May’s. She has known for years the RBWM housing supply policies are built on sand. Blinkers need to be removed. Co-operation and polite good manners need to be re-discovered.
What is the answer? Stantec’s report provides clues. Look at the Conclusions. If RBWM sincerely want to protect Berkshire’s lovely open countryside they must pioneer the first Home Counties overspill policy. Pay host authorities to take their own overspill housing demand, needed by their residents children and pay Slough residents a valuation protection incentive to transfer their obligations to another authority. This is good market stuff. Tough decisions ahead.
Ian Campbell
23 April 2023
