Shropshire Council is in a pickle over its local plan. Planning inspectors sent a critical letter to the council last year, outlining what they see as shortcomings in the plan, particularly the need to allocate more land for overspill from the Black Country. The council is proposing to sacrifice part of the green belt for this housing. It says it can’t achieve all the inspector’s demands in six months the inspectors require and it does not want to extend the period covered beyond 2035 as the inspectors suggest. It wants to replace the plan soon after it is adopted to take account of the higher housing targets demanded by the Labour government.
If the inspectors don’t agree, the council invites them to reject the plan, so that it can start on the new plan immediately.
The current local plan, the Core Strategy, was adopted in 2011, with detailed policies, SAMDev, adopted in 2014. The plans run until 2026. The new council had hoped to adopt the new plan in 2022 but now it won’t adopt the new plan until 2026, if at all. This delay has not just been caused by inspector’s demands. The planning team working on the plan is seriously understaffed. The new Planning and Infrastructure Bill is likely to go through parliament this summer and is will introduce new housing targets from the Autumn.
The government has increased the housing target for Shropshire to 1,994 dwellings a year, 86% more than the previous assessment. Currently, more houses than required by the old target are built in the county each year, around 1,500 homes, 33% above the previous target. But then government says that is not enough
The government requires councils to have a five-year land supply for housing. This currently stands at 4.73 years, down from 5.91 years before the government imposed the hew target. That creates serious problems for the county. Without a five-year land supply, it is very difficult to turn applications for housing. We can expect many developments that would previously have been rejected as inappropriate are likely to now be approved by the council or planning inspectors on appeal. However, if the council adopts the new local plan quickly, the new housing target need not be adopted until the replacement plan is adopted, optimistically in 2038, and the council will have a five-year land supply until then.
This is why the council is only proposing to adopt some of the inspector’s recommendations.
There are several reasons for the inspector’s letter, amongst them a demand for new sites to accommodate housing and employment for the Black Country. To add pressure on the inspectors and the council, Bradford Estates has threatened legal action. It wants to build 2,900 homes and a Midlands Tech Park near J3 of the M54 in the green belt at Tong, east of Shifnal. Shropshire Council had previously rejected this proposal because it is in the green belt. However, the inspectors say they think that green belt sites at Shifnal and Albrighton will be most suitable for the Black Country overspill.
Government policy is skewed against rural areas. Local authorities in cities have had their housing targets reduced while rural authorities have theirs increased. Greenfield sites are easier and quicker to build on than derelict city sites. Labour is in a hurry as it has pledged to build 1.5 million homes in England over this parliament. Currently around 110,000 houses are built each year, not more than half the rate Labour is demanding. Whether there are enough skilled workers to build this many houses without increasing the number of migrant workers is uncertain.
To me it seems sensible to end the tortuous process of the current local plan and adopt it in 2026. Substantial changes are being made to national planning rules and whether we love them or hate them, it is better to produce a new plan that conforms with the new rules than have planning inspectors decide where development goes in the county.
The impact of the new planning rules on Shropshire along with the inspectors’ arguments will be major. Shropshire will become more urbanised. The green belt separating Telford from Wolverhampton will be eroded. Shrewsbury and all the market towns will expand. Ludlow is not in the current plans the inspectors are arguing about but its expansion will inevitably be in the next local plan.
Note on housing supply
Since the 1960s, a structural problem has developed in England as housebuilding failed to keep up with population growth. It has far fewer dwellings relative to its population than other developed nations with 434 homes per 1,000 inhabitants, significantly fewer than France (590), Italy (587) and the OECD average of 487. This leads to overcrowding, with more than 4,000 homes in Shropshire were overcrowded in 2021 (2.9%), substantially below the 2011 figure of 5,200.
The government targets of housing need are based on an annual growth of 0.8% in dwelling stock in each planning authority area, plus an uplift for affordability, which is calculated as a ratio of median earning to house prices. Wages in Shropshire are relatively low and houses prices are relatively high, hence the significant hike in the housing target. But twenty years on from the then Labour government commissioning the Barker Report on housing supply, houses are more unaffordable than ever. There are many reasons for that but just building more houses does not guarantee they will be more affordable.
I don’t think we should take housing for the Black Country. The planning inspectorate should put pressure on four Black Country councils to bring more brownfield sites forward rather than force Shropshire to take more housing.