Water Shortage – What Water Shortage?

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Published: 27 October 2006

Water Shortage – What Water Shortage?

Housing Minister Yvette Cooper is pushing ahead with plans for 45 towns and cities as New Growth Points, with the claimed potential to deliver up to 100,000 extra new homes and more jobs over the next ten years than previously planned.

The proposals are intended to deliver a substantial number of new homes to help first time buyers onto the property ladder and enable towns & cities to grow their economies by creating new jobs and encouraging business development.

Norwich's growth proposals for example contain plans for 36,000 new jobs, and over 130,000 new jobs are planned in the East and South West regions alone.

The successful bids put forward by over 70 local authorities with high housing demand contain a wide regional spread from Truro to Lincoln and include major cities like Derby, Leicester, Nottingham, Birmingham and Bristol as well as large and small towns like Swindon, Reading and Ipswich, Grantham, Thetford and Maidstone.

These areas will share in £40m (a pittance when shared among 70 authorities) start up funding to support infrastructure, unlock sites for new housing and to assess and mitigate environmental impacts.

This will hopefully make them more attractive for business investment and help young people who want to stay in their home town to find a home.

The initiative is a crucial part of delivering an increase in housebuilding in England in response to economist Kate Barker's review of housing supply which found that over the last 30 years house building rates have halved whereas over the same period demand for new homes has increased by a third.

The New Growth Points initiative is based on the potential and local ambition to achieve growth of at least 20% above 2003 plan levels.

DCLG has worked closely with the Department for Transport, Defra, Environment Agency and other agencies to assess the information provided by the places, considering such issues as:

· the ability to achieve growth at the levels suggested without detrimental impact on sensitive habitats

· to ensure adequate water supply to new & existing developments and

· to avoid over-burdening transport networks

As a result, Government agrees with the local authorities concerned that potential exists to deliver around 30% more homes across the 29 locations than previously planned for.

Certain conditions will apply to the 29 places becoming New Growth Points, such as:

· the need to conduct growth-related studies

· to engage with the local water company to assess water supply and future infrastructure needs and

· to carry out transport modelling to inform development decisions

One does wonder, however, how all these plans fit in with the realities of the current & forecast water shortages for the areas involved, together with other infrastructure problems. There appears to be no mention of funding for those issues.

At the moment they seem to have a plan that assumes that all these issues can be resolved rather than establishing any limitations before making their plans.

Yvette Cooper said:

"If we don't build more homes less than a third of today's ten year olds will be able to afford a place of their own in twenty years time.

Helping our towns and cities that want to grow can make substantial difference in delivering the new homes we need.

This gives local areas the chance to provide more jobs and homes with higher design and environmental standards too."

New Growth Points are supposed to help concentrate future growth at existing urban centres and (according to the government) ‘present a significant opportunity for the new communities to become exemplars of sustainability by pioneering eco-development and encapsulating high design standards in parallel with meeting the housing needs of local communities’.

The three cities bid includes an exemplar low environmental impact settlement at Ashton Green in Leicester, using its own renewable energy, minimising water use & waste generation and reducing the need to travel, as well as a new park connecting Derby city centre to the Derwent Valley.

The initiative is also intended to be a catalyst for improving existing areas and city centres, such as Taunton's proposals, which include:

· the redevelopment of Somerset County Cricket Ground for international matches and other major sporting & cultural events

· an extension of the Brewhouse Theatre to enable larger productions and

· improvements to the museum & central library

According to the government; ‘the growth ambitions submitted have all been appraised by Government to ensure they are sustainable, acceptable environmentally and realistic in terms of infrastructure.

Levels and locations of growth are subject to full public consultation, testing, and examination through local and regional planning processes.

In signing up to a new partnership for growth with the Government, local authorities will be subject to conditions to ensure that growth is sustainable including effective water supply and flood mitigation, and that the impact of potential development on infrastructure is fully understood’.

In its Response to Kate Barker's Review of Housing Supply on 5 December 2005, the Government announced the intention to increase the rate of housing delivery in England from 160,000 homes per year then to 200,000 per year by 2016.

Government invited local authorities and their partners to put forward proposals for sustainable growth, which could form the basis of a long-term partnership for growth, to help achieve this ambition1.

On 20 June 2006 they announced a list of 21 places with which they would be working over the summer to assess their potential to increase housing supply

Since then, a further eight places have come forward with proposals to grow.

Taken together these locations aim to deliver around 100,000 more homes over the 10 years from 2006-2016 than in plans in existence in 2003 (why not tell us what that total was?), when the Sustainable Communities Plan was published.

If these local ambitions were realised then the New Growth Points would make a significant contribution to achieving delivery of 200,000 homes per year by 2016. (So no guarantees then?)

These 29 places have entered into a Partnership for Growth with Government: ‘a long-term working relationship between Government and its agencies and local authorities to achieve the potential for sustainable growth and to meet the housing needs of the population, now and into the future’.

The government says that the local authorities will now work closely with DCLG and other Government organisations such as the Environment Agency, Highways Agency, Natural England and CABE, the Government's design adviser, to ensure that the growth is sustainable, acceptable environmentally and realistic in terms of infrastructure.

Funding has been allocated on a project specific basis for 2007/08 and will now be subject to detailed negotiations & appraisal to ensure best value and deliverability.

Further funding may be available following next year's Comprehensive Spending Review.

Further information

New Growth Points

New Growth Points by Location

Partnership for Growth document

Kate Barker's Review of Housing Supply and Government response

DCLG – Barker Review related documents

Partnership for Growth document

Natural England

CABE

Sustainable Communities Plan 2003

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