CPRE urges Shropshire residents to respond to housing consultation

Residents of Shropshire must respond to a consultation on plans to build an additional 28,750 homes across the county, if relentless development that threatens the region’s special qualities is to be mitigated.

This is the urgent call being made by the Shropshire branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) as it seeks to challenge what it believes are unrealistic and overblown development targets set out by Shropshire Council as part of its Local Plan Review. The public consultation is due to go live today and will remain open for eight weeks until December 22.

Speaking on behalf of CPRE Shropshire, Charles Green explains:

“When Shropshire Council recently announced its Preferred Options for the scale and distribution of development over the coming 20 years, we were astonished and disappointed. Not only did it appear to be an inflated growth game, but it also disregarded earlier consultation preferences which had clearly shown support for lower levels of development.

“Having challenged the Council on this point at last week’s Cabinet meeting, we are convinced that the people of this beautiful and unique county need to come together to demonstrate what they really think about those in authority imposing unrealistic targets on them.”

CPRE Shropshire is not against all housing development but does stand firm that it needs to be the right types of housing in the right areas to support the genuine needs of the county’s diverse population. Importantly, the wishes of local populations must not be ignored. Charles Green continues:

“As part of its 2015 development allocations, Shropshire Council outlined what it said was a sustainable approach to the distribution of future development. Along with Town and Parish Councils, it set local housing guidelines for communities that were willing to accept development. In many instances those guidelines have already been grossly exceeded, in some cases six-fold! We’re therefore determined to ensure that the views of local people are now clearly demonstrated – and, we hope, listened to.

“The Council has laid out its housing and employment guidelines for the 17 largest towns and centres, and these total 20,875 houses. It has also used a scoring system to decide which villages should get development, but is not due to disclose how the remaining 7,875 houses should be spread between the villages until the next round of consultation, scheduled for early 2018.

“People are therefore being asked to decide whether their village should take development, without being told how much they will be asked to take. The past gross disregard for some village guidelines should, therefore, serve as a further stark warning to the people of Shropshire to take action and respond to this latest consultation.”

Residents wishing to contribute their views on Shropshire Council’s housing proposals, should visit http://new.shropshire.gov.uk/get-involved/local-plan-review-preferred-scale-and-distribution-of-development/ where further details of the public consultation can be found.