House building to double in Guildford
Labour swept to power with a promise to build a million new homes. It should come as no surprise to anyone that this means an increase in the number of homes needed to be built in Guildford, but the current proposal is that this number will double to over 1000 homes each year.
You can argue whether this number is fair or not, but even if it changes slightly, that is a lot of new homes that need to be built. So where will they be built?
The Local Plan of 2019 put large numbers of the new homes in Horsley, Wisley and Ash. Despite that, we only have current plans to build 500 homes each year. So what happens if we don’t update the Local Plan to show where the extra 500 homes will go?
Cllr Catherine Young has become an expert in these matters, and she explains what happens. “If insufficient houses are being built in the Borough, the developers can come up with plans to build anywhere and our ability to refuse planning permission is significantly reduced. This is what happened in Waverley, which resulted in houses being built in inappropriate areas.”
“For this reason, it is vital that the Local Plan is updated as quickly as possible. The current plans mean that we will probably face 2 years of such speculative development before we have a new Plan. We absolutely must do everything we can to accelerate development of that plan.”
Cllr Catherine Young
