East Hampshire’s fight for fair recognition of its unique housing challenges has reached a major milestone, with the Housing, Communities and Local Government Minister acknowledging that the council needs to find an exceptional way to calculate its housing numbers.
Matthew Pennycook, Minister of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, met with EHDC officers and East Hampshire MP Damian Hinds on Monday 10 March and agreed that the district faces a unique situation with more than half of it protected from development because it is in the South Downs National Park.
The latest government planning policy says that 1,142 houses must be built in East Hampshire each year and the area covered by the South Downs National Park provides for only about 90 homes a year in the area of East Hants covered by the park.
The Minister said he would look at the special case around national parks. He said the current data used to calculate housing numbers is not sophisticated enough to differentiate between inside and outside of a national park and that this would need to be considered in the future.
Cllr Richard Millard, Leader of East Hampshire District Council, said: “We have led a determined campaign to get the government to look sensibly at our unique situation. With more than half the district protected from development in the South Downs National Park our housing figures place enormous pressure on areas of the district outside the park.
“So this is a huge and significant milestone in that campaign, and I hope that the housing minister will be able to help us find a way to calculate a more realistic figure for our district.”
Damian Hinds, MP for East Hampshire, said: “The huge increase in the housing target for our area - up by 98% since the new government came in - is unrealistic and wrong, as I said in the debate I led recently in Parliament. The constraint of the National Park exacerbates that. It is good that the minister has heard our case but we will have to see if that translates to change. I will continue to press on these points.”