Agenda item

The Chairman, as Portfolio Holder for Housing, said the Government were encouraging Authorities to build more housing and the proposals in the report would allow this in a considered and strategic manner.

The Director for Place provided Members with a power point presentation on housing and house building in the area.  He said SSDC had commissioned the Three Dragons report to understand the National context, the local housing delivery patterns and market in discussion with key local developers, land promoters, housing associations, Homes England, and council officers, and to explore other local authority approaches elsewhere in order to achieve South Somerset’s housing outcomes.  He noted that SSDC had not achieved its house building targets for a number of years but there was no clear trend why.  The power point presentation will be attached to the minutes.

During discussion the following points were made:-

·         There was a lack of recognition by the Government of the need for social housing and the Council should lobby the Government for more funding in this area.

·         It took 2 years to fully train a bricklayer.

·         The planning workshops would take forward the recommendations of the report.

·         The failure to deliver housing in Yeovil, Chard and Crewkerne was putting pressure on other sites in the area.

·         The renegotiation of Section 106 Agreements was time consuming and led to the loss of affordable housing elements within development sites.

·         In Wincanton and Yeovil certain developers were limiting the land available for development and it may be possible to form a Joint Venture with them to allow SSDC some control of the land available for development.

·         The local communities should be involved in developments within their area.

·         The report mentioned stepping in when a large housing development was not commencing and perhaps a commitment from the developer when permission was granted to build within a timescale should be pursued.

·         The CLR development in Crewkerne was very close to commencing building out the site.

·         The training of Councillors to propose acceptable and applicable reasons to refuse applications was needed and special meetings of the Regulation Committee could be held to speed up the determination of applications. 

·         It would be helpful to know when the Priority Project Action Plan would be ready and the Area Committees would welcome the opportunity to debate the report.

·         Building to a good environmental standard and having environmentally friendly builds were welcomed.

·         Holding the Regulation Committee meetings within the Area of the application to be discussed would help towards the environment by reducing the need to travel.

In response to a question, the Director for Place said there were some good development sites allocated in the Local Plan which were not being built out by developers and there was a need to understand why this was.  This was putting pressure on development in rural areas and there was a need to discuss with developers the reasons for this.

The Director for Strategy and Commissioning advised that the planning reimagined workshops being held with Councillors would be looking at a more streamlined process for determining planning applications without losing the democratic process.

The Chairman of the Scrutiny Committee said they welcomed the report which assisted in housing delivery.  He said that most of the questions raised at the Scrutiny Committee had been answered during the debate and the remaining could be answered by email.  He said they had requested that recommendation 3 be amended for the Priority Project Action Plan to be discussed by the Area Committees.  The Chairman said this would be considered if it did not slow the process.

It was proposed to amend recommendation 4 to remove the words ’in the market towns’ to make the funding more widely available.  It was also proposed to amend recommendation 3 to add the words ‘to be approved by District Executive’ at the end of the point.  The two amendments were agreed by Members, and, on being put to the vote, were carried unanimously.