Stephen Jope, of Elm Grove Road, Dawlish, writes:

I have been following with interest developments reported in the Dawlish Post regarding the forecast of housing 'need' on which the Teignbridge Core Strategy is to be based culminating at the time of writing in the decision by the Housing Numbers Review Group of Teignbridge Council to recommend reducing the housing requirement to 10,000 homes, reported by your correspondent Rodney Helme on the letters page of your June 8 issue. However, I wonder if that reduction goes far enough or if the figure ought to be lower still.

I place the word 'need' in quotation marks because it seems to me that the real need is for affordable housing for local people. However, I get the impression that need is going largely unmet with the waiting list in Teignbridge growing rapidly longer not shorter.

I suspect that this is due to the current system of funding the building of the majority of affordable housing which relies on financial contributions from developers. Teignbridge Council, and presumably other councils up and down the country, set targets for the proportion of affordable units to be included in housing developments. The target set by Teignbridge in its Core Strategy currently being prepared is 30 per cent, rising to 40 per cent over the plan period. However, if on any particular site inclusion of the target percentage would make the site unviable the council will allow the percentage to be reduced. However, even the target percentages strike me as far too low as, even if achieved, they will result in 60 per cent to 70 per cent market housing and as far as I am aware there is very little demand for new (ie additional to what already exists) market housing from within local communities in the district. (Newly build market housing, in any case, is extremely expensive these days with prices often exceeding £300,000 and I suspect that very few local people can afford it).

Building houses on greenfield sites, as we must unless we can find suitable brownfield alternatives – and I am not convinced that all 'brownfield' sites are necessarily suitable – will inevitably cause a certain amount of damage to our currently high-quality local environment.

That damage must be minimised. However, the current system causes and will continue to cause the greater part of sites which could accommodate much larger quantities of affordable housing to be used for market housing instead. That in turn means that in order to meet the affordable housing need we need to develop larger areas of land than would otherwise be the case and as your correspondent Brian Hall of Bishopsteignton so rightly said in his letter published in your May 18 edition, 'as you develop, the more acceptable sites are all used up and you start encroaching into far more damaging areas.' It seems to me that we need very much greater proportions of affordable housing to be included in developments than current arrangements will allow.

What is needed is a massive increase in government funding for the provision and building of affordable housing.

Ideally, I should like to see 100 per cent government funding for all of it. Indeed, I feel certain that the current backlog of need has built up due to a failure over many years to provide adequate levels of state funding. That the previous (New Labour) government had its priorities wrong is shown by its decision to bring the Olympics to this country instead of spending the money on much-needed social housing. (I make no apologies for saying that. The Olympics are a luxury whereas affordable housing is a necessity). However, the current (Coalition) government is currently spending £6.5 billion nationally on affordable housing but has been contemplating splashing out £33 billion (five times as much!) on a new (high speed) rail-link between London and Birmingham, a project that would benefit only those cities, when there are existing rail-links between the two. Affordable housing, it seems, is the Cinderella of government spending. I feel it is important that the government rectify that, even at this time of recession and spending cuts, by providing several times the £6.5 billion currently allocated (and intended to last until 2015). Spending on affordable housing now urgently needs to be prioritised over other government spending in order to make up for the long period of miserly underfunding.

The government's housing strategy (published on November 21 last year) seems to place at least as much emphasis, if not more, on using housebuilding to achieve economic growth as it does on trying to provide housing which people need. However, I am far from convinced that even as an economic policy that strategy has been formulated in a way which will work. In the south west of England the effect of building quantities of market housing which exceed local demand and which most local people cannot afford will be to attract people to come and live here from outside of the region unnecessarily increasing the size of local populations and therefore the volumes of sewage that will need to be disposed of. That in turn will put an additional strain on an already creaking sewage disposal system with potentially disastrous consequences for the quality of the region's bathing water. (I am told that South West Water are confident that they could cope with the extra sewage created by significantly increased local populations but that other people do not share their confidence in their ability to do so. In any case, if a major upgrade of the sewage system becomes necessary how will that be financed?

Will we find ourselves paying water bills two or three times their already outrageous current size?). The damage to the region's tourist industry both from the effect of more sewage on the bathing water and from the disappearance of large areas of our very attractive countryside, landscapes and scenery under bricks and mortar, once done, will be permanent. As the economy of the south west is highly dependent on tourism it seems likely that from a regional perspective far from creating a short-term economic boost the government's policy will cause a permanent economic decline. Furthermore, it is important to recognise the contribution made by farming which, by keeping the country's food-import bill down, helps not just the regional but the national economy – a contribution which will be permanently reduced by the loss of farmland (which is also likely to cause food prices to rise).

If, as an alternative strategy, we could concentrate more-or-less exclusively on building affordable housing, that would create some employment in the building industry stimulating growth sustainably and at the same time meeting the real housing needs of local communities, destroying much smaller areas of countryside and farmland and without unnecessarily enlarging local populations. There would be an additional benefit to the economy from building more affordable housing in that people probably perform better at work when they have somewhere decent to go back to where they can relax and unwind in their leisure hours and also get a good night's sleep whereas the hassle and worry of having no alternative but to live in unsuitable accommodation probably has a negative impact on the way people do their jobs. Although the proportion of the workforce affected may be fairly small (just those people who cannot afford a home of their own on the open market), I suspect the effect could be significant.

I believe the head of the IMF has recently said that we need to invest in infrastructure projects. (She obviously thinks that the government can find some money from somewhere). However, if we could spend at least part of the money that would otherwise be spent on infrastructure on building affordable housing instead, that would help greatly to achieve the sustainable growth that we need. I would suggest that increasing current government spending on providing affordable housing at least tenfold (therefore to £65 billion or more equating to over around £22 billion for each of the next three years, including the rest of this year, and hopefully beyond) would not be unreasonable.

I suspect that in Dawlish if, even at this late stage, enough public money could be made available to finance the conversion of 80 per cent to 85 per cent of the market housing currently being built (and therefore not yet occupied), or due to be built, in the area to the east of Secmaton Lane into affordable housing much additional destruction of very attractive countryside and farmland and damage to landscapes due to proposed development of other areas around the town could be avoided.

I believe that the government's Localism Bill is ostensibly intended to place more power in the hands of local communities. However, we seem to have a system which, by starving those very communities of the funds necessary to fully and adequately meet their need for affordable housing while at the same time allowing or even encouraging the building of unnecessarily and destructively large quantities of market housing, prioritises the aspirations of would-be incomers and the interests of major construction companies. What kind of 'localism' is that? I should like to think that neither the current government's nor the previous government's approach to housing was influenced at all by the fact that large companies sometimes make large donations to political parties but I feel I cannot be sure.

However, in addition to the funding of affordable housing there is another important issue. England as a country is seriously overpopulated and, because of that, already overdeveloped. We therefore need to make the best possible use of our remaining undeveloped land. I believe that until recently our planning law contained a presumption in favour of development meaning that unless very good reasons could be advanced against it any application for development had to be approved. I understand that the presumption in favour of development has recently been changed to a presumption in favour of sustainable development. On the face of it that appears to be an improvement but I suspect that much depends on how the term 'sustainable development' will be interpreted and that therefore it remains to be seen how well that will work in practice. Therefore why do we not have a presumption against development instead? Developments could then be approved and allowed to proceed provided they met certain tests applied by local planning authorities who would be required to apply them in accordance with what is in the general public interest and in the interests of local communities not necessarily in the interests of developers.

Those tests might be:

– Is the proposed development either necessary or highly desirable?

– Will the development have or cause any adverse effects, in particular any unacceptable ones?

– Will the development be the best use of that particular site? (Alternative options to be considered should include leaving the site undeveloped, eg as farmland or as natural wilderness, using it as green infrastructure or using it for a purpose which involves building on it other than the one proposed).

– Is there another (or are there other) site(s) in the locality which would be suitable for the proposed development (including one or any which would be more suitable)?

– Would the development be better sited in another locality altogether and does the planning authority for that locality agree?

I feel that such a system would be more likely to give the necessary degree of control. In addition, if I understand the way in which planning works – and to be honest I am not really sure that I do – it should put an end to the current ludicrous and appallingly inefficient, ineffective, unfair and undemocratic situation in which people feel forced to accept Local Development Plans or Neighbourhood Plans which are far from ideal and which they do not really agree with simply because having even a bad plan in place is better than having no plan in place at all.

Although local authorities obviously have to operate within the law it surprises me somewhat that they appear so willing to do central government's bidding instead of protesting loudly and publicly against it on behalf of the local communities in whose interests they are supposed to act. If Teignbridge Council got together with other local authorities in the south west, and possibly in the country as a whole, and demanded adequate levels of funding for affordable housing and the introduction of a presumption against development into the planning system in place of the current arrangement the force of their combined weight might prevail.

However, if local authorities feel either unwilling or unable to act in that fashion I suppose it is up to ordinary individuals to try to develop some sort of campaign, possibly an e-petition (or perhaps two, one on each issue) although I am not quite sure how that works. I have to admit that I would be reluctant to take the lead on that myself because I am not terribly good at organising things and in any case I do not have a computer. However, if anyone else feels able to take it on I would certainly be willing to support them. I have written direct to the government and been in correspondence with our local MP regarding both issues but it remains to be seen if that will achieve the desired results especially if I am a lone voice. However, if we all stand up together and shout loudly enough, metaphorically of course, maybe that will succeed when other approaches have failed.