Planning debates are never easy; it’s quite understandable that those who own houses in an area would not want to see the value of those houses diminished nor their view despoiled. If it’s taking four weeks to get an appointment with your doctor, it’s counterintuitive to think that somehow a larger community would ease the pressure.
If there are roads where two vehicles cannot pass, it’s clear the road network cannot cope. If the local school is already pretty full, where would all the new kids be educated? And where on earth are all these people going to find work?
Yet the reality is that we need more houses very urgently indeed. Every week, I visit local businesses who cannot fill all their vacancies. Some of them have already decided to leave Somerset or to open new offices elsewhere to meet their expansion needs rather than expanding at their current site.
Doctors surgeries get money per patient and that allows them to employ the appropriate number of clinicians for the number of people on their books. However, that also assumes that on their books is a pretty standard mix of old and young because the reality is that the money received for 30 year old men – who statistically are least likely to visit the doctor – offsets the increased demands of those aged over 65. Perversely a larger yet more demographically balanced patient list served by more clinicians would actually bring down waiting times.
Similarly improved roads come with development whilst many of our local schools have a shortage of two years olds in their catchments. Where schools are over-subscribed, new schools will often be coming at the expense of the developer as a condition of their planning permission.
That’s not to say that we need to build whatever and wherever development is proposed, but we must be clear that renewing our communities cannot happen exclusively through the resale of existing housing stock. We need to bring down open market prices – designated affordable and social housing is another issue altogether – and we can only do that by accepting the development needed to meet the needs of our growing local economy.