A COUNTY councillor has called for the rate of house building in Basingstoke to slow down.
As previously reported government calculations suggest as many as 17,820 new homes need to be built in Basingstoke and Deane by the end of 2039 and council documents reveal that Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council (BDBC) need to build 7,703 houses more than they currently have in the pipeline.
It's part of the update process of a document called the local plan, which sets the rules surrounding the development of the borough and can be used by developers as a blueprint on where and how to build houses.
County councillor Stephen Reid has highlighted the latest figures from the national census and called for the rate of house building in the borough to slow down.
He said: "The census website tells us that in Basingstoke and Deane, the population size has increased by 10.4 per cent, from around 167,800 in 2011 to 185,200 in 2021. This is higher than the overall increase for England (6.6 per cent), where the population grew by nearly 3.5 million to 56,489,800. Basingstoke and Deane's population increase is higher than the increase for the South East (7.5 per cent).”
This has lead to Cllr Read becoming concerned.
He added: "Is this because Basingstoke has a higher birth-rate? I don't think so - the hospital wasn't reporting that when I visited a couple of months ago and the official figures I have researched don't show that. The reason that I see for Basingstoke's high growth rate is that Basingstoke and Deane has been building more homes than it needs to cater for the Borough's natural growth. People have moved here because this is where the homes are being built.
"This has become a vicious circle - we build more homes, so people move here and the population goes up. Then, because the population has gone up we are told to build more homes for a growing population. Growth has become a self-fulfilling prophesy.
"Basingstoke is a great place to live, but the sad truth is that we have been destroying our green fields to build homes that supply other districts' housing needs. It is not sustainable.”
He has called on the council to help justify a slower rate of building houses.
He added: "I want the Borough Council, in its new local plan, to argue that Basingstoke's artificially high growth over the past decade is an 'exceptional circumstance' (as the Government calls it), that justifies a slower rate of building in the future.
"Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council needs to adopt a housing policy that defends our open spaces and stops this hell-for-leather rush to develop."
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