One thought on “Where are all the houses going? Where are we with land supply?”

  1. For me the most important part of this document is the graph on page 40 showing both historic and forecast building rates. My opinions on this graph are:

    1. For the period 2006-2013 we can see a historical building rate of c. 400 homes per year. For the period 2015-2021 we see a building rate of c. 1,400 – this is hardly the “modest increase” that Council Leader Paul Diviani plays down.

    2. The drop off in building rates from 2020 onwards should not necessarily be believed – most projections of this nature favour the near-future where plans are firmer and are normally underestimates in later years. This is commonly known as Planner’s Droop. In my view, once established, the rate of 1,400 homes per year will continue beyond 2020.

    3. If the 1,400 homes does continue beyond 2020, then in the period covered by this document, we are likely to see not 17,000 homes as predicted, but 23,000 – or as Paul Diviani would likely put it a “modest increase” of “only” 35%. To put this in perspective, if you take the area covered by all existing towns and villages, we should expect to see an equivalent of about 20% of this area which is currently beautiful green East Devon countryside (a lot of which is bound to be in AONB) turned into housing estates.

    (I am sure that someone somewhere can find some statistics about the current size of urban areas in East Devon and tell us how much this is in acres of countryside built on.)

    Distilling this down into a stark reality, what this means is..,

    If you want to stop acres and acres of countryside being covered in houses, DON’T vote Conservative (the High Growth party) in the May local elections. Instead vote for Councillors (i.e. Independents) who will fight for a balanced plan.

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