Having a secure roof over one’s head has long been recognised as a basic human right. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) describes it as “the right to live in safety and dignity in a decent home”.
At the moment many people in the UK find themselves in situations far removed from that ideal and millions lack the security of a permanent home. While many in the younger generation are being forced to live with parents or endure sub-standard and sometimes unsafe accommodation, house prices continue to soar.
The average house price in Sussex last year, as reported by Rightmove, was £429,987 – way beyond the pockets of the majority of people on lower salaries or those just setting out on their working lives. The rental market is equally challenging in the south-east.
The Brighton Argus reported in July 2024 that Sussex renters were spending over half their wages on homes. (As compared with the average in England, which was 32.3%, still remarkably high in historical terms.)
Housing and housing development is an incredibly complex area – if you attempted to draw a mind-map of all the challenges currently facing government ministers it would be a horribly complicated spider’s web. The lack of affordable housing, the skewed economics of housebuilding, out-of-date planning regulations, and crumbling infrastructure are to name but a few. Every one is daunting in its own right.
We hope to publish articles over the next months that will contribute positively to the overall debate, help to unravel the spider’s web a little, and provide some ideas for positive ways forward.
Building proposal on the outskirts of Newhaven
As an introduction to the series, we are publishing a press release from Lewes District Green Party, responding to a decision to grant planning permission for the building of 400 new homes and some industrial units on the outskirts of Newhaven. In many ways the scheme meets some key criteria – it is partly built on brownfield land, it provides (in theory) much needed new housing in the area and could generate new jobs.
But reading the objections outlined in the press release will immediately identify the problems that so often bedevil new housing schemes.
Objections to the plan included concerns about the encroachment on to the surrounding greenfield environment and damage to wildlife, massively increased traffic movements that will impact an already very congested road system, and no planning for affordable housing. The press release also mentions the erosion of local democracy and over-powerful planning inspectors.
So, do we need a totally different approach to house-building to overcome these problems? What would that look like and is it even possible? So far none of the main political parties really seem to have viable answers to these questions. We’d love to have our readers’ views, and in our series on the housing crisis we’ll hope to address some of the key issues in future articles.
Meanwhile, here is the Lewes District Green Party’s response to the granting of planning permission for the building of 400 homes on Harbour Heights, Newhaven.
Lewes District Green Party warns of planning ‘tragedy’ becoming disaster
Lewes District Green Party Councillors have spoken out at their despair that “a broken planning system will get worse” following announcements by the Labour government.
The announcement came the same week that Harbour Heights, an unpopular development on a greenfield site just outside Newhaven, which had been allocated for development in 2016, finally got planning permission. It is the latest in a string of unpopular green field developments in areas including Ringmer, and the local Green party says it shows why planning committees need to have more power not less.
Lewes District Councillor and planning campaigner Emily O’Brien said: “Along with other Local Greens, I have been clear in opposing Harbour Heights Development. It is completely the wrong place to build. However, what people aren’t telling you is that development here was already stitched up because this site was previously earmarked for development and rubber stamped by the earlier Conservative Council in 2016. Anyone who tells you development at Harbour Heights could be stopped once it was in that local plan isn’t being honest – by then it was too late.”
“What they also aren’t telling you is that even the Conservatives didn’t choose to build at Harbour Heights. Local council officers said clearly that the site is not suitable for development, but the government planning inspector forced them to add it to the local plan. This was just plain wrong.”
“Harbour Heights is already a tragedy but this week things got worse. We’d hoped the new Labour government would try to fix the planning mess, but this week has shown they are even worse than the last lot and would like to see many more Harbour Heights. We must oppose these changes and stop a tragedy becoming a disaster.”
Lewes District Green Councillor Sue Morris added, “Our planning system is already broken, and I was horrified by this week’s announcement which means building even more new housing in places like this, ignoring what people and councils think. Even worse, on Sunday, the Government then announced they want to abolish planning committees altogether if a site is already in a local plan, meaning officials will get to rubber stamp huge developments in places like Newhaven, Ringmer, Wivelsfield and Newick – and we’ll lose even the limited say your local councillors have currently.”
“We must tell the government to stop pushing these harmful building targets and give more power to local planning committees, not less. Developers are happy about these rules because they can make a lot of money, but it’s just not fair to our local communities.”
If you are a local councillor or a professional involved in some way with housing development we’d love to hear from you. Contact editor@sussexbylines.co.uk
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