Housebuilders could be forced to build more affordable homes in part of Shropshire if radical new proposals from planning officers are accepted.Oswestry Borough Council pledged last year to tackle the problem of a lack of lower cost housing for first time-buyers and young families in the area. Now it has been revealed that developers may have to build one affordable home for every four they build in the borough.
Estates of 50 or more homes could see half of them as affordable properties.
The move has brought opposition from some developers who fear small developments will become unprofitable and as a result will not be built at all.
Currently sites of 25 or more houses must have 25 per cent affordable housing built on them.
But a report to be presented to tomorrow’s full council meeting is suggesting a change.
Assistant chief executive Dave Jones says in the report: “The council’s housing needs assessment revealed a significant worsening problem of affordability in the local housing market since the first survey carried out in 1998.”
The assessment recommended lowering the threshold above which sites qualify.
Now the draft Interim Planning Guidance for the borough is recommending that there should be 25 per cent of affordable housing for sites of one to four dwellings, gradually rising to 50 per cent for sites of 25 or more homes.
Comments made during consultation over the proposals said the changes would see the cost of affordable housing passed on by developers to the open-market buyers.
One developer, who did not want to be named, said: “It will become uneconomic for developers to carry out housing development on small sites.
“Developments of smaller units are likely to become totally unprofitable and not built at all.
“This will reduce the availability of starter homes and drive up their price, making affordability worse not better.”
The housing needs assessment showed that in 1998 terraced houses cost 2.5 times the average earning. By 2004 they cost 4.3 times the average earnings.
By Sue Austin
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