The Government has added an extra 30,000 homes to the East of England’s house-building target, taking it to over 0.5M, while councils fear there could be more to come.
Communities minister
Parmjit Dhanda revised the draft regional spatial strategy figure of 478,000 upwards, ‘to reach the latest housing projections’.
Following the regional assembly’s call for upfront infrastructure investment, he confirmed £28M of growth funding, which meant a total of £150M in growth funding would be invested in the region. In addition, he said, the community infrastructure levy would ‘create another important funding source for councils’.
But Assembly chairman Cllr
John Reynolds said in response: ‘Councils need more money to create communities, and not just housing estates.’
Cambridgeshire County Council was not happy that 5,290 extra homes had been ‘chucked on’ the county, many in South Cambridgeshire, which suffers some of the county’s worst congestion.
The county was already grappling with whether local roads could cope with a proposed eco-town in South Cambridgeshire – which it feared would be additional to the East of England plan.
‘You’re looking at trying to provide public transport across virgin countryside,’
Huw Nicholas, transport assessment manager, said.
Similarly,
Tony Ciaburro,
Essex County Council’s head of highways, said that there was a funding gap for the growth already proposed. A proposed eco town was likely to be on top of the 5,340 announced by Dhanda, he feared.
‘There’s a £6bn transport funding gap for the region – that won’t be filled by developers,’ he said.
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