Flawed Housing Study Could Lead To

GRAGRA Flawed Housing Study Could Lead to Irreversible Damage to Guildford Town & Borough

Residents groups are deeply troubled that if a draft Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA) published in January 2014 is adopted as it stands, the character of Guildford could be changed for ever by an unnatural growth in house building in the years to 2031. The SHMA had been commissioned and now published by Guildford Borough Council as it moves towards the production of the Local Plan.

The draft study by consultants, GL Hearn, proposes that the number of houses in the Borough could be 30% more than the 54,000 houses we have today. The average annual number built in the last ten years has been just over 300 homes. This draft report, unless it is altered, would put pressure on the Local Plan to provide 800 houses per year at a time when the town has full employment and there is good equilibrium for commuters travelling to and from their jobs.

To put an annual build of 800 into perspective, this would mean building more than the 525 homes on the Queen Elizabeth II Park in Stoughton plus the 200 homes at Boxgrove Gardens year upon year until 2031. Both these schemes were major multiyear developments occupying some 20 hectares in total.

Guildford Residents Association, which speaks for more than 30 residents associations and parish councils spread throughout Guildford borough, has identified flaws in the draft housing study. In particular the Consultants need to rework the impact of student numbers, who are assumed erroneously to stay on in Guildford once their studies finish. The draft report uses a blip when student numbers were high to predict future need for homes. It selects 5 years of higher growth to predict future population rather than basing estimates on a fuller 10 year period which would give a lower, more balanced forecast.

Every opportunity has been taken by the Consultants to inflate their figures, which flies in the face of GBC’s own earlier study in 2013 conducted by Edge Analytics. The natural growth of the Borough is 200 per year being the flux of equal numbers of people in and out of the Area. In the order of 400 homes a year is GRA’s assessment of underlying need taking account of the economy and the need for more affordable homes.

The over estimates arise due to ‘net international migration’ of which students represent 57%. There is space on campus at Surrey University to accommodate the predicted growth in total student numbers.

Concerned Residents Associations comment

“The consultation period for this draft SHMA ends on 21 February, only a few weeks since publication. The consultants have presented the council with over 170 pages of incomplete, opaque and fundamentally flawed analysis. There is a major discontinuity between the past evidence and unsubstantiated projections.” Graham Hibbert, Chairman of GRA and member of Abbotswood Central Crescent RA. “We look to Councillors to insist on a great deal of reworking before the draft SHMA can be regarded as a robust basis for the assessment of housing needs in Guildford. An approach that is transparent and based on Guildford’s circumstances is essential if these projections on housing need are to be used in the preparation of the Guildford long term Local Plan and influence the many other dimensions such as infrastructure that result from the number of new houses to be built.” Keith Meldrum from Merrow RA

“It is difficult to understand why Guildford Borough Council has encouraged and allowed this draft study to be published when the conclusions are so different from all their thinking in the past three years and from their own study by Edge Analytics as recently as summer 2013. Have councillors really developed such different aspirations for the character of Guildford compared with residents?” [Jennie Kyte Holy Trinity Amenity Group]

Notes to editors:

1. Guildford Residents Association (GRA) response to the draft SHMA dated [21 February 2014]

2. GRA response of 29 November 2013 to the GBC Issues and Options paper

3. List of the residents association within GRA

CONTACT:

Graham Hibbert; Tel: 01483 535071

Keith Meldrum; Tel: 01483 565197

David Thorp; Tel: 01483 561016