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DON’T SWAMP WEST CORNWALL – GEORGE LAUNCHES PETITION

Local MP, Andrew George, has today launched a petition calling on Government Ministers to concentrate efforts on meeting local housing need rather than treating the Cornish countryside as a developers’ paradise.


Following the credit crunch and insecurity in a falling housing market, Mr George is arguing that the Government should abandon its plans to build 70,000 new homes across Cornwall before 2026 and, instead, concentrate on buying up surplus homes, the development of some new ‘affordable’ housing and the control of second and holiday homes to help address the desperate local housing need. Mr George has already told the Prime Minister and Government Housing Ministers earlier this summer that the decades long Cornish housing crisis will not be solved by continually swamping the place with overdevelopment.

Mr George has forwarded a report to Government which shows that:

FACT: For 40 years, Cornwall has been one of the fastest growing places in the UK;
FACT: In spite of high levels of development, Cornwall’s housing problems have got worse;
FACT: The Government cannot build its way out of Cornwall’s housing crisis;
FACT: West Cornwall is already the most densely populated rural area in the Government’s South West zone.

Mr George said, “The planning system is fuelled more by greed than by need. In areas like ours, with extreme and high housing need and development pressure, the planning system has to be tamed to allow our local needs to be given a higher priority.

“We must be allowed to build what our communities need, not what the Government tells us we must have.”

Mr George’s report included the results of his recent survey of local estate agents which showed that, last year, three times more local homes were sold to second home buyers than to first time buyers.

Mr George added, “Locals just can’t compete. Year on year we’re just being priced out. The market operates as if local families had no right to live in their own communities.

“We must give our local communities the power to control to second homes and to set targets for meeting affordable housing need. We should give our local communities a breathing space. If the market is cooling over the next year or so then now is the chance to bring forward developments which just meet the need for local housing.”

The wording of Mr George’s petition is:

DON’T SWAMP CORNWALL: WE WANT HOMES FOR LOCALS

To the Secretary of State:

“We petitioners urge the Government to listen to Cornwall.

“The Duchy has been a developers’ paradise for 40 years. Cornwall’s housing stock has more than doubled. Yet the housing problems of local people have got much worse.

“We say that it is time for the Government to let Cornwall put our local community first. To meet our local housing need. Not to allow the place to be swamped with unaffordable housing and second homes.”