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Search the Public Notice PortalHousing and development is always a hot topic, both in Taunton and Wellington and nationally, writes Gideon Amos MP.
Fantastic progress in healthcare and longer lifespans now enjoyed are something to celebrate.
The fact that these lead to the need for our housing stock to accommodate a whole extra generation isn’t always so welcome.
The trend towards smaller household sizes – down from six at the beginning of the previous century to an average of less than two people per house today – also drives up demand, as does migration to the South West, the biggest group being people from elsewhere in the UK, such as those retiring here from the South East.
And the international migrants we do have here are essential to keeping our health and social care services going.
But the real flaw in the government’s thinking is prioritising market demand for housing over and above real, genuine need.
Too often, what is proposed is, in the words of Protect Wellington, "the wrong homes in the wrong places".
Development anywhere and everywhere, with public voices cut out of the discussion.
Development in the setting of the Monument – an icon of Wellington – is one such example, which is why I have taken the unusual step of objecting to it.
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Government rules, which now prevent your locally elected planning committee councillors from deciding key applications, are a dangerous undermining of local democracy at a time when it most needs to be strengthened.
Councillors are being banned from deciding reserved matters and householder applications, and must now ask the Secretary of State before they’ll be allowed to refuse any for over 150 homes.
To make things worse, local youngsters see homes being built that they’ll never be able to afford.
That’s why it was a Liberal government which invented council houses.
If the current government really wanted to help, then, instead of foisting thousands of permissions for unbuilt private housing on us, it would instead allow my Somerset Lib Dem councillor colleagues to build council houses once again.
Having already started by delivering the first new council houses in part of the county for a generation, our administration is desperate to go further.
And with 13,000 households on the waiting list in Somerset, I have repeatedly urged ministers to allow the council to build more.
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