CORNWALL’S head of housing has tentatively welcomed the Government’s new house building target, but says if the Duchy does indeed have to build around 4,500 new homes each year they need to be a mix of affordable and social housing to ensure young people get on the property ladder.

The Labour Government aims to build 1.5 million more homes in the next five years, helped by planning reforms, the release of green belt land and the reintroduction of mandatory housing targets.

In its manifesto, Labour also pledged to update the National Policy Planning Framework, restore mandatory housing targets and deliver the biggest increase in social and affordable housebuilding in a generation.

To achieve all of this, the government will prioritise building on previously-developed brownfield land first but, where necessary, also release currently-protected green belt land of lower quality.

The new government’s 1.5 million homes target suggests that there will be an average of 300,000 net new homes each year – something that hasn’t happened in the past. Under the new method, Cornwall would be expected to build 4,454. The current figure is just over 2,700.

Olly Monk, Cornwall Council’s Conservative portfolio holder for housing, said: “The figure is high but it is in line with the expected population growth – what we need to do as a council is tailor it to insist that the right housing is built out of those 4,500 that local people can afford to buy or rent.

“Our next Local Plan envisages a situation by 2050 where the population of Cornwall will be over 700,000. That essentially means we need housing in and around that government rate of 4,500 to be built just to accommodate the population of Cornwall.”

Ahead of next year’s council election, Cllr Monk said: “No matter which party you belong to and what sort of administration you end up with next May, they are still going to face those same cold hard facts of population expansion. Any administration is going to have to rise to the challenge of how they’re going to provide the extra housing need.”

To politicians opposed to house building in the Duchy, he added: “Simply stating that you’re not going to build housing because you think Cornwall should be protected and no more houses should be built on fields or densification in urban centres, for instance, all that position does is allow the existing properties to rise in price as they become more and more sought after.

“The issue is, as they start to rise it further exacerbates the gap between the people who can afford to buy a house over £500,000 to £1m – which generally means older people moving down here – and disenfranchising the youth who we need to stay to create the jobs and industry to build those houses that we need.”

He said Cornwall was in need of social housing, discounted open market rent and shared ownership properties, and more starter homes priced between £250,000 and £350,000, “so the young people in Cornwall can see a staircase through renting right up to buying their starter homes”.

He added: “That house building figure on the face of it sounds astronomical, but in response to Labour’s target, we should make representation that if you were to build that many houses they should be aimed purely at local need. If we were given those regulatory planning powers to ensure that large-scale housing developments were catered for in that sub-£400,000 market all the way down to social housing, that wouldn’t be as much of a problem.”

He believes planning rules should be changed to ensure affordable developments take precedence.

“What you find is that developers in a nice area of Cornwall will turn around and say ‘okay, Mr Landowner, we want to buy this land off you’ and the landowner will turn around and say ‘well you can put 20 £1 million houses here, therefore I want this much money for it’. What tends to happen is they might bolt on five affordable units as part of the application.

“What we’ve seen recently, as the cost of living and building inflation kicked in, the first thing that attempts to get canned is the affordable element, not one or two of the £1 million houses.

“However, if we can be in the situation in the future where it’s very difficult to get those really expensive applications through, but it’s relatively straightforward to get a development of 50 sub-£350,000 houses through, there’s an opportunity for the Government to regulate to ensure that we build the right type of housing.

“I think we’re seeing an element of that with Treveth [Cornwall Council’s arm’s length building company] in Redruth and Camborne – their properties are selling very well in that price point within the means of local people.”