THE government has dropped a “nuclear bomb” on Cornwall by “forcing” the council to build more than 80,000 new homes over the next 20 years.

That was the view of one councillor when plans were discussed today (Tuesday, January 14) about how Cornwall Council will instigate the government’s new housebuilding policy.

Under the new mandatory National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), Cornwall will have to build more new homes than any other local authority in the country. This will see the annual target rise from 2,707 per year to 4,421.

A meeting of the council’s economic scrutiny committee heard this basically means that Cornwall’s current Local Plan housing supply policies will be deemed to be “out of date” if tested at appeal. If Cornwall Council does not meet the new figures, its planning powers could be removed by the government.

Councillors discussed a new Interim Policy Statement, which will provide clarity when prioritising housing applications and what would be the best ways forward for Cornwall, before a new Local Plan is implemented in line with the government’s new policy.

The meeting heard that the national changes mean that places which have previously expected development to be limited to infill and rounding off of sites will no longer have that protection and schemes will be considered on their merits.

Among recommendations approved by the committee was a move to “heavily prioritise” town centre living and to make it easier to change from low-demand retail use to residential. Changes to Cornwall’s town centres could include the “imaginative use” of car parks and industrial land, with more high quality, high density urban housing. This could include more blocks of flats.

The council has put out a call for what land is potentially available for housing – 683 residential sites (5,012 hectares of land) have currently been submitted. That equates to about 30,000 homes.

Louise Wood, the council’s director for planning and housing, said: “We have to be honest with ourselves that in the position we’re in at the moment with being quite significantly under-delivering against those new housing numbers, our collective challenge is to find the most positive way to respond to that.

“We are failing the government’s test that is set for us – we’re failing the five-year land supply and will start to fail the housing delivery test. If we’re going to deliver a 60 per cent increase in our housing numbers we are going to have to find more sites and we are going to have to do things a little bit differently.”

Independent Bude councillor Peter La Broy responded: “I’m not sure it’s embedded in the public mind yet, the level of the nuclear bomb that the government’s actually dropped on local authorities; Cornwall in particular. Reading through this document, it doesn’t feel as if we are thinking about the residents of Cornwall and meeting their needs – the very specific challenges that we have historically experienced. It feels like we will just be forced to build 4,400-odd houses or else.”

Phil Mason, the council’s director for sustainable growth and development, said: “You could argue that this way of driving more homes actually does serve your communities because there’s a fundamental point here that we just need more homes; affordable homes and all sorts of homes for people across our communities.”

Discussing how sites for housing will now have to change across the Duchy, Conservative councillor for Camborne Peter Perry added: “The pain that we’re going to have across Cornwall for development has to include every part where it is suitable and appropriate – you can’t protect the sanctity of a typical Cornish village forever.”

Bodmin councillor and leader of the council’s Lib Dem group Leigh Frost questioned whether there would now have to be more tower blocks in Cornwall: “We have always built out, we’ve never built up. Is that now something we won’t be able to avoid?”

He also queried whether the government’s house-building target was realistic. “The numbers can be whatever they want – realistically, we are never going to achieve them. In Cornwall, there are not enough builders and not enough tradesmen.”

Mebyon Kernow councillor Dick Cole, who represents St Dennis and St Enoder, said he wanted to give everyone a word of warning when it came to housing.

He said: “When I was young, my home parish had less than 1,000 dwellings with 137 council houses. Now, my parish has doubled in size and there are 127 rented properties in the public sector. The achievement of politics over the last 30 years has been to go from 14 per cent social rented properties to six. That’s a pretty sad indictment.”

Mr Mason said it would be to Cornwall’s economic benefit to develop more types of housing that would encourage younger, working age people to either stay in or come to Cornwall, rather than housing that attracts retired residents from outside the county.

After over two hours of discussion, the committee recommended that Cornwall Council urgently identifies sufficient funding and staffing to resource the planning services workload in relation to the increased house-building programme. Councillors also agreed to ask MPs to lobby for powers for the council to unblock sites where planning approval has been landbanked or not delivered, which could then contribute rapidly to housing delivery.

They also recommended that the new Local Plan includes explicit planning policies to support remote and home-based working, creating employment and growth opportunities in residential property built on commercial land.

The meeting also heard that developers should be encouraged to provide long-term rented homes to local people to supplement affordable housing and that a robust Cornwall Design Guide is produced providing high quality housing.