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| Section about affordable housing in "Friends of The Evenlode Valley leaflet" |
Everyone in Charlbury has received a leaflet from the "Friends of The Evenlode Valley" and a number of people have submitted public planning comments on the basis of the information contained within it. It does however contain some misleading information, which should be taken into account.
There are three main social benefits of the Rushy Bank project: more affordable housing for local people, sheltered housing for those suffering from early onset dementia, and funds (section 106) for infrastructure improvement and community use by the town.
Let's be clear: this project has not been instigated by a developer looking for cheap land to make a big profit. It has been developed by Young Dementia Homes UK and The Beacon Project Charlbury over a number of years, and we went out and found a Charlbury-based developer and a Charlbury-based architect. Even the ecological, archaeological and landscape consultants are Charlbury-based! (that's the kind of town we are).
"Affordable" housing is a grossly overworked term, isn't it? So let's be clear what this application contains. 29 houses are being proposed, in addition to the 12 bed sheltered housing unit. Of those, 9 will be built by a social housing provider. That's low rent, shared ownership, etc. That's the usual sort of "affordable" housing we are used to. But what isn't clear in the Friends leaflet is that social housing providers only pay something like £10-15k per plot for land!
But this project is innovative in having another 10 out of the 29 houses proposed as being custom-built for Charlbury people at below market value, probably at least 25% below! And those enjoying this discount won't sell it on at a profit as soon as it's built, as there is a proposal by the Beacon Project for a phased lock-in for this discount so that it can be passed on to the next local person wanting to buy a house. The mechanism for passing on discounts will be wrapped up in the section 106 agreement that will accompany any planning consent and the team are liaising with the planner and housing officer to finalise this.
The other 10 houses would also be custom-built (i.e. internal layout, number of bedrooms, etc) and be sold at full market value. The reason these are needed is to allow the landowner enough of a return on the land to allow for the very low, or discounted land return for the rest of the development, and also to fund the road improvements, landscaping, groundworks, community payments etc.
So, that's 9/29 social housing (31%), 10/29 discounted custom-build housing (34.5%) and 10/29 full market value housing (34.5%).
Given that both the social housing and the Beacon Project (discounted) housing would all be priority for local people, that is 65.5% of the development which would be more affordable housing for local people.
We hope this counters some of the misinformation on the issue of who is really benefitting from this proposed scheme. The developer is also proposing to run the development as an open book so that everyone and anyone might inspect the financial side. This isn’t a requirement.
The issue of the location is an entirely different matter - that is up for debate and depends on where we see acceptable development in the town, and how sensitive this scheme is to its proposed location.
We hope this is useful information about some aspects of the proposed development that we feel passionately about and have worked towards for a number of years in our own town. Let the application stand or fall on its merits, but not on false information.
