The council's own Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA) suggests that if all affordable housing needs are to be met, about 77% of new homes should be affordable. Therefore, the council's lack of ambition regarding affordable housing is disappointing and suggests greater concern for developers than local residents who are in desperate need of suitable housing. The Council accepts the Affordable Housing Viability Assessment (AHVA) assessment that it is possible to have up to 50% affordable housing, yet it is not willing to take a flexible approach and categorise sites by level of viability i.e. insist many sites have more than 40% affordable housing. This is despite good work of the AHVA in setting out 3 categories of site. The Council should work harder to maximise affordable build and therefore should:
* Categorise each site by viability to maximise the number of affordable houses which it recognises are so badly needed
* Increase density of housing which will reduce the cost per home and therefore enable more affordable properties to be built
* Follow the advice in the AHVA, 7.49 and reduce the threshold for affordable properties to 7 properties in urban areas
* Seek independent opinion regarding the 20% of Gross Development Value (GDV) return figure in the AHVA upon which viability figures are based. This figure is not justified in the document and expected GDV returns are falling in the property industry e.g. see http://www.thepropertyspeculator.co.uk/tag/gross-development-value/ which suggests 15% is more realistic. LDZ who wrote the AHVA also work for developers and so potentially they have an interest in inflating this figure to the benefit of developers at the expense of local residents
* Demonstrate with detailed commitments how any remaining short fall in affordable housing can be met through innovative working with the private sector, so that the local plan is compliant with the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF)