The District is justly proud of the excellent rural areas surrounding for our small towns. Therefore it is scandalous that this local plan seeks to build recklessly, and almost exclusively, on green field sites. This is entirely unnecessary for the following reasons:
* There is not a clear link between economic growth and housing (see response to PO8)
* Housing should be focussed on brownfield sites within urban areas
* More effort should be made to use currently vacant homes and retail/ office spaces, especially homes above shops
* Excellent residential schemes of up to 200 homes per hectare are quite common, so there is absolutely no reason to advocate 30 homes per hectare (note section 4.23 of the Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment, SLHAA). As household size is tending to reduce, the need for small homes continues to grow, enabling much higher housing densities than proposed in this plan
* The SHMA report indicates that the majority of older people live in homes with 3 or more bedrooms and that over 40% of homes are under-occupied. Therefore a high priority is to set the conditions whereby high quality, attractive smaller homes are developed in all areas of the district to encourage those in under-occupied homes, particularly older people, to move into them. This has the potential to free-up enough homes to obviate the need to build any more
* Warwick University, along with other Higher education institutions around the country, have made the strategic decision to keep as much student money to themselves i.e. they are engaged in a major programme of building student accommodation on campus. This dramatic reduction in the number of students in the rest of the District is another reason why house building is unnecessary

Even if the council does not accept the full force of the above arguments, it should still be acknowledged that there is uncertainty in their prediction that so much housing is required. Therefore, it is imperative that there is gradual release of land for housing over the timescale of this plan, with the most suitable land released first e.g. only brownfield sites usable for the first few years, then selective low-grade agricultural land. Only when all other sites have been built upon, should the rest of the allocated land be released for development.