Affordable housing in National Parks

Affordable housing is one of the thorniest problems facing National Parks. Everybody wants to live in our most beautiful protected landscapes but even in deprived parts of Northern England, exponential increases in house prices are pricing first time buyers and people on lower incomes out of the market. Farm workers and tourist industry staff must increasingly commute from towns outside the park, causing inconvenience and congestion.

Friends of the Peak District believe the vitality of our National Park depends on the strength and vigour of local communities so what can be done to ensure that people who maintain and improve the landscape we cherish continue to live here?

In January, Friends of the Peak District heard about an innovative plan to create homes for key workers in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. The Dales Authority are teaming up with Skipton Building Society and Craven District Council to invest £10 million in affordable, rented housing for ‘key workers’. Once a housing need has been identified in a village, the Authority will locate suitable sites and the building society will fund the construction of two- and three- bedroom homes to be let to 'key workers' at reduced rents. The first such scheme in the country, Friends of the Peak District hope this welcome initiative may be adopted by other National Parks.

Our own Authority in the Peak is endeavouring to provide affordable housing through the planning system. New housing is only allowed if it is affordable and Friends of the Peak District has been happy to support affordable housing proposals recently, including land at Michlow Drive, Bradwell. However, providing affordable housing in this way is fraught with difficulties and even when sites can be found, potential occupants may have trouble getting mortgages.

Sites where new housing is allowed because it would be affordable are known as ‘Exceptions Sites’, so called because housing would not be permitted under normal circumstances for example because they are beyond the village limits or they are on ‘greenfield’ sites. This conflict with landscape quality is a major hurdle and Friends of the Peak District always check that proposals are only approved if the landscape impact is acceptable. Planning policy is another barrier, with development generally pushed to ‘brownfield’ sites in the middle of villages with good public transport links.

Affordable housing is often not attractive to landowners and developers because of a poor rate of return compared to build costs, a disincentive to develop land for this purpose. In successful schemes, housing associations are able to attain additional statutory funding. Some landowners are also reluctant to release land in the hope that planning policy may change in the future and allow them to profit from the open market but developers are beginning to get the message that this will not happen and sites for affordable housing are trickling through in some of our villages.

Changes to Yorkshire Dales planning policy now mean that any new development, whether a single barn conversion or a new build scheme, can only be provided for existing local residents or key workers. New Peak Park planning guidance also ensures that houses will be truly affordable and that when sold they must remain so, and must be sold to local people.

At Hope a new, affordable housing development of six, two and three bedroomed cottages, (see picture above), will provide new homes for people who have been resident in the village of Hope and the surrounding parish for at least ten years.

Friends of the Peak District are encouraged by such initiatives but affordable housing provision is ad hoc and further policy interventions are urgently needed if a truly living and working Peak Park landscape for the future is to be guaranteed.

Picture: Market Close, Hope - Successful locally affordable housing scheme