Covid has accelerated home shopping and home working trends, and yesterday the BBC reported that almost all the 50 biggest UK employers they questioned have said they do not plan to bring staff back to the office full-time1.
Even before the pandemic hit, CPRE’s ‘State of the brownfield 2019’ report showed there’s enough suitable brownfield land available in England for more than 1 million homes across 18,000 sites2.
Here in Maidenhead, 1,270 dwellings already have planning permission across numerous brownfield sites, including Moorbridge Court. But many more commercial buildings lie empty, and this number is likely to increase as businesses rethink their office space requirements.
Time for a radical rethink
With so many shops and restaurants now empty too, so it’s time for a radical rethink on how the future of our town should look.
In the meantime, sadly it looks like our council’s bid to develop the 132 acres of parkland leased by Maidenhead Golf Club will be given permission by the planning inspector later this year.
The golf course is home to thousands of trees and many types of animals, birds and insects, including a number of protected species.
Development plans are based on out of date figures for housing need
The number of new homes allocated to our borough is based on the Objectively Assessed Need (OAN) figures released in 2012. Not only are these figures seriously out of date, but Maidenhead is taking a disproportionate amount of the new homes allocated for our borough. The Borough Local Plan (BLP) proposes building 6,144 homes in Maidenhead, out of a total of 8,296 for the whole of the Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead.
This unfair allocation of housing, which has given our council the mandate to build on our greenbelt, needs to be re-examined. There will be similar town centre changes in other parts of the borough, providing new brownfield development opportunities.
We are waiting for the 2020 housing need projection figures to be released, but based on 2018 figures, the OAN for new homes in our borough has been halved, down to 6,3823.
By July 2020, 5,860 new homes had already been built or granted planning in the borough since 20134. So based on these numbers, we’ve already met our allocation for new homes.
Access to local greenspace is vital for our wellbeing
Many of these new homes are flats in the town centre. The pandemic has shone a light on the importance of access to local greenspace for our physical and mental health and wellbeing. And one of the key objectives in our council’s Environment & Climate Strategy5 is to ‘protect and enhance our natural environment, green our towns and urban areas’.
The successful towns of the future will have large areas of green space, which provide a green envelope around the town to help with cooling, oxygenating and filtering pollution.
We must protect all the remaining greenspace in our town, including the greenbelt land of the golf course, to ensure our community has the best possible chance to combat the worst effects of climate change.
All new development should be focussed on brownfield sites, including new family homes and affordable housing.
Once our greenspace and the wildlife that lives there has gone, we’ll never get it back.
- BBC News online ‘No full time return to the office for over a million’, 6 May 2021 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56972207
- CPR’s annual ‘State of brownfield’ report 2019 https://www.cpre.org.uk/resources/state-of-brownfield-2019/
- Inspector’s documents, 2018 Household Projections Letter July 2020 ID-15 https://www.rbwm.gov.uk/home/planning/planning-policy/emerging-plans-and-policies/draft-borough-local-plan/examination-local-plan/inspectors-documents
- Freedom of Information Request FOI75156, dated 30 July 2020: ‘The Council’s records show that a total of 3,286 dwellings were completed in the period 1 April 2013 to 31 March 2019. Please note that this includes dwellings with planning permission and also those ‘prior approvals’ delivered under permitted development rights. As monitoring is undertaken on a financial year basis (April to March) data is not available for the period 1st January 2013 to 30th July 2020 as requested. Figures for the 2019/20 monitoring year will be available in due course. As of October 2019, there were 2,574 dwellings with an unimplemented planning permission in the Royal Borough. This figure will also be updated in due course to 31 March 2020.’
- ‘Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead Environment and Climate Strategy 2020-2025’ https://www.rbwm.gov.uk/media/2288/download