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HomeYour VillageAlvechurch25-year wait for homes windfall

25-year wait for homes windfall

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Would-be village housing developers face a very long wait for permission to build any new homes in this area, it has been revealed.

According to new guidelines in the pipeline for the Bromsgrove district, it could be 25 years before any major new building is allowed.

Conservationists will welcome the news after more than a decade of new building, particularly in large back gardens around Barnt Green.

The leader of Bromsgrove District Council, Roger Hollingworth, told parish councillors in Alvechurch that under the council’s current housing policy, the only homes that could be built have to be ones classed as “affordable”.

This ban is due to end in 2011, but the West Midlands Regional Assembly is now producing a Regional Spatial Strategy restricting development until 2026 and possibly until 2031.

Coun Hollingworth said three options were being considered, with the one giving Bromsgrove the most new housing allowing 7,200 homes over that period.

“We are already in an oversupply situation and have overbuilt by about 4,000 homes, so this will reduce down to around 3,200 houses for the whole of Bromsgrove district,” he added.

“We have to build 80 affordable homes per year, so over 20 years that leaves about 1,600 market-value houses that can be built – about 80 a year.

“Under current Government guidelines none of these will be built in the Green Belt.

“In fact we are being told to target brownfield sites in non-green belt areas and, more specifically, Bromsgrove District is being told to concentrate on Bromsgrove town.”

Coun Hollingworth said there might be a dispensation allowing housing on the soon-to-be-redundant schools site in Alvechurch, but he added: “The chances of anything else being built in the next 25 years are very slim indeed.”