Letter: Rules need to change for cheaper homes

SIR – In your report of New Forest District Council's planning committee’s approval of a planning application for 64 homes in Fordingbridge (A&T, 18th February), you quote Cllr Malcolm Wade stating: "We need to accept the fact we need to build more houses."

If only life were so simple. If NFDC thinks we need more homes, why does it allow new homes to be sold as second homes, holiday lets and to add to the property portfolios of investors?

Over 40 properties were recently built on green belt land in Milford. I wonder how many more of the new houses that have been built in the NFDC area in the past few years are second homes, holiday lets or part of property portfolios?

Perhaps NFDC would like to tell us. And if they don’t know, then how can they make a judgement about how many new houses are really needed, as opposed to desired?

Why does NFDC allow this? Other local authorities, such as Sidmouth and St Ives, have made it a condition of buying a new home in their areas that it must be the buyer's main residence.

In others, such as Cumbria, some new houses are ring-fenced and only local people are allowed to buy them.

Surely, if NFDC is serious about wanting cheaper homes, they too would have brought in some of these rules.

John Welsh,
Milford