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Prioritising affordable housing in the South Downs National Park



Prioritising affordable housing in the South Downs National Park

A new affordable housing strategy has been launched by the National Park Authority to increase delivery of much-needed homes.

It comes as the Partnership Management Plan, which was adopted earlier this year, set ambitious targets for 300 new affordable homes being completed in the National Park by 2031 – the equivalent of 60 a year.

The strategy is the result of collaborative working over a six-month period between a group of planning officers and representatives from local Registered Providers of affordable housing and housing enabler associations.

Stella New, Development Management Lead and who sits on the group, said: “Delivering new affordable housing is one of the National Park Authority’s priorities and rightly so.

“The communities and businesses of the National Park need affordable and accessible housing if they are to continue to thrive and to ensure that those who work in the National Park can afford to live here.

“In developing the strategy, we also sought advice from planning agents and developers to better understand issues from a supplier perspective. The strategy gives us a good starting point to deliver the affordable homes the National Park needs.”

The strategy pulls together a range of actions, incentives and policy recommendations which include:

  • Changes to our emerging Local Plan Rural Exception Site policy to include landowners’ incentives, allow for the use of secondary housing need data and removal of onerous sequential test
  • Developing a toolkit to help Parishes and Community Groups to identify and assess potential rural exception sites and engage with their communities
  • A communications strategy to encourage Rural Exception Sites to come forward
  • A matchmaking service to match housing development sites with registered affordable housing providers

The group will continue to meet quarterly to further evolve the strategy and explore other ways to boost delivery.

A “Rural Exception Site” is a small site developed for local affordable housing in perpetuity that would not normally be developed for housing.