Where will the extra houses go in West Berkshire? Response due

A response is expected today (Monday) on how and where West Berkshire must build more homes.

The Planning Inspector responsible for reviewing the Local Plan for West Berkshire sided with the previous Tory administration – and told the council it must build the 2,500 homes in Thatcham – plus another 500 across the district.

And West Berkshire has been told by the government that its housing allocation needs to more than double.

The question being wrestled with is where.

West Berkshire has a large proportion of space allocated to the AONB (now National Landscape) and the DEPZ (the emergency zone around AWE Burghfield and Aldermaston).

Policies relating to these need to be clarified before WBC can work on identifying where these new homes can be put.

West Berkshire’s current annual target is 525 net dwellings per year - this is new builds and homes from changes of planning use.

Since 2012, according to the department for levelling up, housing and communities there have been 2.9k houses added to the district’s stock.

Not all of these are new builds though, with the figures showing 2.3k of those have been built in that time. The others are either conversions or change of use properties.

Last year (2222/23) the biggest change of use to residential was from offices. There were 7,903 of those,- but noticeably there were ten thousand more of those five years previously, suggesting the number of convertible offices might be becoming rarer.

There were 534 changes from agricultural properties to homes in 222/23 and 451 commercial businesses to residential.

In her first speech as chancellor Rachel Reeves has promised to "get Britain building again" by bringing back compulsory housebuilding targets as part of a wide-ranging plan to reboot the UK economy.

Ms Reeves also said she would overhaul planning restrictions and end the effective ban on onshore wind farms in England in order to speed up national infrastructure projects.

She said the government would make the "tough" and "hard choices" to fix the economy, adding that the UK had lagged behind other developed nations for years.

She confirmed Labour planned to build 1.5 million homes in England over the course of this parliament, but said it was not a "green light" to any kind of housing development.