5.4

Need affordable social and private housing. Private renting cost is too high. Need affordable mortgages to get on property ladder.

Old unused or rundown buildings should b compulsory purchased and turned to housing. The pentagon is a prime example. There should b a limit on how many homes an individual or household can own. Foreign ownership should not be allowed over UK residents. If u rent homes this should be seen a business and taxed accordingly

No matter what the argument is over the precise method of calculation is. It cannot be denied that ther is a very real housing crisis and the Medway local plan should as a matter of principle commit to solving this lack of housing supply within the plan period.

I have a fundamental question relating to Medway's population and the funding of council services. My reason for asking this is to understand whether there is a benefit to a council to increase its population. Does all the money raised from Council tax paid by Medway residents go to provide the services provided by the council, or is there an element of profit that could be used for instance to pay down council debt or in good times provide new and improved services? If there is an element of profit, there is no incentive to maintain population levels.

The potential development of Chatham Docks should not be authorised as it will not have nearly enough 'affordable housing' it will be predominantly expensive high rise apartments that attract Londoners and drive out local Medway residents.

Agree with need for affordable housing, this should be eligible to Medway residents first and also be based around a price affordable to Medway median income levels to ensure it is truly affordable.

The current methodology used to determine housing need is flawed and needs revision. Affordable housing prices should be set at either the national average restricted to medway residents that are first time buyers living either with parents or in rented accommodation or based on the mortgage amount available to someone on the average medway wage. This would enable local residents to be able to buy a property in their local area.

I refer back to my earlier comment about the lack of infrastructure funding for the Hoo Peninsula. If Medway has no intention of lobbying and applying for every piece of funding for infrastructure Medway will become even more squashed up than it already is and look like a grey blob from above with no green space

Completely agree. Too many political party donors have disproportionate influence on govt housing standards - Grenfell Tower is a case in point.

This is a sensible approach as I understand that the 2021 Local Housing needs Assessment calculated that Medway requires 4,278 dwellings, including 1,200 social houses to satisfy natural growth, but the Standard Method requires six times this need!

Make representation to the Government to make more realistic building targets in relation to the Medway towns and safeguard our villages and green spaces.

Bearing in mind the Government has now dropped formal targets for local authorities and the housing figure is now flexible, the council should only bring forward a local plan based on locally assessed need, and which can be delivered on a sustainable basis!

I feel strongly that local housing development should be for LOCAL people. I would urge the Local Authority to put the needs of our existing population and their families before importing the overflow from London which at the moment is pushing prices up and making it increasing difficult for our young residents to get places of their own, and also for the more senior residents to move into more desirable accommodation to suit their changing needs.

With new flats in Rochester and Chatham including Street End Road it encourages Londoners rather than local families to reside in them. With viability assessments reducing affordable homes from 30% to less than 10% say on Volume Housebuilders sites as an example some proactive part funding is required. It all comes down to finance. Son of CIL may be the only way forward.

Local citizens cannot afford to live in the area.
What is currently being built is mainly for people coming into the area not for the local citizens so the need locally is becoming more acute. According to the local Con. Clown, MDC is set up to provide building of social housing for the citizens of the area. This is the same MDC who advertised the builds internationally as cheap second homes and tried to wheezle out of S106.

We acknowledge that there is current uncertainty regarding the Standard Method formula and we acknowledge that the Council has submitted these concerns about the standard method to Government. However, we request that as the Local Plan progresses that the LPA consider the outcome of this response once published and consult with the public and stakeholders such as our client, to ensure that the appropriate approach is undertaken in terms of determining the scale of housing needed over the plan period.

It will however be important that housing provision is set as a minimum target in the future Local Plan.

References to ‘the Site’ mean Site Ref: GN6 (Gillingham No.3 and 4) identified in the Land Availability Assessment 2023 and as fully detailed in our letter of representations submitted to the Council.

Whichever method is used to predict Medway's Growth Outcome , it is clearly not going to provide all the answers to the housing problem. People cannot be blinded with statistics and graphs. They only see that most of the housing being built is neither affordable, nor for local people. 5 huge blocks on Chatham waterfront - all for private purchase or private rental. 109 properties built at Garrison Point - only 10 for MHS. All of the houses on the Southern Water site, advertised privately in London etc... etc...
MORE SOCIAL HOUSING.

Medway needs 4,278 dwellings, including 1,200 Council Houses to satisfy natural growth (see Local Housing Needs Assessment 2021). The Standard Method results in six times actual need. No professional advisor or planner can condone or be complicit to such patent manipulation of the housing market solely to maximise the profits of the Volume House Builders. Consequent on the giveaway sale of Council Houses we are faced with limited local authority finances and a Housing Crisis for those most in need, Medway must focus on its residents that are most in need and ignore Government policies driven by greed and corruption.

The housing crisis is an affordability crisis, the new developments across Medway are not affordable and the affordable homes allocated by developers are not enough.

I hope that the government standard figure is higher than needed, .but I think we need to move forward using that so the plan can be produced. and hopefully further along we will need less homes.

Encourage and simplify the process on building annexes which can be used by multigenerational households. It will also promote care within the family. New apartments can also provide similar provisions. In Singapore, developers are encouraged to build a proportion of apartments as "dual key condos" where there is a single deed for the apartment and each apartment has 2 entrances to a studio flat and a multi-bedroom flat. The deed will stipulate they cannot be rented out individually, ensuring the scheme promotes affordability and care needs within the family.

As previously stated I understand there is a need to build more homes to ensure that local people have somewhere to live. That young people are able to move out of their parents accommodation. Can buy a property if they wish, or rent if they wish. But currently we are building properties that are too expensive for many local people. They will therefore continue to be out priced by others moving into the area and we will never meet our need. Developers will only build houses when they know they can sell them for the highest price.

The current housing land supply and housing delivery position points to a significant need for housing within the borough. The Council can only demonstrate a housing land supply position of 3.64 years. Further to this the published housing delivery test result for 2021 was 67% when compared to the objectively assessed need under the Standard Method calculation (1,675 dwellings per annum (dpa)). This points to a persistent undersupply and under delivery of housing in Medway. In addition to the above, there is also a real problem with the delivery of affordable housing in the unitary authority. In 2021/22 only 17% of all gross housing completions were affordable. In the last
two years this has amounted to 408 affordable homes out of 2,264 gross completions. This is below the Council’s current target of at least 25% of homes being affordable. The cumulative shortfall over the 10 years from 2010/11 has been 3,649 dwellings. The issue may also be exasperated when the ‘right to acquire’ and ‘rent to buy’ sales of affordable homes is taken into consideration, which reduces
the amount of affordable housing stock in Medway and leads to a rise in supressed households.

Given the current housing crisis, despite the government not yet responding to the consultation on the revisions to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) and lack of direction given to the future use of the Standard Method formula, it is imperative to meet the needs of the current and future residents of Medway who desperately need the right homes in the right places, with many residents currently living in sub-standard conditions.

The impact of developments at Capstone Green and the old brickworks at Hale have yet to manifest themselves fully. Upper and lower Hempstead Roads already justify a dual carriageway.
Housing development in the area would result in Hempstead, Lordswood and Bredhurst morphing into a homogeneous mass to the detriment of existing residents.
Development would of course allow an influx of people from London, motivated by the difference in property prices and the encouragement of London Councils. Development would also be to the advantage of greenfield site landowners as part of their ‘master plan’.

See previous comment- we should push back on external targets and meet the needs of the people of Medway.

Absolutely affordable homes in the right places to meet the needs of those currently living in over crowded , substandard and unhealthy homes. According to the mentioned "Local Housing Need Assessment " Medway Needs 4278 dwellings including 1,200 council houses.
The focus mus be on those most in need. The council must resist the "dwelling led Standard Method".

Paragraph 5.4 of the Consultation Document recognises that there is a housing crisis, particularly regarding affordability. Richborough is of the view that this is particularly the case in Medway with the Office for National Statistics median affordability ratio (household income to average house price) showing that affordability has worsened from 5.73 in 2014 to 8.65 in 2022. Whilst the Consultation Document refers to these issues, the proposed resolution is not clearly stated.
Issues with regard to the affordability of dwellings within Medway are also highlighted in the Local Housing Needs Assessment (2021), included in the Local Plan evidence base. Table 3.1 of the Assessment identifies that house prices in Medway, when compared with neighbouring authorities, increased at a much higher rate between 2000 and 2020. A change of 257% is the second highest of the six authorities included within the comparison and is significantly higher than the South East average of 218%. There are clear signals present within Medway in regard to affordability which should be factored into to identifying the housing requirement.
As referenced elsewhere, in the nineteen years since the Medway Local Plan was adopted in 2003, overall housing completions have only exceeded the housing requirement figure that was in place at the time in only three years, and the three most recent monitoring years have seen the highest deficits. The cumulative under supply of housing since 2003 is 4,955 dwellings.
In respect of affordable housing completions, the annual need figure has not been met once since 2006 (the highest year was in 2008 and still saw a deficit of 305 dwellings) and the cumulative deficit in affordable housing over the 19 year period (2003-2021) is 10,012.
The emerging Local Plan housing requirement clearly needs to reflect both the worsening affordability and the previous poor housing delivery rates. These factors point to the need for a significant increase in the number of houses to be planned for.
Richborough supports the use of the standard method calculation for establishing local housing need as a starting point for calculating the housing requirement for Medway. The solution to worsening affordability in Medway is to build significantly more houses than has historically been delivered and to treat the proposed requirement as a minimum.

Yes there is a desperate need for really AFFORDABLE housing it will be up to the council to tell builders to include such housing get final planning permissions

Any evidence is for the “ late 30’s living with their parents” assertion?- good to have hard facts here. this is a free country, developers will sell to whoever they wish, be from abroad etc. there is no mechanism to give houses to local people for sale, banks have their own ideas on who to give a mortgage to.Not sire that targets which cannot be reached will help anyone much, but it would be good to see some housing built on NIMBY protected land which could , ironically would, have been protected by the last ( failed) local plan.