Our team of Lib Dems at Waverley Borough Council are solving national planning issues with a range of new measures aiming to make housing across the borough affordable and sustainable.
Affordable homes: Introduced this year, the council’s new affordable homes strategy aims to fix the Government’s failed ‘affordable’ home definition. Waverley’s policy reduces rent levels classed as “affordable” to between 65% to 70% of market rent to ensure developments provide homes that are truly affordable to local residents and families.
Zero-carbon: We believe that all new homes need to meet high standards for energy-efficiency and quality, especially with the cost-of-living skyrocketing. All new Waverley council homes must now be delivered as zero-carbon to maximise environmental sustainability, saving our residents money as well as helping the environment.
Sustainable: New planning advice for developers makes designing sustainable homes clearer and easier - giving developers better direction on the standard of sustainability expected for today’s new homes. This gives our residents an environmentally and efficient new home, which works for the planet and their pocket.
These are changes we have made in the past few years at Waverley Borough Council to improve the council's own housing stock through updates to housing policies and strategies, but national planning policies provide little room for improvement on non-council managed developments.
Local authorities continue to be hamstrung by central Government targets coupled with strict planning criteria. This limits our ability to require modern practices and improvements from developers that we expect given the cost of living crisis and climate emergency.
Over 70 new, efficient houses will be built across Godalming, Chiddingfold and Farnham in a forward-looking move by Waverley Borough Council. This marks the start of Waverley's next phase of social housing provision.
