housing plans
Combined Authority plans to address housing shortage
West Yorkshire Combined Authority Chair Cllr Peter Box responded to the government�s announcement that it wants a million homes built in England by 2020, saying:
�The looming housing crisis is a result of the restriction of house building by successive governments, which is why my fellow West Yorkshire leaders and I have included eight measures to give us greater control over housing development in our 27 Leeds City Region devolution proposals.�
Housing Minister Brandon Lewis made the million-home announcement in response to an investigation by the BBC�s Inside Out programme. He said this would combat a "decades-old deficit".
The BBC�s report says that figures from 326 councils showed only 457,490 homes were built between 2011 and 2014 falling far short of the 974,000 the National Housing Federation estimated were needed. Homelessness charity Shelter, has blamed the problem on a shortage of land while others have criticised Developers claiming they acquire land but build slowly to keep house prices high.
Cllr Box said: �Providing people with decent, affordable homes they can rent or buy and eradicating the scourge of homelessness has been one of the Combined Authority�s key ambitions from the outset.
�To achieve this we want to see 65,000 new homes built across the City Region in the in the next five years and through our Growth Deal projects we are already making house building possible including 2,500 new homes as part of our Wakefield Eastern Relief Road project.�
��Our devolution proposals include control of a new �500 million Housing and Regeneration Investment Fund and powers to incentivise developers to bring forward strategic sites and prevent land-banking.�
Find out more about the Wakefield Eastern Relief Road scheme