Future Housing Solutions

The local development planning process is under consultation. Rhuthun is considered an area of ‘lower growth’ and if you’ve read the consultation deposition, you’ll know that planners, while acknowledging Rhuthun’s importance as a local service centre, recognise it’s unlikely to attract major inward investment from outside the region.

Scope for development is somewhat constrained by the hills and area of outstanding natural beauty east of the town. Planners feel that demand for housing is unlikely to be great, particularly given the on-going Glasdir development. It seems Rhuthun is currently at its optimum size, something Denbighshire council recognises in its previous policies aimed at achieving sustainability, now so nearly accomplished.

If Rhuthun is to see relatively modest additional housing capacity, the town’s villages look certain to witness quite some expansion, in relative terms. Although the depositions list all potential sites without indicating which are likely or best, it’s clear that villages are to shoulder a significant proportion of the new housing earmarked for Dyffryn Clwyd/Vale of Clwyd.

Ask rural Wales what it feels is its biggest pressure or concern and it’s likely to be affordable housing. Denbighshire’s plan states that between 30 and 50 per cent of housing shall be affordable. In theory, one in three village new builds shall in future be affordable. Young people born to and brought up in such villages suddenly have a greater opportunity to stay, something not previously available to a generation following the sale of the council-commissioned housing stock, which offered no replacement. Housing associations have largely failed to redress the balance.

Now ask individual villagers what they feel and the reaction’s likely to be mixed. There will be those who consider housing a big issue and there will be as many who feel that, actually, additional housing is a Bad Thing.

Is this pure nimbyism? Or is there a real sense that more housing simply distorts villages, bringing in newcomers who aren’t part of the fabric of the community and who won’t or don’t fit in or take part? People who have no choice but to commute out to get work? Young people may ill afford rural housing but few people in town or country should expect to step into the house of their dreams without first becoming economically established. You simply can’t have everything at once, so the argument goes. There’s no automatic right to a house in *any* community.

This is the dilemma planners face. At a time of huge inflation in the building trade and land prices that may slip a little but in villages not a lot, the pressure’s on to build five bed housing or substantial retirement bungalows that can only ever appeal to outsiders. If village communities have mixed feelings about rural housing, there’s probably no such equivocation about expensive homes.

But there’s an easy way of solving the village housing dilemma. Build most new housing in Rhuthun instead. After all, it’s here that there are supermarkets, town centre shops, a choice of church controlled, Welsh medium and county primary schools, a secondary school, a focus for employment, a leisure centre, doctors, a hospital and a dentist. In short, all the facilities for everyday life, on the doorstep, without the need to drive (far).

Unlike our villages, whose post offices and shops have either closed or retrenched, whose farms tend only to employ family members, whose petrol stations have dried up and, let’s face it, demand that residents have a car to take part in modern society, to go to *Rhuthun* or quite often beyond for goods, services and employment. It's just a thought.

You have till 1 August 2008 to comment on the local development plan