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Report updates housing targets for district

Release Date: 20 August 2012

An independent report commissioned by Stroud District Council to assess its housing projections for the district's Local Plan has endorsed the council's approach and updated projections for forthcoming years.

In its draft Local Plan, which needs to be adopted by 2015, the council asserted that 9,350 homes would need to be built between 2006 and 2026. Making use of more recently available data from the Office of National Statistics, the report states that council should plan for between 9,260 and 11,500 homes until 2031 - which means extending its scope for an extra five years.

Councillor Dennis Andrewartha, executive member for planning for Stroud District Council said:

'When building a house you need sound foundations and when you're putting together a plan to build homes for the whole district for the next two decades, those plans similarly need to be built on strong footings. I'm delighted that the huge amount of work undertaken so far has been endorsed and validated.'

The report was produced by Dr Keith Woodhead, former Regional Policy Manager and head of planning for the South West Regional Assembly specialising in demographics and now an independent consultant specialising in strategic planning policy and demographic and economic research.

Councillor Andrewartha added:

'These figures will be recommended for use at forthcoming council meetings over the next few weeks. Fundamentally, the report confirms that the approach to calculating population and housing targets we have used is correct but the updated information allows us the flexibility to act and react according to changing economic and demographic conditions. Once agreement is reached on numbers we can then go on and revisit the more difficult debate on where these homes should be located.'

The report will be discussed at a planning advisory panel meeting on Tuesday 4th September and subsequently at a meeting of the council's Executive on Thursday 13th September and a finally at a full council meeting on Thursday 3rd October. All three public meetings start at 7pm at Ebley Mill and will be available for live online viewing at www.stroud.gov.uk/webcast

www.stroud.gov.uk/docs/planning/planning_strategy.asp#s=sectioncontent2&p=BASE,housingev,pgthrra

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