7,290 homes are expected to be built on the Isle of Wight over a 15 year period under a new local planning strategy.
As previously reported by Island Echo, the Isle of Wight Council is proposing to lower the housing target on the Island by nearly a quarter but this still means that a total of 486 homes a year could be built between 2023 and 2038, with the vast majority in the Newport area.
In the latest draft of the Island Planning Strategy, 73 allocated sites for housing have been removed, when compared to the previous version published in 2018.
Feedback from the 2018 plans was said to be ‘overwhelmingly’ opposed to the number of new houses planned — 641 houses a year, a total of 9,615 over 15 years — due to a lack of capacity to deliver the government’s housing target.
The government’s housing target for the Island has risen further to 668 new homes a year for the next 15 years but that has been deemed not realistic, nor deliverable. Instead, in an effort to beat the government’s new planning bill which could see the Island’s target rise to over 1,000 homes a year, the council is proposing to take the latest draft strategy out to consultation and start the process of formally adopting it.
Every area on the Island has lost allocated sites and, as a result, housing numbers, with some areas slashed in half.
Here is what is now allocated for each area:
- West Wight: 255 houses over 6 sites (down 297)
- West Medina: 869 houses over 6 sites ( down 109)
- Newport: 2,410 houses over 11 sites (down 1,285)
- East Medina: 315 houses over 4 sites (down 139)
- Ryde: 852 houses over 7 sites (down 586)
- The Bay: 311 houses over 7 sites (down 528)
Some of the sites in the 2018 plan, gone from the 2021 revised version include:
- 880 homes at New Fairlee Farm, Newport
- 99 houses at the Follyworks, Whippingham
- 20 houses on the St Thomas Car Park, Ryde
- 80 homes on Upton Road, Ryde
- 100 houses on Guildford Park Caravan Site and Fakenham Farm, St Helens
- 125 homes on Perowne Way, Sandown
- 15 homes at the former Flamingo Park, Seaview
Other allocated sites have either shrunk or, in some cases, increased:
- Westridge Farm / West Acre Park – 555 to 474 homes
- Land by the Football Club, Camp Road, Freshwater – 150 to 90 homes
- Somerton Farm, Newport Road, Cowes – 80 to 130 homes
- Land at Horsebridge Hill and Acorn Farm – 375 to 115 homes
- Land at Noke Common – 180 to 100 homes
- Scotland Farm and Tresslewood Care Village, Godshill – 30 to 100 homes
Sites allocated in the plan, either existing or new, include:
- 50 houses at Birch Close, Freshwater
- 50 houses at the former Polars Residential Home, Newport
- 175 houses on land by Carisbrooke College
- 250 houses at Newport Harbour
- 1,200 houses at Camp Hill Prison
- 125 homes on Crossways, East Cowes
- 150 houses on land off Broadwood Lane, Newport
- 225 homes on land by Sylvan Drive, Newport
- 84 homes at the former Sandham School
- 535 homes at Medina Yard, Cowes
- 146 homes at the former Somerton Reservoir, Newport Road
The council’s cabinet will decide next week whether to start the consultation, which would run from the end of July to September, to gather residents’ thoughts.
Is this after a new hospital is built and roads adapted for extra traffic. Asking for a friend
Picture shows such ugly house. For goodness’ sake, no more! We are a small geographical area & can’t have this amount of house building without it having an appreciable detrimental effect on our local environment. The flora & fauna suffering with the loss of habitats & the bad psychological effects of everywhere too built up which people may not even notice on a conscious level but which can affect them in subtle ways causing depression & anxiety, or at least adding to those unhappy feelings. Living in areas with more trees around & more greenery have been proven to be beneficial for mental health & well being.
IE is there any reason that nearly every single comment I ever make always says “awaiting approval” and then it it ever does appear it is hours and hours and hours later, and sometimes I don’t see it until the next day when everyone has moved on to something else so hardly anyone will see my comment anyway. I never use bad language here or insult anyone or threaten anyone or use un pc words, so I’m just wondering, why always my comments?
Not only yours, same thing for me.
Where are all the people apparently wanting these new homes? 7,290 houses with probably at least 2-3 people in each means there are, apparently, over 15,000 people without homes at the moment. Yes, some might be in rented accommodation, but 15,000 of them? I don’t think so. The Council needs to come clean about this and tell us what the plan is. Are these all supposedly Islanders, or any they people ’emigrating’ from the mainland, or are we importing undesirables who other Councils want rid of?
With the amount of undesirables already here, it seems this has been going on for ages.
Yes, import the overspill from the mainland. I have been posting this for some time now. Look at the sites currently under construction opposite the Chilli Farm near to Jubilee garden Centre. One is Stoneham Construction the other Vectis Housing. I’m guessing, private and council side by side.
I asked the council about this and i was told that the iow council hold zero housing stock, its all housing association owned, if there was iow council owned housing stock then the council would have to house homeless islanders!! i was shocked..not for us but for the mainland first????
Beleive me, if you were born in the uk you have no chance of getting local authority housing, I have watched the area I was born in on the mainland change from a community into a not very nice place in less than ten years. My Dad has lived there since the fifties and is now scared to go out. Thats the benefit of “diversity” which cannot be either questioned, or I suspect, commented on…
You got it, not difficult to spot, especially living in Newport. Out and about on a daily basis, I regret not opening a walking stick shop, for all those poor people unable to work.
As far as “council importing undesirables from mainland” goes, someone needs to knock this on the head once and for all or provide proof. Given that elsewhere in here someone says that iow council holds zero housing stock, it seems unlikely. People that other people consider undesirables could be moving here, but what’s your yardstick for undesirable.. “not like us”? (probably), But in any case iow is not a “gated community” which so many obviously wish it was. It’s part of the UK and anyone from within the UK has a perfect right to live here. If you look down your nose at people with trainers and a buggy and label them scum, (without even knowing the first thing about them) as a lot of people on here seem to do, then that’s your prejudice right too, unpalatable as it may be to many. But it’s your right. But perhaps you’d be happier moving to a virtual gated community within iow, like Seaview or Bembridge, where everyone’s “just like me” and better for it.
Don’t give out that rubbish. I came from a very poor, and extremely underprivileged background, it didn’t make me into one of these undesirable ignorant types. You only have to speak with common politeness to some of them and get accused of being a ‘snob’. You just don’t get it. Import a vast number of people into a small area and those people will change that area. Why should locals be pushed out and made to feel anxious and intimidated by rough types moving in all around them? That’s certainly what’s happened in many areas, people are expected to put up with bad behaviour galore and never complain.
I don’t dispute that manners are important, and people should lead by example, and not everyone does. Manners maketh man. But làbeling people so vociferously doesn’t help; certain people might be more of a good Samaritan when it comes to it than the person with impeccable manners.. Whatever the ins and outs of that, the image of some sort of Windrush generation council sanctioned importing of undesirables from mainland lIke convicts to Australia, is quite honestly ridiculous. And if it is true, where’s the proof? The Isle of Wight hasn’t declared independence and if it had, it would be economically bankrupt, without being subsidised by the mainland, given dire economic activity, and an almost complete lack of cultural entrepreneurship. So, as part of UK, anyone from mainland has a perfect right to move here, no matter how many people rail against it, and come up with fantasy conspiracy theories. And btw having lived in London for most of my life, when I moved here 12 years ago, I was struck by the politeness of the kids here, compared to London
Where are all these people going to work??
We have just one hospital, will most of us have to be treated on the mainland?
This is worrying to say the least, the island doesn’t have the infrastructure to accommodate this madness…
I’ve heard, hope its just a rumour, that St Marys is going to be down sized to just, maternity and accident and emergency. And with all those extra people. God help us.
Don’t forget we have to find homes for the hundreds of guests arriving every week.
Sorry but you reap what you sow. Get the Tories out was the cry now look what’s happening. You can’t see a doctor or dentist now so how are they going to improve that with all these extra people. 535 homes at Medina Yard and 146 at the former reservoir in Cowes totally not needed and there is no infrastructure in place for this
Idiots – there should be no new houses on the island.
the very fact it is an island, should be a clue to the inability to accept new builds. All you end up doing is creating a bottleneck effect at the town centres/ferry ports and other main roads.
The islands infrastructure cannot cope with the numbers that live here now, without adding that many houses.
the islands population are not huddled in shop doorways, homeless and needing a house- therefore, these houses would be for people to move to, from other places in the country, into.
this is a short sighted move, by people of low intelligence.
If they plan to build more property the least they could do is build more schools and medical care practises for the island to cope with the rise in population and such places can providing jobs for the huge influx of people. People come here on holiday for the wildlife and scenery, not to look at newly built housing estates. Don’t rid us of that!