The Isle of Wight Council has missed out on funding to build homes on brownfield sites due to a lack of a planning strategy.
The money would have come from the Government in the second round of the Brownfield Land Release Fund.
The Government has made £180million available to authorities to build homes on council-owned brownfield sites — land which has previously been developed.
The Isle of Wight Council was successful in the first round of funding last year, being awarded £950,000 to bring forward around 70 homes across 3 sites. They were at the former Island Learning Centre in Lake (yet to be developed), Thompson House in Gatcombe (yet to be developed) and the former Weston Academy in Totland (yet to be developed).
Work has been progressing towards providing houses on the sites as they had recently been marketed. Offers are currently being evaluated.
However, now the second round of funding has opened — which could have seen further much-needed housing delivered on the Island — the Isle of Wight Council has announced it will not be able to bid for funding.
Brownfield sites are a favoured location for housing schemes on the Island — as opposed to building on green fields — but they are more expensive to develop, which is where the funding would have come in handy.
Speaking at the Isle of Wight Council’s cabinet meeting on Thursday, Councillor Julie Jones-Evans confirmed the council would miss out on funding due to the lack of an up-to-date planning strategy. The council has been trying to bring forward a new planning strategy — setting out the Island’s housing targets and policies to judge an application on — for the last few years but it has continually stalled.
In the last year, the Alliance administration has built on the work of the previous Conservative councillors, taking the draft Island Planning Strategy out to consultation. It is now ready to be sent to the Government for approval but needs full council’s consent first before it can be. It was due to be approved earlier in the year by full council but due to issues noted by councillors was deferred until September.
Coupled with the Island’s failure to meet government housing targets, the planning authority falls into the presumption in favour of sustainable development, which means unless there is something majorly wrong with a housing scheme it should be passed.
Looks like either the council are incompetent or just out of there depth.
Totally incompetent…they only want to build on open green areas
JJE was too busy getting the pedestrian only for the dead Newport town centre approved to worry about new homes for those trying to buy affordable houses. Disgusting that they missed the opportunity for a Brown Site area, watch out farmers landowners they will be coming after your green land soon!!
So true..
which could have seen further much-needed housing delivered on the Island
……….
stop peddling the wrong narrative – it is the importation of too many benefit scroungers, asylum seekers and second home owners, as well as airbnb that is creating the housing issues. If these were all prevented from moving to the island, then housing would be freed up for those that were born here and there would be no need to continually concrete over the island, ruining its garden isle status.
What the heck is a garden island status, is this some figment of your imagination,
No it’s real
So our council tax will increase because these parasites are too busy feathering their own nests to get their act together.
Unlike any other business, the council can do as little or as much as it wants, but knows it can never go broke, because it just charges us more and more for their own self created incompetence.
About time people stopped paying their council tax to force them to act in the manner which people voted and trusted them to do the right thing for US, not for themselves and their fat salaries and pensions and perks.
Undoubtedly they will now pursue as many green field sites as possible.
Yet again we will pay for their incompetence.
When the island is a concrete jungle maybe they will realise they got it wrong, but I doubt it..they are too thick to see their incompetence
When the place is unliveable they will all be long gone, along with their developer pals.
The most of them, the Island is just an easy target to make mega bucks, they care little for its Indigenous people, it’s wonderful history, or its future.
Once ruined, with a bank full of cash the world is their oyster.
Amazing how they manage to gove building permission to greenfield sites but miss out on this
The island adminstration is incompetant, that is a given, are the present councillors any more stupid than the last lot, no I do not think so, are they at war with each other, definetely, problem with a council that is not run by one party is that they all play games against other on party lines and this prevents anything meaningful getting done. Who suffers, not the councillors they have a very financially lucrative gravy train, thank you very much.
They can’t even get a planning strategy approved.
What the hell chance of actually implementing the strategy?!!!
Shambles. Should be taken out of the hands of the councillors responsible really, they’re not up to the job.
“Isle of Wight Council … lack of a planning strategy” now there’s a surprise (not!)
It’s about time the Council explained to the people of the I.O.W. why the Island plan has stalled, it has been out to consultation twice and the number of houses to be built was reduced. Maybe the Island Echo could ask the question. I am sure we would all like to know why they are so inept at their jobs.
To be fair to the council, who would want to live on a brown field site anyway.
Nothing but dust and mud and no grass and trees etc.
It’s not literally brown rather than green! I’m thinking that’s not a real PhD you got there.
Crazy thought but maybe it’s time to stop voting for people/parties who continuously fail. Try someone else when your next at a ballot box. Perhaps things might get done and change for the better?
What would you suggest, the greens?, maybe the liberals?, we would really be in the shite then. The trouble is, there simply isn’t anyone on the island worth voting in as they are all as bad as one another. Voting is just a waste of your own valuable time. Politicians are all liars who will never do what their voters voted them in to do. It is time the public woke up and stopped believing in these people.
Agreed, time for a revolution, or coup. Throw the buggers out and manage this island for the island.
Problem is some people on island don’t want ANY building and feel a middle class retirement Isle should be exempt from any government strategy to address the national housing shortage. So therefore the council procrastinate hoping problem will just evaporate. Instead it’s taken out of there hands like a child being asked what ice cream it wants and after half an hour at the ice cream stand the mother gives up and says give her a vanilla, we’re going. So the government will in future push through planning permission on non brownfield sites because no planning strategy to allow subsidy for brownfield, good job all,… Not
there wouldn’t be any housing shortage anywhere if there wasn’t an influx of spongers and dinghy people.
should simply scoop them up and dump them back in france, as we know that is where they came from to get here. Where they originally started their journey or what country they were born in, is irrelevant to us -they arrived from france – send them back
More council corruption will be along soon….
How have our incompetent councilors got the cheek to claim their salaries.We were much better off when run by unpaid members who had the community in mind not their pockets.
Yeah like the farm in ashey!
I give up with this council.
What are we actually paying them to do?
From what i can gather, its nothing that the rate payers actually want.
If you can’t get it together to accept free money maybe it’s time to move aside & set someone else have a go