This is the first of four blogs by Jonathan Griffin of the Mylor NDP Housing Group which will appear over the next week.  

395 people responded to the housing needs survey, a strong return of 28%.

Of those, an encouraging 67% are supportive of further development with 24% answering ‘maybe’ and 9% saying that there should be no further development at all.

There are naturally some worries about the scale of potential development with 33% thinking that 20 houses would be about right; 20% thinking a maximum of 30 is acceptable and 23% not minding how many at all. So growth of around 30-50 houses over ten years seems realistic.

Who needs those houses? Two themes emerged from the survey: the young and the old.

As one respondent to the open-ended questions puts it: ‘We are desperate to keep the young generation in the area’. Many others use the same sort of words: ‘young people’, ‘local connections’, ‘family links’ and, importantly, ‘affordable’. The priority is clear.

The other theme is about older people. Some 40% believe that their houses will need adaptation (25%), or that they will have to down-size (15%) in the next ten years. That is a real challenge as we are short of ‘down-sizing’ homes in the Parish and currently have no care homes or sheltered accommodation.

What is striking is that there is no call for additional open-market houses unless they are part of an enabling development to cross-fund affordable housing.

The underlying theme is for houses for local people: affordable housing for the young and ways of  supporting older residents who want to stay in the parish.

As the next blog (coming soon) will make clear, the demand for affordable housing is higher than many of us realised. If we are going to meet that demand we will need to think very carefully about the scale and location of development