Stockton housing report ‘literally bonkers’ councillor says

Cllr Tony Riordan, the leader of Stockton’s Conservative group who sits on Stockton Council’s planning committee, expressed worries about the report giving figures which could affect future planning applications.

He said: “I have a great number of concerns about the way the report has been assembled with parts where it doesn’t make sense at all.

“If this committee is asked to reply on that report, I think it would be flawed,” he told the planning committee meeting on Wednesday (November 5).

As a result of his concerns, councillors voted to put off consideration of a outline planning application for up to 11 self-build plots near Manor Close, Wolviston to a later date.

The council’s report gave an update on the level of housing supply in the borough of Stockton between 2025 and 2030.

It says the five-year housing supply requirement is 4,153 homes, but the council could only show four years’ worth of deliverable housing sites, saying: “The council cannot demonstrate a five-year housing supply.”

This means applications for future residential development should be granted permission unless national policy protecting areas or assets give a good reason to refuse them, or harmful impacts would “significantly and demonstrably outweigh the benefits”.

According to the council’s report, government changes to calculations in December last year meant Stockton’s “housing need” figure jumped from 440 to 767 dwellings per year.

Cllr Riordan said in the committee meeting: “The report describes all the development sites within the borough and whether those will be deliverable in the five-year period or not.

“There’s a great number of houses there, in fact 2,353, which equates to 2.8 years of deliverable housing. It’s decided those areas are not going to be delivered within a five-year period.

“There’s no evidence of why that assessment has been made or why that determination comes forward.

Billingham town centre, the houses won’t be delivered within a five-year period, but houses will be demolished within a five-year period. There’s no evidence as to why major sites such as 400 houses on Harrogate Lane will not be delivered in a five-year period.

“These have all come before this planning committee. There’s an anticipation when we grant planning permission they’re going to be delivered within that three-year or five-year period.

“Things are not squaring up and we need confidence in the documents if we are to rely on officers’ recommendations or take them into consideration when deliberating applications.”

Planning services manager Simon Grundy said officers gave a “critique” of various sites with information and estimates from housebuilders, seeing if they were realistic: “Whilst you might have a site for 500 houses, it doesn’t necessarily mean 500 houses will get built in a five-year timeframe. They only build out a proportion of houses per year.

“Officers will critique those various build-out rates which get inputted into the various spreadsheets. That effectively gives you a supply over a five-year period.

“That’s what we consider to be a reasonable build-out rate. We try to be slightly pessimistic with it, in all honesty, but that’s a more robust position to defend in our opinion. That’s why we’ve got the numbers we’ve got.

“It’s not that we’re just plucking numbers out of thin air. We’re critiquing it, in some cases where we think their build-out rates are ambitious we might dial those numbers down or push it back slightly.”

He said the Harrogate Lane plan was reserved for future development but there was no timeframe for when it might come forward.

Cllr Riordan added: “There’s been an explosion in this last 12 months of applications from major developers to build houses. And the main reason they’re putting these applications forward is because they say Stockton Council hasn’t got the housing supply.

“It’s still not credible that in three years of housing supply over 2,000 houses can’t be built. It just doesn’t bear any resemblance of sense to what we are asked to decide. It is literally bonkers.

“I’ve got no confidence in the content of this report to rely on future applications that come before me or this committee. These issues need to be addressed, members need to be reassured with evidence of why these applications, all of them, cannot be built out.”

Committee chair Cllr Mick Stoker said: “A lot really of that is down to the actual builders themselves. All we can do is take what they say to us in confidence.”

Cllr Eileen Johnson said: “These big building firms bank land. They put in these applications and they will build out as and when market forces allow them to, or where they’re going to get the best return on their investment. They don’t necessarily apply to build 300 houses and actually build 300 houses.”