Yahoo News Just who will buy Herefordshire's 10,000 new homes?
SOME 10,000 new houses are threatened but who is going to live in them (Coming your way: 10,000 new homes, April 4)?
It’s a question I have been asking for two years. The young planners at a 2022 local plan meeting said vaguely “people who work from home”, an idea endorsed by councillors in the previous administration. I wrote to our chief executive hoping for a more cogent view, and his assistant promised an answer “in due course” – but “due course” has still not arrived!
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We need thousands of local jobs at realistic wages to justify the construction of large, bog-standard estates.
Sixty per cent of jobs cannot be done from home. People who work entirely from home can live almost anywhere, so why would they choose Herefordshire? Hybrid workers need easy access to their offices in the big cities, which Herefordshire doesn’t offer.
There is every risk that Herefordshire will support the construction of thousands of unnecessary and unaffordable homes on green-field sites which will stand empty for years, taking land out of either environmental benefit or food production, whether it is occupied or not, forever.
And, of course, the 2021 census noted 4,000 vacant houses in the county plus more than 500 second homes with no usual residents.
What are your thoughts?
You can send a letter to the editor to have your say by clicking here.
Letters should not exceed 250 words and local issues take precedence.
I doubt whether that figure has improved, so the county isn’t short of accommodation.
Urban sprawl, habitat loss and climate change are already blighting our English countryside and jeopardising our national food security. It is surely up to rural counties like Herefordshire to make the most of their natural assets, not destroy them.
JULIA C EVANS
Lyonshall
