According to the recently published ‘Outcome of the proposed revised method’ on the Ministry of Housing website, South Hams District Council has somehow now to build no fewer than 875 new dwellings each year.

This represents a 70% increase over the existing Joint Local Plan annual target of 515 additional dwellings, of which 290 were to be built in the Plymouth Policy Area – essentially an area bordered by Woolwell, Roborough, Sherford and Langage, and 225 in the Thriving Towns and Villages Policy Area – effectively the rest of the South Hams.

Over the 20-year period between 2014 and 2034 the JLP required us to build a total of 10,300 new dwellings  – a target that has effectively already been met. Table 9 of the 2023 Housing Position Statement provides an identifiable supply of 11,342 dwellings in the South Hams, either by now constructed or for which planning consent exists.

Yet despite our Local Planning Authority having delivered all that was previously asked of it by central government – and more, suddenly that is no longer good enough. And still we have a housing crisis.

Making matters worse those houses we have built, unaffordable to all but a very few locals, have largely been bought by people moving down from cities such as London, many coming here in order to retire.

Indeed, were it not for the incomers, the population of the South Hams would be in decline.

As a result we are in danger of becoming the Grim Reaper’s waiting room, with an increasingly ageing population making ever greater demands on our hospitals and GP surgeries. Derriford has already declared five critical incidents this year, Torbay one. GP appointments are often hard to get. NHS dentists impossible to find.

Nor is it only our health services that are being put under unsustainable pressure. The capacity of almost every one of our sewage treatment plants is already insufficient to cope with the demands of our existing population, regularly spewing pollution in to our waterways. Add to that there is also the question of whether our reservoirs have enough capacity to ensure we continue to have sufficient fresh water for an ever-increasing population to drink.

More housing will only add to the problem.

Similarly our road system, much of which dates from the Eighteenth Century and earlier, remains incapable of coping with 21st Century traffic volumes, a challenge exacerbated by ever-larger cars being unable to pass each other on our narrow lanes.

However without removing the ancient hedgerows and Devon banks that line many of our roads to allow the carriageways to be widened, the growing traffic volumes will choke this area to a standstill more often. But doing so would dramatically change the character and appearance of our countryside, and destroy much of what makes the South Hams so special.

Crucially the only infrastructure improvements the new government are proposing ‘are intended to provide particular support for the following key industries’, namely Laboratories, Gigafactories, Digital Infrastructure and Freight and Logistics – none of which are likely to offer any improvement to either our environment or our quality of life.

Instead, because we are also required to add a 5% buffer to the number, we are somehow going to have to find the land to accommodate an extra 404 dwellings each year. The question is where?

Much of the South Hams comprises the protected landscape of the South Devon National Landscape. And the Ministry of Housing continues to insist ‘land that is safeguarded by existing environmental designations, for example National Parks, National Landscapes and Sites of Special Scientific Interest, will maintain its current protections.’

Of the remainder a substantial proportion consists of an undulating agricultural landscape of rolling hills, narrow lanes and high hedgerows, across often difficult terrain, where modern public transport cannot venture, and offering few if any suitable and sustainable locations capable of accommodating houses in any number.

Essentially that only leaves the A38 corridor and the area around Woolwell and Roborough, provided of course we are not required to assist Torbay in solving its housing problems. Unfortunately we may well have to.

To quote Paragraph 62 of the revised National planning Policy Framework: ‘In addition to the local housing need figure, any needs that cannot be met within neighbouring areas should also be taken into account in establishing the amount of housing to be planned for.’

Suffice to say some of this might be acceptable if only we were building the genuinely affordable housing we need. But there is little if anything in what the government is proposing to ensure this is the case. Their definition of ‘affordable’ remains a discount of 20% off the open-market price.

That might make sense in Hartlepool, where according to Rightmove there are three-bedroom terraced houses on the open market for as little as £45,000. Here in the South Hams you will need to pay at least £200,000 – not something anyone working as a carer or in hospitality on the minimum wage and earning less than £25,000 per year can afford.

The Government’s ‘one size fits all’ approach is clearly problematic. And the characterless housing estates they are insisting must be plastered across our countryside will inevitably continue to impose architecture from anywhere, dwellings completely divorced from the local vernacular, further eroding and erasing what has previously been fundamental in helping to make the South Hams so special.

Finally, according to the Ministry of Housing, because ‘the revised LHN figure is more than 200 dwellings per annum higher than the annual housing requirement set out in the adopted version of the plan, upon introduction of the new plan-making system, the local planning authority will be required to begin preparation of a plan under the new system as soon as possible, or in line with any subsequent arrangements set out to manage the roll-out of the new system.’

That will have to be completed within 18 months of the new system coming in to force. But until it is done and a new JLP is in place, and because the South Hams cannot demonstrate a 5-year housing land supply on which to build 875 new homes each year, the presumption in favour of sustainable development is going to apply.

In other words, at least outside what used to be the AONB and is now the National Landscape, developers will be enabled to build almost anywhere there is suitable access, and neither we nor our Council will be able to do anything to stop them.

So unless Angela Rayner can be made to change her mind, our natural and built environment is now suddenly under very serious threat!