Climate and housing dominate Winchester plans
The council’s goal is to make the city carbon neutral by 2030
Winchester City Council’s local plan is under way with climate change and housing delivery in focus as the main priorities for the district.
A local plan sets out how development including housing, business construction and infrastructure can benefit the area that a planning authority is responsible for.
The council has started the engagement stage of its local plan examination, and a draft is being prepared for public consultation where local residents will have their say on the future vision of the district.
The plan outlines tackling the climate crisis as the main objective in line with the council’s goal to make the district carbon neutral by 2030.
The council is aiming to build homes with high energy standards by incorporating schemes and ideas such as those from the London Energy Transformation Initiative – a group of built environment professionals working on making the capital zero-carbon.
With some of the highest housing prices in the country, the new plan replaces the expectation for affordable housing with a minimum requirement that developers have to achieve.
Speaking to a public scrutiny committee on Thursday, September 29, Councillor Malcolm Wallace said: ‘The local plan is the most important undertaking of the council.
‘The climate emergency needs to be at the heart of this plan. If we continue following a business-as-usual approach studies have shown that by 2050 England would use up 104 per cent of the country’s entire carbon budget on just building houses.
‘It’s vitally important that how we build houses changes, both to minimise the carbon impact of the building itself plus the ongoing impact from heating our homes.
‘The UK has the least energy efficient housing stock in Europe; 19 per cent of carbon emissions come from heating buildings and they’re still building homes that would require retrofitting.
‘The impact of poorly insulated homes is having a huge impact on this cost of living crisis. It’s vitally important that lessons are learned and that going forward we only build homes that are suitable for the future.’
The draft local plan will go to a cabinet meeting in November for approval before the official public consultation is launched.