CONCERNS were raised over the “lack” of affordable homes in Fordingbridge which is “unbalancing the town”.

The Local Plan and development in the town were discussed by the town council when councillors were joined by New Forest District Council’s chief planning officer Claire Upton-Brown on September 4.

Councillor Anna Wilson said: “There is a real lack of affordable homes and it is unbalancing the town completely.

“It’s opened up to a lot of speculation about Ashford Close up there that is not sustainable. There seems to be some sort of policy to build our way out of austerity some how and ignoring affordability.”

She said the properties at Augustus Park were “far too expensive”.

District councillor Edward Heron said: “We have a percentage in our Local Plan of affordable housing and we have percentage in our last plan of affordable housing. For all sorts of reasons the world moved on and it wasn’t deliverable but, and again, we can only do what we can do in our system. We have robustly in our wording defended our affordable housing percentage in this [Local] Plan - 50 per cent.”

He said there were different types of affordable housing and the problem, which had been seen in other places, with having affordable housing was it “ran the risk” of a development made up of the affordable housing with the remaining being five bed executive homes.

Cllr Heron said: “Part of the challenge and difficulty in doing all this is trying to steer development in a way that does not have that perverse result that we find we have some housing available on the very struggling bottom on social rents or affordable rents but absolutely nothing in the middle, perhaps someone trying to get a deposit for their first flat might be able to afford.”

He said the district council in the Local Plan were trying to “stop having those extremes”.

Miss Upton-Brown told the meeting the district council did not have a five year housing land supply and it was somewhere between a two or three year supply. She said there had been “quite significant changes” at national level in how housing need was calculated.

But the Local Plan, which was currently with an inspector “does demonstrate a five year land supply”.

Cllr Wilson asked “are we open to property developers challenging everything we do?”

Miss Upton-Brown said: “At the moment with the current position until we get the Local Plan more firmed up and were in the sort of last stage of that then it does give us difficulty because we can’t demonstrate the current five year housing land supply.”

Cllr Heron added: “When you are not meeting your land supply are you at risk of speculative development? Yes.”

He said as part of the process “every parcel” of land in the district was assessed and “sustainable” sites were allocated.