FOR the past two and a half years, since being elected as a Plaid Cymru councillor, I have campaigned against the Vale of Glamorgan Council’s Local Development Plan – the proposals to build 10,000 houses when Welsh Government’s own housing need projections are for 5,600.

Unfortunately, new government regulations mean that the number of houses we need to build will be based on those remaining in our LDP.

This means that, if the Vale Council continues to insist that we need to build 10,000 houses, then we will have to build 800 houses per year from now until 2026 to meet that target. That is more in one year than have been built in the past five years.

Building these unnecessary extra houses will mean more cars on our streets, causing added congestion on already busy roads.

However, if we can scrap the cruel and unfair bedroom tax, as Plaid Cymru wants to do, then we would need even fewer new houses – as those affected by the tax would no longer be forced out of their homes.

The Vale of Glamorgan Council will soon submit their final LDP. It would make much more sense if their housing target was 5,600, rather than 10,000 – so that developers can get on with building the 400 houses per year that we require to meet local need, rather than fictitious targets that mean over-development and unnecessary building on Greenfield sites across the Vale.

Cllr Ian Johnson

Plaid Cymru – the Party of Wales candidate for the Vale of Glamorgan

Barry