Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Housing and Local Government – in the Senedd at 2:25 pm on 29 January 2020.
Well, thank you for that. As Llyr Gruffydd knows, it's much more complicated than that. He's absolutely right in saying that Wrexham had its original LDP rejected as a result of the way that it had done its housing land allocations policy. While the council does have an extant unitary development plan in place, it has expired for the purposes of calculating the five-year housing land supply. As he knows, the authority has been, and will continue to be, vulnerable to speculative development until the LDP is actually adopted. The LDP is currently at the examination stage.
The inspectors have raised concerns regarding the level of housing proposed in the plan, specifically questioning whether it is aspirational enough. The level of housing proposed by the council aligns with the 2014-based 10-year migration variant published by the Welsh Government, which is a requirement of 7,750 homes. Officials have made public representations supporting the level of housing in Wrexham's LDP, and do not consider that it should be increased further.
The level of housing is broadly in line with the past 10-year delivery rates. The inspectors have asked the council to provide additional clarification on this matter, and the deadline for that is 31 January. There will be an additional hearing session on 11 March to consider housing matters further. So, you can see that our officials agree, I think, broadly with what you're saying, which is that, given the current projections and what Wrexham is projecting in the LDP, our officials have made representations saying that we think that Wrexham is about right.
It's always a difficult balance for councils because the projections are just that: projections. They are not plan-based policies. They are based on projected population trends, but they don't take into account any economic development or tourism or other aspirations that the council may have, and they are not intended in any way to be a target. They are simply one part of a set of evidence that the authority must take into account when it sets its local housing target.
For example, in a local authority area, if the number of households being created is outstripping the level of population increase because there are growing numbers of people who want to live on their own, for example, then the housing target might be higher than the population increase and the forecast. So, it's a much more complex matter than that. But I think the simple answer to your question is that our officials agree that the plan is about where it should be and have made representations to that effect into the system.