How many new houses does Rugby need?

Shelter, the housing charity, says England should be building 250,000 new homes every year and the Liberal Democrats policy for the UK is to increase house building to 300,000 new homes every year. (As the UK not only includes England but also Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland then Shelter's figures and the Liberal Democrats' figures are both in the same ball park).

As Rugby is roughly the size of one constituency and there are 650 constituencies in the UK this means that if the number of new homes the Liberal Democrats wanted to see built were spread fairly over the country then Rugby would need 460 new houses every year. Of course some areas of the country are growing faster than others and we would expect house building to be faster in those areas. Rugby Borough Council's core strategy suggests a need for 540 houses a year.

Rugby Borough Council has granted planning permission for 6,200 new houses to be built on the Radio Masts site. The Borough Council also continues to give planning permission for smaller schemes. For example as well as a number of smaller developments on 26 November 2014 the planning committee gave consent for 86 new houses to be built off Daventry Road in Dunchurch.

It is clear that sufficient land has been allocated planning permission to meet Rugby's housing needs for many years to come.