Call for more family homes as RBWM faces pressure to meet housing targets

Concerns have been raised about the lack of family homes being built around the Royal Borough as the council faces increasing pressure to meet housing targets.

The Royal Borough’s authority monitoring report, released at the end of last month, revealed a shortfall in meeting its housing target despite a record number of homes being built.

The authority monitoring report looks at a council’s progress in delivering new homes to residents.  The latest version of the report covers the period from April 1, 2023, to March 2024.

Martin McNamee, Maidenhead Civic Society’s planning chair, regularly analyses these reports – and is concerned about the focus on one and two-bedroom flats as housebuilding ramps up to meet housing targets.

A target to build 1,400 homes was set for 2023/24, but only 857 of those were completed.

However, this is still a record number since the start of Borough Local Plan (BLP) and up from 318 in the previous year.

Hopes are higher that targets will be met this year –1,733 homes were under construction as of March 2024, with the target for 2025 once again set at 1,400 homes.

Under the Borough Local Plan (BLP), which sets out the development framework for Maidenhead and Windsor, the Royal Borough has to build at least 14,240 new homes by 2033.

In his analysis, Mr McNamee noted a ‘worrying trend’ is continuing among completed projects, with an ‘under-provision’ of family homes and a lack of ‘significant progress’ in delivering affordable housing.

Although there is a rise in demand for affordable and social housing, only 50 new affordable homes were completed in 2024.

In December, the council adopted an affordable housing delivery supplementary planning document to help address this issue.

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, Mr McNamee said: “I think things will change when the golf course is developed because the golf course has got a significant number of affordable homes.

“But they are nearly all flats.”

Residents have widely objected to the golf course plans, but the outline application for 1,500 new homes was approved in February this year.

The monitoring report revealed an imbalance between the number of flats and larger homes, with only 14 per cent of new builds being family homes.

A high number of new builds –   82 per cent – were two-bed units or smaller.

Mr McNamee recognised that there is a ‘great pressure’ on the council to approve development plans to reach its housing target.

But he said the Royal Borough has to steer the developers more, to be able to deliver what residents need.

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, Mr McNamee said: “If you just let the developers make the decisions, they will come up with never ending schemes of flats, as many units as they can squeeze in as possible.

“The borough has to be more proactive in steering the developers and say ‘we need this, we are short of family homes, we are short of affordable housing’.

“Once the developer comes up with a scheme and puts it to the borough, there is a great pressure on the borough to pass it because of the pressure to achieve targets.

“Every year that goes by where we have more flats, more flats, more flats, we don’t have enough homes, so families won’t be able to stay in Maidenhead.”

A Royal Borough spokesperson said: "During this monitoring period over 850 new homes were completed in the borough, the highest number since 2008.

"We currently estimate almost 1,200 new homes are needed each year until 2028/29 to meet housing requirements.

"Our Borough Local Plan requires a higher proportion of both larger properties and more affordable housing, with more planning permission for these being granted in the last couple of years."