Goldsworth Road, Woking

Delivering affordable housing was a key objective of the Core Strategy and had been highlighted by the Local Plan Inspector as an important issue that needed to be urgently addressed. SP&D unpicked the Strategic Housing Market Assessment to demonstrate how the need was growing as a result of newly forming households that could not afford to get on the housing ladder and existing households falling into housing need, a situation exacerbated by average house prices being substantially above typical earnings.

This was backed up with real life evidence from the Council’s lengthy housing waiting list which confirmed the significant need in the Borough. Our analysis of recent tall building permissions in Woking and the Council’s own Monitoring Report to demonstrate how little affordable housing they had delivered.