Agenda item

The report of the scrutiny task group – Joint Core Strategy and Liaison Working Group on Household formation rates will be presented by Councillor Tim Harman as the chair of the group. The O&S committee are asked to satisfy themselves that the terms of reference have been met and endorse the recommendations before they are forwarded to the JCS joint member steering group for consideration at their meeting on 31 January 2013.

(30 mins) 

The chair reminded the committee that their remit was to receive the report of the scrutiny task group and ensure that the task group had completed the task set by Council and met their terms of reference.  It was not within the remit of the committee to get into the detail of the contentious points but he would allow time for members to ask questions. The consultant from the Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research (CCHPR) was on the conference phone so would be able to listen to the debate and respond to any technical questions.

 The chair invited Councillor Tim Harman, as the chair of the scrutiny task group - Joint Core Strategy and Liaison Working Group on household formation rates, to introduce their final report and recommendations.

In his introduction, Councillor Harman thanked the members, the two co-opted members from Gloucester City and Tewkesbury Borough Council and officers for their contribution to this review. He referred to the background to this review set out in section 2 of the task report and he stressed the importance of a local authority ensuring that housing requirement figures set out in their local plan are soundly rooted in a robust evidence base.  The project brief set for the working group had challenging timescales but they had maximised the time available. They had considered a final report from the Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research (CCHPR) on 14 January 2013 which had examined a whole range of issues including the important factors of changes with regard to young people and an ageing population and the economic climate. The working group concluded that there were no material errors in the way in which the DCLG household representative rates had been applied and they didn’t find any significant reason for deviating from them hence their recommendations set out in 9.1. He considered the working group had produced a sound report and the recommendations would support the council in ensuring it had the sound evidence base that was needed. He informed members that Councillor Bickerton, as a member of the working group, had not supported their report and presented some alternative evidence on household size predictions which he wished to present to the committee.

Councillor Bickerton said he was happy with the work undertaken and it had provided lots of valid data but he did not consider that the work was complete. He referred to the graph on JCS District Average Household Size Compared to National Trend he had produced that had been circulated at the start of the meeting. At the task group meeting on 14 January he had presented an earlier version of this graph which had resulted in an action to verify some of the data used by CCHPR. Since then he had been in discussion with the Office of National Statistics and Neil McDonald from CCHPR had assisted him in correcting some of the earlier district figures he had used to produce the graph presented at the task group meeting. This had resulted in the revised figures in the graph he had circulated to the committee tonight. This supported his view that there was still more work to be done and he disagreed with the conclusions of the consultant regarding the impact of the ageing effect on household size. He wished this graph to go forward as a minority report to the task group report as permitted under the Council's constitution.

The chair referred to the additional paper which had been circulated at the start of the meeting from Neil McDonald which provided some notes on Councillor Bickerton's graph on household size presented at the task group meeting and highlighted some errors in the data used. With regard to the revised graph circulated at this meeting, Neil McDonald advised that Councillor Bickerton appeared to have used rounded figures which indicated that average household size in England and Wales had been flat between 1991 and 2011. If the unrounded figures were used, the average household size was closer to 2.45 in 1991 and 2.37 in 2011 which demonstrated a fall in household size of around 3.5%.

Councillor Teakle, as a member of the working group, thanked CCHPR for a clear and accessible report and she encouraged the public to read it. She was pleased to see the acknowledgement in 14.1 b of the conclusions that if there was no change in household size between 2011 and 2031 around a third fewer extra households will be formed in the JCS area. She asked if the consultant could explain the statement in 14.1 c. and why it was unlikely that household size would remain static.

In response, Neil McDonald advised that there were three key drivers of household size. These were the household formation rate – the tendency of groups to form households (currently younger people were tending to stay longer with their parents); the ageing effect (i.e. the tendency for the average household size to fall if the proportion of older people in the population grows, as older people tended to live in small households); and marital status (a relatively small factor). Over the next 20 years, there was likely to be  a faster increase in the older population in the JCS area than in the last 10 years.  This would cause the ‘ageing effect’ to be much stronger.  As a consequence it seemed highly improbable that, even if there was no economic recovery, there would a sufficiently strong continuation in the trend for single people not to form households to counter the ageing effect.  For that to happen that trend would need to go further than observed so far (rather than moving back towards the previous trend).  A continue fall in household size therefore seemed highly likely.

Councillor Teakle responded that even if there was an economic recovery, she considered there were a number of other factors which may keep young people at home and they would not suddenly move into the housing market. She also questioned why household size did not appear to have been affected by the ageing population in the last 10 years.  She wished to highlight the recommendation in 9.1.2 of the task group report which recognised the need for a sensitivity analysis. The report also referred to phasing development. Whilst accepting the officer advice that the council needs to have a five-year plan to satisfy the planning inspectorate and encourage developers to provide the necessary investment for initial infrastructure, she stressed the importance of phasing development to match economic recovery.

Councillor Bickerton suggested that the 2011 Census data appeared to demonstrate that the over 65 population had decreased in the last 10 years and therefore this needed to be re-examined.

The chair advised the committee that they should not prolong the work of the task group but instead should bring any matters to the attention of the JCS project which they felt needed further consideration going forward.  He referred members to the terms of reference set for the working group and asked the committee to consider whether they had been met. The chair of the working group concluded that they had effectively discharged their obligations in the time given and any other matters could be taken forward by the working group.

Resolved that

1. The minority report submitted by Councillor Bickerton be noted
2. The recommendations of the task group be endorsed and their recommendations should be forwarded to the JCS joint member steering group together with the minority report.