He said: “The formula, I’m sure, looked logical when it was done on paper or on the computer screen I’m sure it was and done for the right reasons, but it has in practice delivered perverse outcomes which will reduce the amount of housing development in urban areas, will harm growth and will be extremely difficult to deliver, certainly impossible I would say, to deliver sustainably in the countryside.
He said: “The new formula, the Government gives an overall 50% uplift in housing numbers, but in many areas, it goes up by a lot more than that and in my area, East Hampshire, our target goes up from 575 to 1,142, an increase of 98%, let’s just call it doubling.”.
Government accused of having ‘rogue algorithm’ for deciding housing targets The Government has a “rogue algorithm” for determining housing targets, a Conservative former minister has said.
Damian Hinds told MPs that the number of houses expected to be built in his constituency of East Hampshire had “doubled” as a result of calculations that place “too much emphasis towards building in the countryside”.
Citing data from the Commons library, Mr Hinds said that of 58 mainly or largely rural local authorities, two-thirds had a target increase of over 50% and the average increase was 71%.
