Abolish housing targets call from Rushcliffe Cabinet member
Last updated: 15/9/2025
The Secretary of State for Housing is being called upon to abolish mandatory housing targets and further protect green belt land from development by a Rushcliffe Borough Council (RBC) Cabinet member.
RBC’s Cabinet Portfolio Holder for Planning and Housing Cllr Roger Upton will propose a motion to be debated at a Full Council meeting on September 18 to write to Steve Reed MP to make the changes in his role as Minister for Housing, Communities and Local Government.
It follows over 13,000 new homes being allocated to have been built in Rushcliffe in the last decade.
Around 6,000 of these were to meet the needs of the Nottingham City local authority area, dwellings the City Council said it could not accommodate, which RBC had to accept under the central government’s ‘duty to co-operate’.
The government’s new housing targets in 2024 outlined nearly 4,000 further new homes need to be built in the Borough until 2041, rising from 609 annually to 831.
By comparison the Nottingham City local authority area, with a higher number of brown or newly defined grey belt sites, has been given a lower target reducing annually from 1,845 homes to 1,247.
Cllr Upton said: “In the last ten years, more new homes have been built in Rushcliffe than anywhere else in Nottinghamshire.
“This was achieved, in part, by the previous government abolishing housing targets and giving more power back to local councils to determine where new housing should be built. The new government has restored housing targets and is proposing planning reforms that will give more powers to house builders.
“We are concerned that Rushcliffe will be forced to take more housing than is planned for. With the current proposed Local Government Reform, we believe that the current housing target policy is no longer relevant.
“Our residents are understandably very protective of the green belt having already seen first hand the large volumes of housing built in their communities in the last 10 years, many having to be included at central government’s increased demands in the last Local Plan in 2014.
“We will propose at the meeting that the council writes to the Secretary of State and calls on the Government to abolish mandatory housing targets for local or strategic planning authorities.
“It will also ask to safeguard greenbelt and greenfield land against future development where an area has met its house building obligations in the last five years.
“We fully understand there is housing shortage nationally but we have already stepped up to the plate and here in Rushcliffe developers have already built some of the highest levels of new houses of anywhere in the East Midlands in recent years. We simply can’t build on more green belt land unjustly.
“The motion will ask to create a new approach of identifying brownfield land and city centre sites for housing development and produce targets for them regardless of the current local government boundaries.”
It builds on Leader of the Council Cllr Neil Clarke’s letter to Rushcliffe MP James Naish last year in a plea to protect the Borough from development of the green belt following the targets being announced.
Cllr Clarke added: “I look forward to speaking further to our local MP on this incredibly important matter so we can protect our green belt land and our communities. I encourage all residents to write to the MP and feedback your opinions on housing targets.
“I share the Local Government Association’s views too that there should be changes to national planning policy that should allow flexibility to us and fellow authorities to make judgement decisions on managing the demands of planning policy and housing targets."