“The number which is definitely going to be going up in the near future is that of incomers of pension age – as demonstrated by the latest Housing Needs Assessment for Sidmouth.”
Have Your Say Today on the East Devon Local Plan!
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What housing does the Sid Valley need? And how is that need determined?
HOUSING NEED IN SIDMOUTH – AND AN ‘UNBALANCED COMMUNITY’
A Housing Needs Assessment for Sidmouth was produced for the town council back in 2017 – and it fed into the policies of the Sid Valley Neighbourhood Plan. As reported a couple of months ago, The Sid Valley needs more [of the right sort of] housing:
“One key part of the plan is making sure affordable homes in the valley go to local people, particularly the area’s young people. Affordable homes will only be allocated to people who have a connection to the Sid Valley.” [Sid Valley Neighbourhood Plan: 2019]
And now a newly-commissioned Housing Needs Assessment for Sidmouth has just been presented to the town council:
“The survey concluded that Sidmouth was not a balanced community and provided pertinent data which should be relevant for the new Local Plan, any planning applications within Sidmouth.” [Housing Needs Survey undertaken by CNB Housing Insight: 2025]
The survey was attached to the agenda of the town council’s planning committee meeting in January – and has been passed on with permission.
Here are a few excerpts:
Overall conclusions: There is significant need for additional affordable housing, both for general needs and special need for older people in Sidmouth on an annual basis according to our analysis of numbers on the East Devon housing register and analysis of projections for older people.
Overall, Sidmouth will continue to attract incomers and concern is highlighted that local people may not be able to find suitable accommodation that they can afford in Sidmouth. This will worsen an already unbalanced community and affect social cohesion and the long term sustainability of the parish to sustain the support and services needed to sustain the aging population. [Final Housing Needs Assessment for Sidmouth Town Council: October 2024]
An additional 65 to 67 units of general needs affordable housing are needed per-annum if the flow of those in affordable need arising from local people is to be met. If the needs of incomers are taken into account, unmet affordable need rises considerably to between 155 and 157 dwellings per-annum.
Sidmouth is not a balanced community. Factors driving the above growth are older people being attracted to Sidmouth which leads to an imbalance of age groups in the parish skewed toward older people, high house prices and rents compared to East Devon, and an aging population. East Devon projects a district wide growth of 24,274 people aged over 65 by 2043. [Housing Needs Assessment for Sidmouth Town Council SYNOPSIS January 2025]
In other words, as stated already in the earlier Survey and the Neighbourhood Plan, in terms of a ‘balanced community’, back in 2019, Sidmouth was singled out as one of the towns facing the biggest increase in the elderly.
And this is the crux of the matter: the difference between ‘demand’ and ‘need’.
In his granting last month of the Knowle planning appeal for the provision of ‘housing with care’ and a care home, the housing inspector made the point that “There is no doubt that there is a clear and pressing need for this type of development in East Devon”. A very controversial decision.
HOUSING NEED IN EAST DEVON
Back in 2017, the CPRE looked at the phenomenon of ‘Needless Demand’, or: What’s the difference between ‘need for housing’ and ‘demand for housing’?
Or as even further back in 2013, EDDC Cllr Julian Brazil noted that “it would be impossible to build to meet demand because there is a never-ending queue of people who want to move to Devon.”
Moving forward to August last year and looking to new local housing targets in Devon under the previous government, two Devon MPs voiced their concerns – with Mid Devon’s MP feeling we need to build houses – but we can’t just build anywhere and Sidmouth’s MP questioning housing expansion.
The new government has provided new housing targets for English councils – and it is within this context that we are being asked to Have Your Say Today on the East Devon Local Plan:
East Devon Local Plan 2020-2042 – review final draft – YouTube
MIGRANTS AND INCOMERS
Today’s Daily Express, quoting research from the former controversial academic Matthew Goodwin, says that UK maps show towns where up to 80% of council houses go to migrants. These figures are difficult to verify [the New European claims the author “cherry-picks evidence” and had “fallen into the abyss”] although a more nuanced piece last month suggests that “appeals to exclusionary complexity reduce public trust in expertise and mainstream politics”.
But perhaps much of this is irrelevant to East Devon and Sidmouth anyway.
Whilst the Herald last weekend ran the story that Channel crossings continue with 4,000 migrants arriving in UK so far this year, the only real impact migrants have made on this part of the UK is that this time last year, refugees & asylum seekers in East Devon faced homelessness amid funding cuts, almost all of this number being made up of migrants from Ukraine.
Whereas the likes of London is home to one-third of the total foreign-born population in the country, the likes of East Devon has a non-white population of two and a bit percent – a number which is very unlikely to be going up in the near future.
Meanwhile, the number which is definitely going to be going up in the near future is that of incomers of pension age – as the excerpts from the latest Housing Needs Assessment Sidmouth above demonstrate.
Or, as a piece from 2013 pointed out on Migration, Sidmouth and East Devon:
The fact is that Sidmouth is largely made up of ‘migrants’ from elsewhere in the UK, for example:
Sidmouth and District Lancastrian Association 50th anniversary – Places – Lancashire Life
Sidmouth Yorkshire society seeks members – News – Sidmouth Herald
With Britain’s oldest civic society having been founded by concerned ‘outsiders’:
Sid Vale Association – About the Sid Vale Association
… the town has long been a retirement haven for the well-heeled.
BBC – h2g2 – Sidmouth and The Sid Valley, Devon, England. – A6092480
In fact, it seems that East Devon has always attracted people from outside the area:
The migration of population into East Devon from other parts of the UK show that in 2011 there were 1130 more people moving into the area than out.
www.eastdevon.gov.uk/knowing_east_devon_version_1.0-2.pdf
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