Councillors back calls for larger homes

Councillors have backed calls for new housing to meet minimum size standards.

Stoke-on-Trent City Council has yet to adopt the government's Nationally Described Space Standard (NDSS) into its local planning policies, making it harder for planning committee members to block developments where the homes are too small.

Councillors unanimously supported a motion calling on the cabinet to formally adopt the NDSS into planning policies "without delay".

Conservative group leader Dan Jellyman proposed the motion to Thursday's full council meeting, following a recent planning application from the council itself which included some homes which did not meet the NDSS.

The plans for 117 council flats, houses and bungalows on the former Brookhouse Green Primary School site in Bentilee were approved in April, but 10 houses and four bungalows will be below the space standard.

During the April meeting, Jellyman, who chaired the planning committee at the time, described the scheme as "incredibly poor" and an "embarrassment" to the council.

In proposing his motion to full council, he said he thought it was time to consider adopting the NDSS.

Jellyman said: "We had this flagship social housing scheme that isn't actually flagship at all – it's too small.

"We thought this was wrong, particularly from an administration that said they were going to invest well into social housing."

The NDSS, established in 2015, sets different minimum internal floor areas for different properties depending on the number of bedrooms and floors.

Jellyman acknowledged there could be issues with applying the NDSS to heritage building conversions but he said these could be taken into account by the cabinet.

Councillor Andy Platt, the current chair of the planning committee, agreed that the Bentilee scheme failed to meet space standards, although he noted that the plans had started under the previous administration.

He said: "I do think national space standards are important. The national standards have got smaller and smaller over the years, but a lot of the council properties in the city meet the original ones from the 1940s, which were huge."

Platt pointed out that some of the Bentilee properties had missed the standard by just one square metre. But Conservative councillor Dave Evans said that even one square metre could make a difference to young parents with a pram.

This news was gathered by the Local Democracy Reporting Service, which covers councils and other public service organisations.

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