A GROUP believes jobs will be lost and a town centre will decline if not enough houses are built.
Wellingborough Chamber of Commerce chairman Alan Piggot hit out at the town council as his organization feels 700 homes should be built every year, while the authority believes the figure stands at 300.
Mr Piggot said: “If you don’t have housing then nothing is going to grow.
There won’t be any schools, it won’t attract businesses and there won’t be any infrastructure to build on.
“The town centre will suffer as there will be no economy to spend there.
There won’t be any investment in public transport.
“There will be a domino effect and if they don’t build the houses then
Wellingborough will be playing catch up for the next ten, 15 or 20 years.
“We really do believe you have got to get this right. The houses have to be built, as if they are not where are our children going to live, where are they going to work and what future will there be for the town centre?
“We don’t want Wellingborough to become a dormitory town. We need 700 houses built a year. The council is underestimating the needs of the area.”
He added: “We do not want to be remembered as the town no one remembers or will come to.”
Wellingborough Council’s development committee chairman, Councillor Graham Lawman, said: “In the last five years an average of 284 houses per year have been built in Wellingborough, with 110 completed last year.
“The problem with meeting our previously government imposed annual target is the rate of building then required increases each year so it is now an unachievable figure – nearly double the highest we have ever done in any year (which was about 445).
“To accommodate natural change (births, deaths, divorces) we would need an extra 214 houses per year; include migration and this becomes 302; re-calibrate this using additional data (GP registrations, etc) and we would require 330.”
He added: “In order to prevent the town becoming one large building site at once and to allow for the proper inclusion of infrastructure, the council has, for some time now, suggested a target that it feels is achievable, namely 300 dwellings per year, which exceeds the current rate and should offer protection against speculation. We would still see 300 as substantial growth.”
