Housing still major issue as New Forest becomes latest National Park.

The change of status means the Forest will now be run under the management of the National Park Authority, which means that funding and protection of the park will be higher than that previously offered. However, the drawing of the boundaries has generated considerable interest from locals. Around 5% of the area previously covered by the Area of Outstanding national beauty orders is no longer covered by the National Park. Therefore this area is no longer receiving any protection. The money that the new status offers local councils has inevitably affected the negotiations for how the boundaries were drawn.

The new status will hopefully grant more protection to the flora and fauna of the New Forest. However, any advances will have to be balanced against any perceived loss to recreational and tourist interests that are the justification for the creation of the new national park. The government argues that by generating more tourism in the area this will generate more revenue for the conversation projects that the park will run. Whilst it is clear that tourism will benefit business and the local councils directly it is unclear how this will filter through into increased protection for wildlife in the New Forest. In particular, there are concerns about the larger animals in the forest and their longterm care.

The media, in the main, has focused on how the change of status will affect house prices in the area. This is an important issue and many local residents are already involved in protests against changing the local character of the area and increasing the number of houses in the local areas. Large property development firms such as Kingfisher have been active in trying to push for more housing in the area. They are pushing through plans to create what they are calling affordable housing. Those familiar will affordable housing will know that this means cheap, compact and high density; something which is not in line with the character of the local area. Whilst house prices in the South of England are already very high – this will not change by allowing major property developers to tear up trenches of our National Parks.

However, the focus of this has missed an opportunity to talk about how houses are used in the South of England. With the South of England already being on of the most expensive regions in the UK, moves like this one will only compound the problem. With the majority of local communities keen to see the style and spirit of their communities stay intact whilst at the same time maintaining growth in the region.

One protest has focused on the conversion of an old station in Ashurst into a block of low cost (affordable) houses which residents argue is out of character with the houses in the rest of the region. However, the council and Kingfisher are aware that there is a demand for more housing the local area. This is in part caused by the abundance of second homes in the region, and inappropriate use of existing housing stock. If a serious effort was undertaken to rectify this then there would be no need to build more houses in the area. Second homes are a waste of resources and space. They distort housing prices for locals, making it harder for them to buy homes. However, they are not the sole problem, other large homes that have only one or two people living in them also make inadequate use of space and resources in the area.

These types of houses where originally built for large families with live in servants and now have couples of individuals living in them. If housing is going to continue to be a problem in the area then radical solutions must be sought if people are to accommodated in the area more easily. There must be some way to increase or stabilize the numbers of people living in each house. This is a requirement if the area does not want to radically increase the number of houses being built in the area. There are many ways to achieve this including relaxing regulations on houses of multiple occupancy, housing co-ops and co-housing. Some councils have made positive steps to bring empty houses back into use. Other steps include the building of any new houses within existing communities but experience in other regions has shown that the big property developers are capable of getting past the strict planning regulations and therefore it is difficult to see what the effect of the change of status will be on new buildings.

The tourism industry is a notoriously low payer. Any new people moving into the region to take advantage of these new jobs will have to struggle to find accommodation in the area. The precariousness of these positions also usually makes it difficult to get a mortgage and maintain a permanent base in the area. Therefore, such workers usually have to move around a lot from region to region. This will not help in the sustainability of the community, unless steps are taken now to try to avoid this sort of scenario.

Overall the infrastructure of the region is not geared towards receiving large number of rural tourists by public transport. Therefore, more roads will presumably be built to deal with the increase in traffic that the new status will result in. However, if positive steps were taken now to improve the rail network across the New Forest in the little towns and villages that make up the New Forest community then there would be less of a problem. New bus routes have been proposed but it is hard to see what affect these will have on the scale required.

Announcing the change of status John Prescott called the New Forest a “gift to the nation”, as part of the unveiling of the plans for the creation of a number of new national parks in 1999. However, the Forest has been there for some time and it is difficult to see what the gift is. The extra protection whilst welcome will be dependent on the vigilance of grassroots activists and conservationist groups making sure that the government lives up to its claims.

On the other hand the benefits to local business will be immediate and are likely to be permanent. The main beneficiaries of the change of status will be business interests in the area and not the environment. If there is any benefit to the environment it will be secondary and will not form the main thrust of the development of the area.