Last week we welcomed some good news for Kenilworth School, as it was announced that Warwick District Council is to receive nearly £10 million from the Housing Infrastructure Fund for new school premises. The school has long needed new facilities, and I worked with the School and the Council as they put together their application for this funding, which will not only help the young people of Kenilworth, but by freeing up land for housing will also make great strides in meeting our housing targets.
Nationally we are not building enough homes to house the increasing population. We are still building fewer homes per year than we were 15 years ago, and our national population is increasing at around double the rate it was then.
In this area too we are all too aware of the problems caused by the lack of housing. Those who grow up here often cannot afford to buy their first home here as a shortage of supply pushed up prices. However, the answer is not just to build houses anywhere – areas can be blighted by ill thought out developments, particularly where there is a lack of infrastructure.
Potential solutions have to properly consider local needs. You cannot simply find a patch of available land and stack it full of houses. You have to build communities, sympathetic to the local area, with the infrastructure to support the life of those who are going to live in these new homes. Sometimes the creation of that infrastructure can hold up what is otherwise a prudent development. This is where the Housing Infrastructure fund comes in.
Set up by this Government last year, as part of our commitment to building the 300,000 homes a year that we need in the UK, the Housing Infrastructure Fund is money for local authorities with ambitions for housebuilding held back by a lack of infrastructure, like the Kenilworth School scheme that has just been approved. Along with the new buildings and facilities, the relocation will allow two new communities to form, in both the area surrounding the new location and on the site of the existing school.
Many students form Kenilworth School and beyond will benefit from new school facilities and Kenilworth can grow in a sensible way.