As Ford Eco-Town is rejected: where do we go from here?

Their hope of moving into one of the 5,000 environmentally-friendly homes was dashed when Ford was left out of the first wave of four Eco-Towns revealed last Thursday.

Living in a cramped, two-bedroom housing association maisonette, Alison and Mark Trist and their three children symbolise the housing crisis facing Arun district, which, Eco-Town or not, refuses to go away.

Over the past two years they have, unsuccessful, applied for more than 40 three-bedroom council houses which have become available. Alison and Mark sleep in a sofa-bed in their living room, their 18-month-old twin daughter Chloe and son Elliot share one bedroom and their 13-year-old daughter Megan has the second bedroom at the property in Bourne Court, Wick.

"Unsuitable accommodation"

Even their housing association admits the accommodation is "unsuitable", but given that the typical length of wait on Arun's housing list is four years for the category of families like the Trists, it could be another two years before they have just one extra bedroom. The family says it desperately needs four bedrooms, but is not even allowed to bid for larger homes.

"The council is working on the theory that our daughter will leave home at 16, but she is a bright girl, and very capable of going to university, so she will be living with us until she is in her early 20s and not moving out at all.

"Our baby twins are mixed sex, so they should have a bedroom each, but we are all stuck in a two-bedroom maisonette.

"It's hopeless, a depressing, stressful situation. You can't plan your future. You live from day to day.

"We were in favour of an Eco-Town being built. It would have helped families like ours. People forget about families like us, but we are hard working. My husband is a manager at the post office in Rustington and I work there part-time, too, when I can.

Shortage of family housing

"We know other families round here with two or three children, living in homes with just two bedrooms. There's obviously a big shortage of family housing.

"Even on the new Eden Park estate many of the homes are two-bedrooms, but that's no use at all."

Arun needs 4,000 more affordable homes

Arun's own research suggests there is a shortage of about 4,000 homes in the district. Now that the Eco-Town seems finished, Arun's long-term housing plans are likely to centre around "urban extensions" at Littlehampton and Bognor, with between 500 and 1,500 homes built at Angmering, too. Councillors will be asked to make their final decision on housing locations by the end of this year.

A spokesman for Arun said there were complex reasons for the housing shortage, which were not unique to the district. "People are living longer and living in smaller households and, consequently, more houses are needed. Limited supplies can cause house prices to rise, which reduces affordability for many '” increasing the need for social housing."

The spokesman added that Arun was working with a wide range of partners, including housing charity Shelter, to tackle the problem and shape the provision of housing across the district in the future.

However, the current economic climate was having a "significant effect" on the viability of housing schemes in the short term.

One stark statistic underlines the shortfall: over the past 10 years an average 79 affordable homes annually were built in Arun; in the next decade, at least 334 will be needed each year.

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