NATIONAL housing policy is failing to meet the need of villages to maintain thriving communities without being suffocated by overdevelopment.

Sustainable village communities have populations balanced across both age and income living in close proximity.

This is a distinguishing feature of villages when compared to other settlement types.

Another essential village feature is its limited scale. If it grows too large it becomes a sprawling commuter suburb bolted onto the old village core. Few see this as a desirable.

Village communities near large urban areas struggle to maintain a good population balance. Young adults leave to gain access to higher education, better employment prospects, or better access to public transport. Their parents typically stay behind in the family home. A perfectly reasonable decision, but the community impact is that availability of properties for young families is constrained.

Adding to the mix is the popularity of traditional village cottages with affluent commuters pushing rents and purchase prices beyond the reach of people in low paid jobs.

Affordable housing strategies attempt to address this through supply of below market value housing. In villages, this housing is targeted at groups under-represented in the population mix, and it is prioritised through local connections.

However, it is heavily influenced by national policies with a presumption in favour of development, strong bias towards market solutions, and severe spending constraints in the public sector. Furthermore, the impact of right to buy means the pool of low cost housing is constantly being eroded.

The recent application for 56 houses in Hutton Rudby is typical of market-led development pushed at villages.

The local target is for 50 per cent affordable homes, but the developer is only offering 41 per cent. At first glance this shortfall doesn’t sound too bad. However, the usual tactic is to get planning permission and then push back on the affordable homes, claiming without more large expensive homes the project is uneconomic.

So adding these 56 homes to the village would, in all probability, barely make a dent in the demand for affordable housing, leaving a succession of developers to offer the same failed solution over and over again.

The mixed development model is a recipe for developer profits and village overdevelopment.

It may work in other regions or larger communities but it doesn’t solve the housing problems of North Yorkshire villages.

Allan Mortimer, Save Hutton Rudby