A THOUSAND fewer council houses could be built in Oxford in future, if changes to laws around planning go ahead as the Government wishes.

Oxford's city council is warning that 919 fewer homes could be built under a plan by the Government to streamline the current system for planning where homes can be built.

The changes are laid out in an official document called Changes to the current planning system, and the city council has called them 'damaging' and asked the Government to invest in a boom in council housebuilding.

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The planned revisions to the planning system would change how contractual agreements between councils and house builders work.

Currently, if a housing developer is building 10 homes or more in Oxford, then the city council can demand that 40 per cent of the homes are rented out at a social rent rate, effectively as a council house.

A further 10 per cent must be 'intermediate housing', sold at a price lower than the market rate.

But under the Government's revisions to the planning system, the city council might only be able to ask developers to build council houses on larger sites.

There are two options for the new lower limit: sites with 40 or more homes, and sites with 50 or more homes.

Because space within Oxford to build new homes is often difficult to find, many sites in the city's new Local Plan, a guide to where houses can be built in the city, are small -- with many likely to hold less than 40 or 50 homes.

The council currently predicts it is on course to build 2,700 new council houses by 2306, which is the end year of the Local Plan.

But under the 'worst case' scenario of the 50 home lower limit, it would build 1,781: nearly 1,000 fewer than it currently hopes.

The council also predicts that housing developers might be less likely to build large estates of more than 50 homes as a result of the Government's changes, in an attempt to dodge the rule on building affordable homes.

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The council's cabinet member for planning and housing delivery, Alex Hollingsworth, said: “At a time when unemployment is rising and more and more people are struggling to afford rents, we need more council housing, not less.

“These deeply damaging proposals need to be dropped immediately, and the Government needs instead to invest in the kind of mass council house building programme that is long overdue."

More than 2,000 families are currently waiting for a council house in Oxford.

The Government's review of current planning law is separate from its future plan to overhaul the entire planning system and replace it with a new one.