Demographics

The H1 housing paper produced by Eastleigh Borough Council, (http://www.eastleigh.gov.uk/pdf/H1%20Housing.pdf) is at the core of their rationale for the continuing drive to build housing. A brief glance at the data presented and it seems to support their position but a deeper analysis shows the desperate attempt to back up a development policy derived from an altogether different source. PUSH . The Partnership for Urban South Hampshire, is a quango formed from council employees from Eastleigh , Test Valley, Fareham , etc a lot of planning policy has been devolved to this organization in a manner that resembles the passing up of power from the UK to the EU – In the New Labour scheme Regional assemblies like SEERA and their related development agencies (SEEDA) were/are responsible for the 'development' of the South East of England , rather than decisions made in the house of commons by elected MP's , on a national basis, these regional bodies create policy skipping over both local and national representative power. More of these later, PUSH as the name suggests published hefty jargon filled plans to achieve economic targets because they felt that the area was underperforming. How they came to this conclusion and why economic growth should be the raison d'etre for planning is another story but PUSH's primary tool to achieve this economic growth is housebuilding. House prices are so much higher in the SE compared to the rest of the country that an identical housing estate would fetch almost twice the price in Hampshire compared to Tyneside for example. In their 2002 documents PUSH states that the rapid development of new housing in the area will result in economic growth and this will benefit us all.

The housebuilding in the council's plan is justified by demographics presented in their own documentation but a more forensic study of these shows them to be false and misleading. In appendix 1 a graph is presented 

which suggests that if no new housing were built the population would fall – the first lie is where the graph starts , 2006 , in a paper produced in 2011 they pretend that no houses are built between 2006 and 2011. In those 5 years about 2500 houses were built ! Is it helpful to model a scenario where you entirely ignore all recent actual events in the field of study concerned , only if you are fudging the figures to fit your designs. These graphs are produced by computer models the projections that the computer outputs are only the reflections of the assumptions that go in, computer modelling is used in many disciplines but is only ever as good as the assumptions used ,if this kind of computer modeling were used in engineering the building or ship designs produced would failspectacularly and people would die.

Local populations and local housing development are intertwined , the council wants to pretend that local population growth demands the housing , but if you build the houses inevitably people arrive to fill them. The demographics model used , The Chelmer Model, understands this and has two modes. It is either in 'demographic mode' where starting population and birth and death rates predict the future local population or 'housing Led' mode , where the resultant population is predicted on the basis of new housing developed.

Only a Freedom of information request confirmed my suspicions – the model is run in housing led mode. The second Scenario (graph above) claims that it is 'zero net migration' and conveniently includes housing completions between 2006 and 2010 , my FOI response states that zero net migration is assumed after 2010 , before 2010 the migration is very significant . The aim of these two graphs is to hide the truth that everyone in Eastleigh knows – intense development in the last decade has brought lots of migrants into the area, and that the inpending continuation of such building will just bring in more people. As they have been told to do by the un-democratic quango PUSH, Eastleigh Borough Council are trying to expand, by building houses, to satisfy an economic strategy (that has failed) which depletes the lives of existing residents.

Demographic facts , rather than projections, are important ,as a result of the post war baby boom the UK has an age profile biased towards those aged 50-70 and Eastleigh has this situation to an even greater degree , because of the leap in population between 1961 and 1971. Between these two censuses the population of Eastleigh almost doubled and the population density more than doubled. (http://www.eastleigh.gov.uk/pdf/C1%20Demography.pdf 3.2 and 3.3) these additions would have been infants or migrants to the area during the boom years, and many of those people are now retiring. Migrants tend to be young people who have or are about to have children, the young children of these arrivals are all retiring before 2026 and this presents a problem to our council, less people working means less income more pensioners means more costs. Over 20% of the population of Eastleigh is over 65 that is 7% above the national average, and over the next 25 years it will rise to 30%.

Another assumption entered into the housing prediction model is the average household size, this figure has been declining in the last 50 years because of people marrying at more advanced age, and having less children, older people living longer , divorce et cetera although these factors contribute to the desire for people to live in smaller households the reason household sizes have dropped is because they have been able too. People have been able to afford to live on their own and the housing bubble has helped this. Single people who bought a house in the early 80's and 90's and wish to continue living on their own will be able to because the speculative bubble of credit flooding into the market has given them sufficient equity to do so. Until there is an appropriate correction in the market many people of younger generations will never be able to afford to live on their own even if they aspire to do so because of the fundamentals of the market. A continual decline in household size is far fetched, it would require property values to rise forever but without the huge inputs of new credit which has inflated the market in the last 25 years ,and it would result in standard families with 2.4 children being a rarity. To predict that building no new houses in Eastleigh would reduce the population because of the assumption that a national trend in reducing household size would continue is pretty tenuous.

It is probable that both these statistical phenomena are a result of the same component of the population, and that the ageing population and the reduced household size are caused by the same people – it is the old people who are living alone.

Amongst the flood of statistics published by Eastleigh Borough Council to support their building campaign there is evidence which directly contradicts their claims. Councillors have told us in public meetings that the houses built are for local people,but when it is assumed that in migration is balanced with out migration (C1 3.7) there is only a 4.3% population increase in 18 years as the document states “Running the model on the basis that 9,400 dwellings will be built between 2011 and 2029 indicates that the population would be expected to rise by 9.7% from approximately 123,000 people in 2011 to 135,000 in 2029”

This is a clear admission that the houses are for migrants into Eastleigh. Building the houses will double the growth rate of Eastleigh's population. A further proof that new housing is not for local people but for migrants is shown by the Office of National Statistics own figures from Mid year estimates 2010, from 2004 to 2010 an average of 500 households moved into the area (C1 5.2) correspondingly the average completion rate of new houses in the area each year is about 500 – all the houses are going to in-migrants.

The demographic projections shown in graphical form to support the councils case are created thus to give the impression that housing is needed for population growth derived from the local population, but the statistics in the housing document tell a different story, the graph showing population decline if no houses are built conveniently overlooks the last 6 years of housebuilding which has resulted in a massive increase in population. They do not want to show the spike in population growth between 2006 and 2012. The second graph (zero net migration) starts in 2006, the section from 2011 to 2025 shows a slow and steady population increase and unless you know that the Chelmer model has reversed causality in housing led mode, you think that this indigenous population growth needs the corresponding house building to support it, if you look at the previous section from 2006 to 2011 it is considerably steeper, on a different projection this would appear as a spike, a spike representing all the migrants filling the houses built recently (they might not want you to see that) The two graphs are using the model run in different modes , if you swapped the modes in which the model was run, in the first graph population would rise just fine regardless of the zero housebuilding and in the second graph with the projected house building the population will increase rapidly. Both these graphs are introduced as unrealistic in the text and admittedly the author is telling you what is shown but without quite a bit of research you can't understand it and you don't expect the council to be tricking you, the effect of the two graphs, in conjunction, to the average reader is 1) that if we don't build houses the population will shrink 2) the population is only rising by indigenous growth and the housing being built is just to keep up with that. Neither 1 nor 2 is the case, 1) is a direct result of daft inflexibility of an assumption and 2) is a misrepresentation of a hypothetical trend which is taken as what they think will occur what appears to be a result is actually an assumption, the results of all models are just predictions only as accurate as the assumptions that are put in but placing zero net migration population growth on the same graph as housebuilding rates which would cause much greater population growth is misleading. Choosing the assumptions you input to models is selecting the output.

When you build new houses as fast as possible, as we have in Eastleigh , and plan to continue to with the draft plan the population increases correspondingly. 25 years is actually a short time in terms of planning – plans designed to really improve peoples lives have to look further in the future, in 25 years the children born in the new houses now will need housing , 9400 houses now inevitably needs another 9400 and another and another so we either stop it now or Eastleigh becomes an entirely built up landscape .