SOUTH West Surrey MP Jeremy Hunt has successfully campaigned for measures to increase the supply of affordable housing in rural areas. Updated national planning regulations published by the Government include new powers for local authorities to stipulate that more affordable housing is built in rural areas. Currently if developers build more than 15 abodes they must provide affordable housing. The new rules set out in Planning Policy Statement 3 (PPS3) now allow local authorities to set lower thresholds in rural areas to ensure that developers build more suitable housing for first time buyers and young families. PPS3 also suggests that local authorities consider allocating and releasing sites solely for affordable housing in areas such as Waverley.Jeremy said: “It has become increasingly difficult for families on modest incomes in Surrey to afford to buy a home. I’m therefore calling on Waverley Borough Council to take advantage of the new planning rules and reduce the threshold for affordable housing from developments with fifteen abodes to those with five. The Government has responded to our campaign against overdevelopment and given local authorities the flexibility to set lower affordable housing thresholds in rural areas. It is now up to Waverley to make sure that make full use of these powers.”Although PPS3 contains measures that could increase the supply of affordable housing they still fail to stop ‘garden grabbing’. The regulations still class gardens as ‘brownfield’ land, meaning blocks of flats will increasingly be dumped on gardens.Jeremy said: “These new rules still fail to protect gardens from over-development and are continuing to impose arbitrary density targets on our local neighbourhoods. South West Surrey’s gardens still face the threat of the bulldozer and concrete mixer.”