Yes. You do not need to be on the housing list for this issue to be of great significance to you.

Here’s why:-

• All Blakeney residents, including those with their own homes, should think about this. A reduction in the resident population could put vital local services at risk through lack of use.  Just one example of this concerns transport, where the Council has already campaigned, successfully, to retain our vital bus link to the hinterland.  If you live in Blakeney, are not on the housing list, but value your local services, affordable housing affects you.

• Businesses in Blakeney need employees, and practicality suggests that most of these will be drawn from the local community. Obviously, any decline in the number of local residents, and of young people in particular, is likely to pose recruitment and retention problems in the future.  So, if you run a business here, affordable housing affects you.

• Visitors, too, are affected, though this may not be obvious. A diminution of local full-time residency is bound to undermine and dilute the essential and distinctive character of Blakeney. Taken to extremes, the lack of affordable housing for local people could ultimately turn Blakeney, and villages like it, into a Norfolk theme-park, a prospect which, surely, no-one, visitor or resident, would consider acceptable. Visitor or resident, then, and if the character of Blakeney matters to you, affordable housing is important to you.