new houses

[wallace]

I got a leaflet through the door recently saying there are plans to build 350 houses near me. On prime farm land. Our town is pretty much dead compared to its industrial past, and is only a housing development creating a commuter town. The builders were very keen to point out that its outside durhams green belt restrictions. They have already built on the old thorn lighting site and lots of other brown field areas.

 

[Trevanion]

It's tragic really, there's only a finite amount of good land in the country and we're trying to build houses en-mass on it. It's similar here where they want to build 100 extra houses in a village with serious traffic problems as the main road through it is only just wide enough for two cars, and people park on both sides of the road on the pavements outside their houses which basically turns it into a single-track road, the ancient and already stretched infrastructure simply cannot support more houses and people.

We shouldn't need more homes, and there shouldn't be a housing crisis. More people died in Britain than were born, so it's a declining population, but we gain half a million in immigrants each year, so we need to house those.

 

[Lurker]

There’s a small housing estate near us and we walk through it to access a circular walk for an hours stroll in the winter.
It was built around the time of the lockdowns it’s already looking a bit shoddy. Some houses are right up against a dual carriageway, house wall, footpath, road edge. When we walk along this footpath (100metres) you can’t talk because of the road noise.

 

[Lons]

I freely admit to being in the "not in my backyard" camp but some decisions seem just stupid and made purely on a potential profit basis.

We live in a small village on a main A road which is very busy and getting worse. It's gridlocked every weekend and rush hour and now the powers that be have pulled the A1 dualling project (£60m already spent down the drain and costing our LA / us around £30k a month atm), traffic diverts past us to try to avoid the A1 car park where dual lane converges into single.
A lot of new housing has gone up in the next village north so they commute past us as well as a number of new properties in our village and they've just started on a new development of another 54 houses with more in the pipeline as there is an empty entrance planned to the next field, all greenfield land.
The village school is full and houses will attract families, sewerage and services are already stretched to the limit and the village boasts only a pub and a small sandwich/general goods shop with part time hours. Doesn't make a lot of sense.

Access on to the main road is not in a great place for safety and for the last couple of weeks they've had traffic lights and single lane in front of the entrance even though nothing is being done. Traffic build up is not good.

I bought part of a field nearly 30 years ago mainly to prevent access or there would be hundreds of houses already immediadely south of us, they've tried but there isn't a safe acceptable alternative route.

 

[SamQ aka Ah! Q!]

We shouldn't need more homes, and there shouldn't be a housing crisis. More people died in Britain than were born, so it's a declining population, but we gain half a million in immigrants each year, so we need to house those.

Hear, hear, Dan! I utterly abhor xenophobia, as it is 'practiced', but you make an excellent, straightforward "use of space" comment.
I would add a caveat, that we might understand the buiding/housing conundrum further: how many of the 500,000 are students, who will (presumably) return home to use their British university prestige to gain jobs and influence, and how many are 'true' illegals? This risks politicing such functional analyses, but clarity is everything.

 

[AJB Temple]

It's inevitable. Our neighbour just over the railway (quiet line) from us farms fruit asparagus and solar. He's 82 and very active. 370 acres. Most of his apples used to go for fruit juice and supermarkets. He's on the point of giving up as the supermarkets don't even give a price until they have taken delivery of the product, and at times that price is below the cost of production. The farm next to him has already sold most of their land for housing development. We have hundreds of new houses already in the area - but no improvement to key structure - doctors, schools, sewerage etc. I think we could probably build 30 houses on our orchard and if we knocked the house down, probably 15 in our garden. As planning consents get closer to us, I will seriously consider it.

 

[Windows]

Stats are available on the gov uk website. But I think the 500K number you’re thinking of is net immigration (which is actually 728K for the current year). This is almost all legal migration. There’s no reasonable way to analyze that headline figure to carve out student numbers, but any analysis wouldn’t reduce that 728K: student inflows are in the gross figure of +1.2 million and the student outflows are taken into account to get to +728K. There were about 400K student visas issued.

Hear, hear, Dan! I utterly abhor xenophobia, as it is 'practiced', but you make an excellent, straightforward "use of space" comment.
I would add a caveat, that we might understand the buiding/housing conundrum further: how many of the 500,000 are students, who will (presumably) return home to use their British university prestige to gain jobs and influence, and how many are 'true' illegals? This risks politicing such functional analyses, but clarity is everything.

 

[Woodbloke]

This strikes a chord - Rob

 

[MattS]

The loss of farming around us in the past 15 or so years is shocking. Driven by supermarkets.

These developments that get built always only have a bare minimum of affordable housing and are still being built as they were 50 years ago with an electric charger on the outside as a nod to the future. Developers build what maximises profit which is lots of big houses around us which does nothing to really help the housing crisis.

Can't see any of it changing though

 

[SamQ aka Ah! Q!]

Stats are available on the gov uk website. But I think the 500K number.....

Thank you, Windows. Wow, we really are back to 500k bodies to.be found a domicile for, per year, hmmm? I'm not going to go 'down the rabbit hole' of looking up births/deaths and calculating the 'deficit' to see how much of the 500k would be simple replacement, but it does starkly illustrate the scope of the housing problem.
As a biologist, trained by one of the most eminent ecologists alive in the 70's and 80's, I came to regard brown field sites and vertical planning as good instruments to maintain our ecosystems and preserve biodiversity. Methinks we may be running out of possibilities to.kerp.that aspiration alive.

 

[Artiglio]

Come east kent, pretty much endless new estates being built last couple of miles of m2 right down to margate. Aylesham an old pit village ( old as in no more coal) is going nearly qradruple in size. Not the only one. Never gets officially confirmed , but a good portion of the building is for the housing lists of london boroughs.
The amount of prime farmland being built on is incredible, then there are the solar farms.
We do have Thanet Earth , enormous hydroponic glass houses.

Home - Thanet Earth

www.thanetearth.com

 

[wallace]

They have been building for the last 25years here. That used to be my view out of my window until they started a big housing scheme. Back then a new house was about £80k and a nice condition ex council was £50k. You can still get a nice ex council for £120k but a new build is £240k. The town has lots of southern migrants moving up here 'for a better life' they say. They say its so nice compared to where they came from. All you can here is cockney accents when shopping. There has been an increase of antisocial behaviour, so much so a special meeting of the pact has been arranged. Not sure if its our own little darlings or newbies in the town. Motorbikes on the bowling green, whilst the old guys are trying to play. Break ins and thefts are through the roof. I heard that southern councils are moving people here because its cheaper.

 

[Spectric]

You see the negative impact of over developement everywhere these days, a small town that has not really changed that much in the last forty years suddenly gets several new housing developments and then traffic chaos because the original layout had choke points that cannot be altered, the youngsters have nothing to do so antisocial behavior rockets and everyones lives take a turn for the worse. The destruction of farmland for housing is criminal because we need our farmers to be productive, once you start to have to import the basics then prices will only ramp up so prime farmland needs protection along with our countryside because once it's gone then it's gone and if we take out wildlife and our eco systems then those at the top will eventually fall and that is us. A lot of this housing is driven by greed otherwise they would build in all areas and not be so fussy when it comes to post codes.

 

[Guineafowl21]

It's tragic really, there's only a finite amount of good land in the country and we're trying to build houses en-mass on it. It's similar here where they want to build 100 extra houses in a village with serious traffic problems as the main road through it is only just wide enough for two cars, and people park on both sides of the road on the pavements outside their houses which basically turns it into a single-track road, the ancient and already stretched infrastructure simply cannot support more houses and people.

We shouldn't need more homes, and there shouldn't be a housing crisis. More people died in Britain than were born, so it's a declining population, but we gain half a million in immigrants each year, so we need to house those.

Nice and pragmatic.

I think of ‘housing crisis’ as a euphemism for overpopulation. A lot of other national problems are symptomatic of this - healthcare waits, traffic congestion, admin backlogs, school class sizes… etc. Throwing money at each of these is not addressing the underlying problem.

There are thousands of Barratt boxes being thrown up round here now. The developments are given twee names which belie their barracks-like appearance, and signs announcing enticing deals, but I notice the roads feeding them aren’t any bigger. Nor are the towns, hospitals, schools, etc. that are nearby.