'Bulldoze local blocks on housing' - there goes more beautiful green space then!

[Rainyday35]

I'm not a tory but quite honestly i'm nervous about what a Labour government would mean. This statement alone from Starmer today seems quite bullish! Where i live we have had many new houses/flats built but the prices are so obscene noone can afford to buy them! Don't think it's property that is the problem, more the price!

What green space?

Most of the land that's blocked by local development interests is stuff like old cark parks, empty plots where commercial buildings used to be but are since demolished, derelict wareshouses etc ... I can think off the top my head of around ten such sites even in my own fairly small town. Not a verdant green space among them.

He said he wanted to build 'new towns' near English cities. Are they not to be on green space?

Price will come down if there is more property. Truth is that unless a current generation can afford to house itself future taxpayers will be left picking up Housing Benefit as well as State Pensions for a significant proportion of those retired. It’s nonsense having large numbers of landlords enjoying passive capital appreciation while other taxpayers are subsidising their rents.

More houses are inevitable. What matters is sustainable building - buildings that are efficient and buildings that will last.

If you love the countryside perhaps look at non-housing developments that are going on and fight against those.

Yes they will be, but it’s unlikely to be green belt.

What remains to be seen is where these will go. Putting a new town in the centre of Dorset or Norfolk would have a major impact on the perception of the countryside as we know it. Putting one between two major cities less so.

Personally, I would prefer half our existing settlements to be expanded by 10% as I think that’s a better way to protect the countryside.

I am concerned about Labour's plans too.

We do not have a housing crisis.

We have a housing distribution crisis.

Not the same thing.

Before we even think about building on green field sites, we need to:

Bring empty houses back into use
"Encourage" people to release holiday and second homes back into residential use - either rented or selling.
Finding brown field sites to build on
Reform the useless retirement home market so people are more likely to sell big houses (although I'd not want to live in a flat with wafer thin walls it has to be said).

If once we've done all that we still have a housing crisis (and having built all the matching infrastructure) then we can consider green field building. But not before.

Is it blocked though or is it just that developers aren't interested because it's cheaper and easier for them to build on a field?

But isn't the land around towns and cities precisely what green belt is? A buffer to prevent urban sprawl. Expanding existing settlements by 10% will by definition be building on that buffer.

Building there will not protect the 10% countryside around our towns and neither will it improve transport, infrastructure or quality of life for the people who live on the fringes of those areas now.

Hear hear to what @enchantedsquirrelwood said above.

I've now discounted Labour for the next election, which makes me sad.

But we need better food security and that means NOT building on agricultural land. Labour seems blind to the risk. They never have had a clue how the rural economy - the great big factory that feeds us all - works.

No idea who I'll vote for now, but it won't be Labour.

So we want more homes
We want lots more cheaper homes
We want homes near jobs
But we don't want them anywhere

Please no more big estates on fields, we can't move around here for building sites (Somerset - I don't recognise Taunton any more). It's the same where my brother lives in the South east. All seemingly on agricultural land. They are just about to start developing grazing land near me. Tragic.

I can only speak for my town, but all the sites I'm thinking of here are owned by developers but not built on, for years. They buy it and put it in the books as an asset. So no one else can build on it, and they won't, because they want assets to borrow against.

@MintJulia no one is proposing to build on agricultural land. Wtf?! It's one of the most expensive types of land to buy!

If we want our children to have somewhere affordable to live, we either need to bring down life expectancy by a lot or build more housing.

I'm in favour of more houses.

Trinity College Cambridge owned agricultural land near Felixstowe in Suffolk. They've sold it off and it's now a housing estate

There are other options too. We could do something about the number of homes used only for part of the year.

'In 2021-22, there were 809,000 second homes owned by households in England, an increase of 13% or just under 100,000 homes on 2010-11.'

Gov.UK.

'There are over one million homes without residents in England and there are hundreds of thousands of people in housing need. We must act now and long-term empty homes and unused second homes - which make up over 530,000 of those homes without residents – are a good place to start.'

Action on Empty Homes. Feb 2023.

Yes we should not allow second homes- that will go down well
We should restrict holiday homes- that will go do even better when holiday prices rise
We should take over empty homes
But that won't give us enough
We should also toughen building rules so that dense flats or terrace housing has great sound proofing and green space

We have at least 2 blocks of flats in Ipswich which are empty because they are unsafe to live in. In some cases the owners have had to leave, and others have never been lived in.

A huge town (Sherford) has been stuck up near me. It was all beautiful green farmland and countryside and now it's a huge monstrosity put up by all different building companies. It is enormous and is spreading further and further. It is completely soulless IMO.

The idea that they intend building a few houses on a car park or knocking down an old building that is probably privately owned isn't realistic. These companies want to be building large amounts of houses on huge areas of green land.

Look up it up if you like, there are going to be 5,500 houses.

Hope the members of the population who are against more house building never use a holiday cottage or airbnb when they go away

5,500 is a small town.

People moan about every new development, but we need housing.

It's not so much these rented holiday homes, but the homes that are used by one family once or twice a year and stand empty the rest of the year.

I've lived in seaside towns where young families are desperate for homes whilst perfectly good houses stand dark and empty for 10 months of the year. This has a knock on effect in provision of local services, transport, schools.

Some places have ridiculous percentages of their housing stock taken up in this way.

We need much more affordable housing. That trumps views.😗

It's about so much more than views. It's about quality of life, infrastructure, food security, the environment, wildlife, quality of the housing that will be built - who will make money out of it and who will be able to afford to buy the houses amongst other things.

I agree with this.

Heavily penalise owners of empty business.

Heavily penalise land bankers of brownfield sites that are not developing them.

Encourage redevelopment of under-utilised commercial space.

STOP BUILDING ON GREEN FIELD SITES. I live in the SE. Every bit of green space is being built on, even within the green belt. The local sports club has sold its land to a developer. There is a planning application in for a field currently used to graze horses. Gardens are being developed. And we are on London clay so flooding is becoming a real problem.

Current geopolitical issues mean we should be using our land to ensure food security and energy security. Not to make shitty housing developers richer.

I don't trust Labour on housing because I live in Waltham Forest where they have essentially abandoned all standards of planning. Developers are allowed to build the ugliest towers full of tiny units an any scrap of land they can acquire - these buildings will cost the state a fortune to repair, maintain and eventually remove once the developers have pocketed their millions and dispersed. There is no thought for the future if they can proudly say they have "achieved" a certain number of units this year.