Angela Rayner and building more houses.

[upinaballoon]

I believe she's going to make a statement today or soon, about plans for house-building.

What would you like her to take into consideration as she makes these plans and implements them?

Would you send her an e-mail to say what you think about it all?

[email protected]
[email protected]

My questions would be will there be sufficient attention given to the infrastructure improvements that would be needed for x number of houses to be built? Ie do local schools have places or are they chocka already? Ditto GPs. What is traffic like in the area, will road improvements be necessary? Are utilities being adequately considered?

Also, is this just more council houses or also houses for people to buy? Not everyone wants to rent from the council for life, some people also want to own a property.

I have written to my MP asking if they could look and consider brining back DIYSO - which is shared ownership on the open market ( not just new builds) - we bought our first flat in Crouch End on this basis- lovely big 1 bedder on Weston park with shared freehold- when we sold it I had 5 buyers within a day . It came in under Blair but was stopped after a couple of years as was simply 'too popular' ( and I suspect it pissed if the builders of new over priced rabbit hutches)

The advantage is you can buy in an established area - and gradually build up ownership and there were a lot more shared freeholds too amongst flats . It was a great scheme - it did have limits on value and was restricted to people not owning another property - ( and they checked that out)

@Lilysgoneshopping I do think they should buy up and turn unused office space into studio flats/1 and 2 bedders and offer them as emergency housing - make sure they are managed well and that there is an onsite manager and a social worker. It would be cheaper in the long term than constant use of B&Bs and help with the homeless situation.

I started this thread. What interesting answers. Pages ago someone asked me on my take on it all.
Well, use the brown-field sites first, please.

Have rules about the size of any estate you plonk on a village.
Stop putting new estates a few feet from existing buildings. Legislate that there must be bigger gaps. Make developers put hedges and trees in in communal spaces, not just a little token tree in a lawn here and there.
Make a specific percentage of small houses in any development and DON'T let the developers fiddle it.
Put no more than 10 slabs up to a garage, to drive the car on on wet days - the rest to be left as earth.

Regulation and inspection of all private rented places.
Build council houses and don't sell them off.

Pay attention to the quality and look of the buildings - I do believe AR says they will, but who knows.
I haven't time to put other thoughts just at present.

I couldn't go back to adjust my original question. I asked if you were going to send an e-mail to A Rayner, but someone helpfully advised that we should send opinions to our own MPs, for them to send on to her.

Yes I agree and on a lot of the green belt farmers grow things like temporary grass to graze livestock on. Extremely limited in biodiversity and polluting (nitrates from livestock running into rivers).

There was someone on the radio the other day talking about the fact that we need the fields around our towns and villages for our mental health and well being. We don't even have public access to them due to our unfair public rights of way system.

absolutely it's totally scandalous, immoral and I can't see how things are going to change...right now property developers must be jumping up and down for joy.
All that the new housing has done is significantly raised prices on ALL housing in our village. At the time there was "help to buy" so the developers took advantage knowing that people were able to get their hands on more money and instead of housing becoming more affordable the exact opposite has occurred. There is hardly any hope now of young people who want to stay in the area being able to afford their first home here...unless they are like one couple I know who have taken out a 40 year mortgage!!! The other disgusting thing is the state of the housing - one estate built by Avant still after 4 years is incomplete not a single road has been finished and there are weeds growing out of the pot holed riddled unfinished surface - things to mitigate the loss of countryside such as bat boxes that were meant to be put up and were part of the planning criteria just aren't done - their arrogance is astounding because no one goes back to check.

I can’t see there being much mileage for the idea that the single person or couples who do not have children should live in the tiniest box with no outside space whilst paying huge amounts to subsidise others

In my experience farm fields have become larger in the last 60 years. Few people work on arable farms. Big machines do lots of work quickly. The headlands around fields have become much narrower. Lots of hedging has been taken up because farmers didn't need them to keep a few pigs/cattle/sheep in a field.

I can understand why any farmer doesn't want a group of 'walking for health' folk trailing across the middle of his/her crop on the grounds that there was a footpath there in 1767, but I do wonder if it is possible to legislate a minimum verge width, encouragement of hedges somewhere and the right to walk around the edges of fields. I think there is some legislation but perhaps more could be useful.
( Off-thread - The milkman stopped coming. No more returnable glass bottles. Poly containers - hundreds of them. Ok - recycle them. How much better if I could take my container to the supermarket and get 4 pints of milk in my container and then use it again next time?)