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]

Get rid of right to buy.

Limit universities building on central sites that are good for social housing- so many have plenty of their own land they could build on- these are nearly all being used by rich overseas students.

Build houses as well as flats and in areas where it's easy to integrate services- not in the middle of nowhere.

Buy back any builders land bank stuff that is over 4 years old and nothing has happened.

Build a small selection of bungalows to be used for over 50s or disabled

Allow part buy on 25% of any development but houses and freehold

Oh, and stop building on areas that are in flood zones. This will only get worse.

Oh yes- as others have mentioned- do something about Airbnb - I would personally ban letting of 'whole places' for Airbnb and bring it back to how it was originally intended- spare room letting. In places like here in Bath or all tourist areas in particular it is totally out of hand -

Build houses and flats that aren’t for permanent use by one family. Or even convert local authority housing when it becomes available into non permanent housing
People can sign up for 3 years at a much discounted rent, for 8 years at rent a little higher and for 12 years at a higher rent. After which you leave and can’t return to local authority housing for a period of time

This will concentrate people’s minds to think about actually getting their own place. If you sign up for the 3 years at a very small rent then you know you have 3 years to bank as much money as possible before you have to move on. Equally you have 8 years or 12 years before moving on.

I have a few friends in council housing who could buy their own place and move on but choose to stay even though through businesses they have bought other properties that they rent out. Or people on 6 figure salaries and prefer to pay a very small rent and have more disposable cash

If someone is through disability not able to work or earn enough to ever be able to own or rent privately then obviously these type of housing doesn’t apply but for those who can work and earn I think this would open up many opportunities to reduce the housing shortage

Also, this might sound quite controversial, get rid of the legislation that make buy to let unfeasible
Let it run its course. Flooding the market with rental properties will reduce rents and the quality will get higher and drive those landlords who aren’t going to offer places that are reasonably priced and to a high standard out of the market because the renter has a choice

Definitely!

Thank you! 😊

Airbnb is where a lot of housing stock went when legislation made it unprofitable to have the house or flat rented to a family

Stop policies that preference money invested or made on housing in the tax system as it artificially inflates demand.

Stick to your guns and don't be scared off by the NIMBYs

Oh - and build lots of social housing on golf courses please.

There are 131 golf courses in London. 42% of them are owned by councils. Build medium density 4-5-6 floor flats with big balconies and shared gardens on 50% of that land, turn 50% into nature reserves, parks, playgrounds, allotments, football pitches. whoownsengland.org/2020/04/14/who-owns-londons-golf-courses/

Build more social housing
End right to buy
Build more bungalows so older people can downsize - nor everyone wants to live in a small flat!

She needs to read Liam Halligan's book 'Home Truths' and tax the uplift in land values when planning permission is granted. The value of a piece of land can go from a six figure sum to millions overnight, and all this profit goes to the land owner. The money raised could be used finance social housing and community infrastructure.

Some of the answers here are so curing ignorant and show that people just have no idea what's going on. Stop developers building houses? Who the fuck is going to build them then? No one else can afford to.

What would be good is to force developers to stick to all their promises, and stop them reducing the number of affordable home they have promised to build.

Boost vocational training for young people to learn the trades we need, far better than some of the useless degrees.

Give more money to community land trusts, so local groups can build the homes they and their community need instead of being lumbered with even more executive homes that no one can afford.

Not strictly true @TonTonMacoute it gets taxed through capital gains. The rate of which I agree should be increased but the gain is taxed.

Boost vocational training for young people to learn the trades we need, far better than some of the useless degrees

In ds’s college none of those that passed the level 2 trade course he was on were allowed to go to the next level because during the year the rules changed and because none had both the Maths and English language GCSE they could only do level 1 courses
They all left to work in bars or warehouses. Whole year of people lost to dead end jobs instead of learning the trade they wanted to do. Even some level 3 people, despite passing the course couldn’t qualify because of the lack of a GCSE

'When I lived on the continent' (!) for a little while I lived in a solidly built block, on the 5th floor, in a city. It's far from those 23 storeys high rise flats which were once the fashion. In a country town I think you might go 3 storeys high, or 4, without it being too awful.

Green spaces. Decent gardens.
Rethink right to buy.

I agree about the bungalows, we need more for the growing elderly and disabled population. There should also be restrictions on converting them into 2 storey houses.

@EdithStourton

Stop making every estate a huge cul-de-sac

These noddy housing estates are so dangerous. Bendy roads full of blind spots that get narrower and narrower the further in you go. Not enough off street parking so cars park haphazardly. No wonder kids don't play out.

The quality and design of 90% of new builds in this country is so shit.

Can recommend the "Shit planning" twitter page if you don't believe me.

Put simply give the councils some money to build homes or contract a national home builder to build 500,000 new homes and see how they get on. They homes will be managed by the council.

If that works repeat the process.

Only use a well managed home builder!

Prevent foreign investors buying properties and leaving them empty.
Take a proper look at second home ownership in pretty hotspots like Cornwall. The council is doing its best, doubling council tax for such properties from 2025. But I don't think that will make much difference to people who have that sort of spare cash. I've seen reports that suggest we have enough properties in the county to house everyone. We wouldnt need to build acres of new estates if some people weren't quite so greedy. Concrete equals carbon - building new houses is v bad for the environment when we already have plenty of existing properties

Please consider autistic people in your plans and leave plenty of remote properties away from noise. Please tackle overpopulation so that we don't need to build even more homes than we already have.

Yes, me too.

Give people a chance at owning, but replace the bought council houses at least 1:1.

Exactly. We need about 300,000 a year to keep up with population increase. So in 5 years once all the pockets of land have been built on then what? Another 1.5 mil? Where will they be built? And so on. People like to moan about the Jackie Weavers of this world, and parish councils and their funny ways, and mock NIMBYs , but once these doughty volunteers pass away and these pretty villages are all urbanised and bringing with them the problems from the majority cities, thats it. It's lost. Gone forever.

Good luck then trying to avoid a sensory overload if you're autistic.

Actually finally implementing the roll out of RTaB to HA tenants too would be good. Just as long as enough private and social housing is being built.

It would be a really bad look for Ange to deny anyone the chance to RTB, after her antics with RTB & addresses.