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]

Of course you did.

A. Well i wouldnt have expected anything else from someone who thought masks shouldnt be free during Covid and everyone should pay for them but also thought everyone should follow the restrictions.
B And i bet if i was benefit bashing and claiming that someone on my estate has told me the ins and outs of all their finances you would have no trouble believing it. Happens a lot on here. People claiming their neighbours tell them all about their benefits they are claiming and that gets believed Funny that!

People believe what they want to believe.

It was a beautiful house Bigger than my parents place even before the extension was built on it and it then became an HMO

Do you not get chatting to hospitality staff then?

I even talk to my cleaner.

In 1950 I moved into a brand new council house. I don't know whether the land under it was gladly sold by the farmer who owned it or compulsorily purchased from him, to his distress.
There weren't any garages. Dads went to work on bikes.
There wasn't any central heating.
There was a good-sized front garden and a good-sized back garden. You could grow your own vegetables. It wasn't long after the WW2 encouragement to grow food.
Outside the back door you could walk under cover just a few yards to a downstairs loo and there was a wash house there. Further down the yard were an integral shed and a coal house, made of brick and roof tiles like the house.

The house is still there. Recently an estate of houses has been built opposite the row of council houses. Some of these new houses are tiny and not too expensive. They look as if they have one small garage. I don't know how big their back gardens are but their front lawns are handkerchiefs. The advert for them shows pictures of them with lots of lovely trees around them. I don't think they have space for much of a tree, although I know many people do very well making gardens in tiny spaces.
I am just picking up on @Autumn1990's point about needing places to store stuff and having a half-decent bit of garden.

Yeah you sound like hard work

How do you tackle overpopulation in an ethical way? Genuine question. And I don't mean Boris Johnson's alleged suggestion of "let the bodies pile high".

The ever-increasing population is a problem, but no politician will go near it.

That was a suggestion on 'Any Questions' (Radio 4) a couple of weeks ago.
How do you decide which land to use? I knew a farmer who had some of his land taken for building council houses. He wanted to farm it. He was upset about it. He wasn't rubbing his hands in glee. He could never again grow food on that land.

Of course people receive some money when their land is taken by a council but I don't think it's a massively good deal. It's not the same as when the land is designated as building land by a county council, and then gets sold to a developer if the owner wants to sell it. Put me right, anyone, if I misunderstand that.

Where is the water going to come from? Electricity? Food?

How is the sewage going to be disposed off?

Has Angela Rayner addressed this?

Dear Ange

My planning wishlist

Compulsory purchase of developer's land banks (in possession for 10 years or more).

Large scale building of council/social housing

Ending RTB

Compulsory purchase of empty homes (make it easier for councils to do this).

Houses should have minimum sized rooms and all bedrooms should have a built in wardrobe/storage. Estate agents need to sell by square footage, not number of bedrooms. A 6' x 6' space is not a bedroom.

Maximum Density with space for nature eg decent front areas and gardens.
Ban plastic grass.

Enough parking

Solar panels on every new residential or commercial building. Great insulation.

Proper assessment of infrastructure schools, Drs etc

Building of footpaths/cycle ways to connect rural villages to each other (to be paid for by developers as part of planning process).

Kind regards
Broccoli

Yes let’s turn the Uk into China, a concrete jungle 🙄

I'm an immigrant in NZ. You can't buy a property here unless you are a permanent resident. It took us 5 years living and working here with as residents before we got PR and we have to prove we live here permanently. It's a perfectly reasonable scheme. Overseas buyers were running riot and pricing Kiwis and especially Maori out of home ownership.

It's pretty straightforward. You have to make a declaration on a sale contract and mortgage co needs to see your passport/visa.

Non residents can buy if they can show to the Government they are bringing specific investment to an area, jobs or building property.

These are socialist policies brought in by a Labour government designed to protect home ownership and the indigenous population from oligarchs and rich foreigners.
The 'racist' right wing government that's now in is likely to throw the doors open to anyone who wants to buy cos thats capitalism...

1.5 million or indeed 3 million won't turn it into a concrete jungle

Some people are clearly unaware less than 6% of the UK is built on

Go over in a plane, there's fuck all houses

If you look at government stats in detail and include residential gardens, it's more like 13.5% for England, which is where most of the development is happening.

Gardens aren't buildings though

6% for actual buildings

@deviantfeline

Has the policy in NZ had the the desired effect on availability and affordability?

Not in the areas where its profitable to build houses ie where there are jobs, so, mainly, the south of England.

The UK has huge traffic congestion issues, so if you want more houses, you'll need far more roads.

Immigration is running at 700k p.a, 1.5m houses over 5 years? won't make a jot of difference, other than ruin the UK even more than it is already.

Nothing in Labours manifesto or Kings speech suggests they will reduce migration to say 100k to 200k.

In England, it's over 9% if you take out gardens. And I wasn't including parks and playing fields in 'built up'.

And gardens aren't countryside. It's the countryside, our productive agricultural land, that is being built over. A couple of years ago our local FB page had a picture of a combine taking the last crop off a large field that is now being built all over. The last crop, ever, from a piece of land that had probably been in production for over a thousand years.

And with an increasing population comes not only houses but huge energy projects (like the massive pylons planned to built across East Anglia, complete with huge substations and so on), road widening and road building schemes, more hospitals and other community facilities, more warehousing.

As a nation, we need a serious discussion about whether we want to keep on increasing our population (and reducing our food security and putting more pressure on our water supply), or go through the economic pain now of dealing with an aging society so that we come out ahead when the Ponzi scheme of an ever-increasing global population finally grinds to a halt.

'Build more houses' is a facile answer to a very complex issue.

Difficult to say but house prices here are bonkers but stagnated for a couple years at least. Problem is most families feel entitled to at least two houses. Their main home and a holiday home 'Bach' usually near a beach or resort, often passed through the generations. There are hundreds of baches where I live. Some are used 1 week a year if that and NZ refuse to introduce stamp duty or CGT so they sit unused (not even airbnb because they don't need the money). That also means rental properties are like hens teeth.

More houses need more infrastructure, how is Labour planning on making private water companies build more water treatment plants? this has to be paid for, so higher water bills/higher subsidy.

Also, if houses are truly affordable, either for rent or to buy, where is the money coming from to subsidise the profits of Barratts etc?

Building firms have to make a profit, building more houses, increases demand for labour/materials and land, forcing up the price of the house.

We have two children, I was once a child, I had never lived in a house until I turned 36. Our children have lived in a house with a garden for 11 months. We still much prefer walking to a local park, gardens are fairly boring and require a lot of upkeep. We’re looking at selling and buying another flat.

But the 94% you're claiming isn't built on isn't where they want to build on. They want to build in areas that are already massively overpopulated and lack the infrastructure to sustain said massive population.

There are swathes of empty shops and offices in my town, multiply that by the rest of the towns/cities in the same boat, Repurpose them into apartments and a big slice of the homeless crisis would be solved.
Build local authority housing on brownfield sites

Our town has a 9 hole golf course smack bang in the middle, and another 18hole one right beside a P&R site. These would be first to be turned into high quality, high-ish density housing if I ruled the world!

@JenniferBooth I believe you! You really shouldn’t have to explain yourself on MN - but I have met many people similar to the “Gregg’s worker”. What’s frustrating is this is the reason people are just staying at home with parents (another thing MN complains about) or are working full time but wages just arnt enough.

@suburberphobe there are benefits to UK passport holders having priority. There are people with British passports (this includes people that might have dual nationality or are non-white - just to highlight that putting British passport holder first does not equal discrimination immediately) that are key workers, or contributing to taxes but their wages just doesn’t stretch far enough. How can we live in a country that cannot take care of their nurses, supermarket staff, charity workers etc? Where are they all supposed to go? Housing should put working people first - if they don’t have a British passport they should be working or contributing to the economy. We are also loosing skilled people to countries that have better incentives for workers.