The death of the British countryside

[Dappy777]

I have lived in north Essex since 1998. When we moved here, this was a small village on the outskirts of a quiet market town. In the last ten years, it has been ruined. My local woods have been hacked down to make way for two huge new estates, and at the other end of the village a second giant housing estate has been built. Now we've been told the fields in the centre of the village are going to be built on as well. The traffic is so bad that the country lanes, which were meant to take the odd tractor and a few cars, now have the sort of congestion you'd expect on the M25. The main road into town is also having 500 new houses built along it. That road is choked with traffic now, so what the hell is it going to be like when 500 extra cars are added?

This beautiful weather has really brought it home to me. My sister lives in a village 30 miles from here, and it's exactly the same where she is. In fact, it's worse. Everywhere I go they are jamming more and more disgusting rabbit hutch 'houses' on top of one another. Instead of bird song, all you hear is the drone of cars and the screeching and backfiring of idiot boy racers. I think we really are living through the death of the British countryside. There will still be fields and trees, of course, but the countryside as I knew it will soon be gone forever.

What sickens me is that I know the left get a kick out of all this. They seem to think that everyone in the countryside is a rich, fox-hunting 'Tory' in a big mansion. In reality, the vast majority of so-called 'nimbys' are just ordinary people who've worked hard and desperately want a bit of peace and quiet. My sister has devoted 30 years to the NHS, as has her husband. They've slogged their guts out to buy a little semi-detached house in a village. Now that village is being destroyed around them.

Is it just here in the south east? Or is this happening in other parts of these islands?

A huge amount of hyperbole with very little actual substance, followed by a lazy and inaccurate political dig. 1/10 must do better

Interesting Labour are putting so much store in house building as a way for growth.

Changing planning etc to get more built.

Some of the ideas on this thread are already more inspiring than anything I’ve seen about housing policy for years.

I would add in an immediate mandate to new housing developments to have green energy built in. Absolutely crazy new builds aren’t coming with solar panels as default.

There’s too many foxes full stop. There needs to be a cull. Like all the rats in Birmingham.

From 2025 new homes cannot have gas boilers I think. Homes being built to the old spec can. Solar panels only help new buildings and large ones need battery storage too. Retro fitting older housing stock is difficult. Air source heat pumps are great in the right house. New ones from 2025 should have them. Whether we have sufficient electricity supply is another matter.

Compulsory purchase? It's not something I just dreamed of. It's been done for decades.

Shush! Don't tell her that!!! lol!

....and planning isn't the real issue, its affordability/demand/funding of HA's to be able to buy the the houses built for social rent etc...

Perhaps if the Tories hadn't let in almost 2.5m extra people in the last 3 years, we wouldn't need to many built?

Labour have no idea about the lack of building labour. Or the capacity of local people to stop development! Or hold it up. Compulsory purchase needs tweaking so Brown field sites are used.

Yes they do, they've been banging on about the lack of trades and training for years.
They've plans to boost vocational training, less reliance on overseas labour, better working conditions.

None of which would have been required had the Tories invested in skills over the last 14 years......

‘Her that’

lol don’t get too excited.

Not many posts about the utter mess in Birmingham on here. Looks so bad.

Exactly that with bells on

In answer to your question - yes it is largely just the south east. You only have to take the west coast train line Glasgow-Plymouth to see that the there is plenty of countryside. As a poster said upthread, only 6% of the UK is built on.

We have plenty of countryside where I live.

What we lack is jobs, shops, and opportunities for our children

@Alexandra2001 No one British has been very interested in training in building trades for decades! When did all the EU trades appear to fill the gaps? Decades ago. We had plenty of buildings trades courses but expanded university provision so then depended on overseas labour which was also cheaper. All governments have been at fault but young people don’t want to work on cold wet building sites. Labour cannot possibly train enough people up in 4 years. It’s laughable. The dots don’t join up!!

I have lived in an all electric house and the bills were eye watering.

Never Again

I don't live in a large house with a garden. You just made that up inside your head. I live in a small house with no garden, and before that I lived in a large flat and then a smaller flat.

Online, it's super easy to collapse all other posters into one amorphous Other or enemy. This enemy is such a hypocrite! Always contradicting itself.

I'm not your enemy. I'm your neighbour.

Tbh my DS trained in a trade. Passed all of his exams and all the practical tests top of his class with a an average score in the high 90s

Couldn’t move on to the final year as he didn’t have a GCSE in English

Only one in his class at college who did decided to go to university

The college actually closed down because no one was able to access the last year because of needing extra GCSEs

Friend of a friend couldn’t get qualified in the business she heads up.
Think owning a bakery for years and getting up each morning to bake that days bread etc and then wanting to expand your knowledge but being told as you don’t have a GCSE in English you can’t do the bakery course as it would be beyond you

Soooo because its not possible to train up enough people in 4 years, we shouldn't even bother? and carry on importing skills we need....?

That thinking is whats got us into this mess, same with health workers too, as you say the problems were apparent in 2010, what did the Tories do? nothing.... were you advising them?

Also, its simply not true, in our little parish there are several young men who are attending Plymouth college to learn a trade or are apprentices in Devonport Dockyard as electricians, one recently qualified as a gas fitter and has set up his own company, doing very well.

Need to get more females trained up too, a woman who runs her own decorating business in a nearby town, has order books months in advance.... same with a female plumber....

@Clouth You are completely wrong about building companies. They do NOT decide where housing goes. You need to understand the basic process. Local plans identified this. There are targets set by central government. Both main parties ramped this up at the last election. There is now the issue of how we get to the new targets.

If you look at most planning authority web sites, they will tell you where development is likely to be. It won’t be in the old AONB (Natural Landscapes) so it has to be in less desirable areas, except the residents there think they are desirable. Of course they do. The targets are now putting huge pressure on those areas with much more zoning for housing. House builders are not the architects of these schemes. The planning system and the government are the drivers of housing expansion.

@Blemin Your ideas should work but everyone wants a garden! Nearly all estates provide gardens. We don’t like flats and we don’t have enough zoned building areas with space for woodland and natural landscapes to be set aside for recreational use. We could make far more use of old railways and better small areas that residents could enjoy. Some new estates do this but someone has to look after them.

There are days when I think just concrete over the UK and be done with it. And then see how we all like it. Common sense resistance just feels like it’s too hard and easily shot down. Once natural habitats are destroyed they are gone forever and won’t return. All of this is the inevitable outcome of successive short term Government policy and generally the message that we are constantly all being fed that we need growth and house building is the main way to achieve that. I don’t agree. What is wrong with only 6% of the UK being built over? If that is the correct statistic (and I actually doubt that) let’s celebrate that and keep it that way for the future of the planet and the next generation. If that means redeveloping existing suburban areas or controlling population growth so be it but don’t just plough through swathes of what in the scheme of things is a relatively small surface area. At this rate, every green space (national parks, commons, Lake District, Highlands) will be fair game for development and who will then want to live in a concreted nature deprived drought ridden overheated country? We all jump up in arms when we see deforestation and development of the Amazon rainforest but seem quite happy to allow similar destruction in our own backyard.

@Alexandra2001 I didn’t say don’t bother! I says evidence shows us it’s a huge uptick that’s needed regarding training and it takes a while to do it. Even if candidates come forward! They don’t. How many young people want these careers? That’s why we used onerseas labour. Maybe we round up neets and get them to do it. Would I trust one of them to wire a house? Hmm? It’s going to be very hard to get the labour - full stop.

If you cannot get a grade 4 in GCSE English you'll struggle with Part P or get the hang of gas regs, installation manuals of gas boilers and ASHP's if a plumber or understand the importance of air filtration systems and particulate matter as a carpenter.
Nowadays trades have to be able to write reports, understand some quite complex drawings and be able to articulate their meaning to others.

I don’t want your first line either and agree generally with your post.

You seemed to imply that! How about congratulating Lab on at least trying to improve things?

Lets make these careers more attractive? make it possible for people who have messed up school or made the wrong career choices to re train? it doesn't rain all the time in the UK...

The next 4 years are going to happen, where do we want to be in 2029?

Labour can either start the ball rolling or import even more people.... as happened in the past.

Yes and many NEETs could be re trained... or do we write off millions of young people?

A "home" but it's our environment. So you need to maintain the garden so it's wildlife friendly, use a water butt, good drainage for hard parking areas etc. and a life sentence for plastic grass.