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?

Flew into Bristol airport over the weekend, the amount of fields and woods was quite incredible, settlements made up very little of the area, even Bristol seems small in comparison... what there isn't is infrastructure, like roads and rail net works etc.

I completely agree with you OP - at least it feels like the case where I live (West Sussex). Houses upon houses being put up everywhere, a local village now the size of a town through houses alone but no other amenities. The traffic is awful, and the roads are going to grind to a complete halt soon enough the way it's going.

I do understand the need for more housing, but it does feel like some areas are taking big hits particularly. They really should be prioritizing building over brownfield sites. It makes me feel sad because once the Countryside is gone it's gone forever.

@Alexandra2001 Neets write themselves off! They need to get on the courses but no government has managed that either! How do you make working in cold and rain attractive? These are not office jobs. People have to want them and they don’t. The money is good for many trades but they aren’t computer games!

I don't think the statistic about only a small percentage of the UK being built on is necessarily helpful. It ignores regional variations (e.g. Scottish Highlands vs. West Midlands or Greater London), and the many and varied demands on land, not least agriculture. Only about 8% of England and Wales is accessible via rights of way. If your local green space is getting built on, it isn't necessarily much consolation that there is a lot of open space hundreds of miles away.

Building lots more houses will not automatically make them substantially more affordable, as research by Ian Mulheirn, for example, has shown.

There are some good suggestions for a better way forward in the Community Planning Alliance's Homes for Everyone report.

I think @528htzabove your post has answered very well

Narrow minded to think we are the only species rather than that we are sharing this earth with wildlife and our gardens are - or should be - for them too

It’s a tragedy. This period in history will be considered as a terrible time when much was lost and nothing gained.

I live in an all electric house and my electricity bill is approx. £1100. Per annum.

So where did you move from OP? Presumably from a more urban area because you wanted to be more rural. You say your sister did too. Yet you don't see the irony in ranting about other people doing the same? You say your sister slugged her guts out working for the NHS. Are you suggesting the people buying new builds are going to contribute nothing to society and are somehow not worthy to breath the same country air as you? On top of all that, where do you suggest new houses are built? There is a radical shortage of housing in the UK and it's got to be solved. It is not an either or situation.

@BarneyRonson Houses are gained - as they were in Victorian times. We have too many separate family homes and too few people accepting flats. Get society to change and we change the landscape.

I thought this issue would come up. People keep talking about declining birth rates, but they forget three things:

1. Lifespan is increasing, and it’s about to increase a lot more. Within a decade or two we’ll have senolytic drugs, medical nanobots and god knows what else, extending lifespans to 120, 130, and maybe beyond. In Homo Deus, Yuval Harari writes that ending human ageing will be the grand project of the 21st-century. In other words, people won’t be dying and making room.

2. The birth rate may be dropping in Europe, but it isn’t dropping everywhere. In Africa, the birth rate is so high the African population is going to double.

3. Even if birth rates do fall, the total population will continue to rise. In 1900 there were a billion human beings. By 1960 that had trebled to three billion. It’s now eight billion and we’re going to peak at ten billion mid-century.

No, we have too many people. Houses without infrastructure are a loss to society.

@BarneyRonson So how do you propose to get rid of the population then? Close down immigration completely? That’s not going to happen.

Yes I agree - I use GIS a lot in my job and it’s surprising how much land there actually is. Mind a lot of this is privately owned by the gentry class (but that’s another story!).

We definitely need to improve our connectivity by opening up old routes, paths and disused railways as I suggested upthread. Canals often have decent towpaths too.

The “gentry class” are largely farming it! They do help to feed us. Can we just stop all this class nonsense. The tenant farmers do amazingly hard work on farms, and as we are not a communist state, they don’t own the land. Many small farmers do and we should be pleased all farmers work hard.

Why not? Why can’t we be like Australia etc?

. Two-thirds of land in the UK as a whole – 40m acres – is owned by 0.36% of the population.

South Wiltshire here and we have had huge amounts of housing estates being built, some on flood planes. I don't have an issue with the houses, but I do have an issue with nothing being changed about the infrastructure to enable all these extra people to get about. We have so much congestion here already and it is just getting worse. And with that, the state of the roads are getting worse and the only repairs that are done are just patch filling of the potholes.

I said upthread that I'm in Cumbria and we aren't losing our countryside here. But in fact we moved here from Oxfordshire precisely because everywhere was getting more built-up and congested there. I really miss Oxford, but I don't miss the traffic and the miles of new builds, though obviously people need housing. I'm just lucky I have a job I can do pretty much anywhere.

@BarneyRonson Australians still like some people to come and do the jobs they don’t do. @BurntBroccoli So what? Lots of land is not farming land at all. Do you want to forcibly take it away from people? Of course farms aren’t owned by a majority! How could they be. Never were and never will be. I’m more interested in keeping farms profitable and producing. If large landowners do that, great. I’m happy with my bit of England.

According to projections, Australia will start to see depopulation if current trends continue. They might do a £10 Pom deal again.

Except a lot of this land was taken from the people during the various Acts of Enclosure. Vast estates were walled and fenced off and people no longer had the right to access it.

Recommend “Who Owns England”
by Guy Shrubsole.

Yes it’s ridiculous. It is causing a housing problem

Regarding solar power, it is a solution but NOT when used on farming land or sites of abundant bio-diversity. A solar farm by me has been approved on agricultural land which is populated by skylarks and wild deer. The proposed solar farm has to have 12 feet tall batteries which regularly combust and the whole site will be fenced. The wild deer that currently have free passage will be marooned or forced into urban areas, the larks will lose their nesting grounds. The local council opposed it as did the planning inspector but developers appealed to the then Tory Minister who overruled. Solar power should be prioritised on the roofs of factories and new build homes. This is not happening because it cuts profits for developers.
The economic “policy” of increasing the population to “promote growth” is totally unsustainable. We all have to eat and Covid demonstrated that in times of crisis, nations are not prepared to trade their wheat. We are part of nature not separate from or above. An increasing population needs increasing supplies of food and increasing supply of houses, it is complete contradiction.

@BurntBroccoliOh dear. We cannot go back 200 years! It’s farmed - it has owners. So be it.

Lifespan increases are stalling at the moment and reducing in some areas.

So what if Africa is doubling its population? We’re not forcing them to do that, that’s their decision - and their problem.

We need fewer people here. We’ve actually passed Frances population now, on half of their land area. immigration needs to stop.