To think at some point there will be no green spaces left in the UK

[SoBloodyFrustrated]

I have just read this..

Dartmoor National Park have asked Cavanna Homes to prepare a Development Brief for this Allocated site, which lies on the fringe of the village with great views to the Tor.

Dartmoor is so bloody lovely, how long before all our green spaces are taken due to new builds?

IfNotNowThenWhenIt's not done in the name of more housing, it's done in the name of making a few developers, and their pals on the council, rich, at the expense of everyone who lives here

Yes. Absolutely. There are a lot of people doing very nicely out of paving the country in little concrete boxes.

That's the reason self build is discouraged by "the system", and no-one cares enough to create a system which provides infrastructure before the developers stick up yet another housing estate.

And people are encouraged to think that if they don't live in new build 4 bedroom detached with 2 en suites and BIWs, they are living in virtual poverty.

So what happens when the already declining bee population finally go?
The others ok, part of the Eco system but the bees put 2 in 3 spoonfuls of food we eat. So the pretty view provides us with food. It's not about the nimbys, it's the bigger picture.
The executive homes built don't help the homeless

i have bees in my brickwork in the garden, they come every year, they adapt.

only on mn would bees be worth more than human life

Nature is good at adapting when done properly, e.g 1930's style developments. Not over developing single areas

I'm also not convinced we're making best use of the houses we already have.

We do need substantial habitats for wildlife, bees are vital for pollination, and human survival. Numbers are only just beginning to increase in some areas after quite a decline in recent years, but that is due to careful management and protection of habitats.

We could also be more self sufficient in terms of food production in this country, but quite how well private estates/farming practices/monopolisation of the food industry by supermarkets contributes to the benefit of wildlife or a sustainable food industry is certainly questionable.

Clearly the more land we build on, our ability to be self sufficient will be compromised, particularly if you take into consideration a 1% growth per year over a hundred years as pointed out upthread. That's quite a burden for our grandchildren.

They aren't worth more than human life, but without the bees there wouldn't be human life.

Much more important to wildlife is the use of pesticides and monocultures in agriculture.

Our agricultural productivity has increased by 4 times since WWII. Even to the extent of using genetically modified crops or new varieties of eg wheat that is a US import and supports no native wildlife.

YANBU There are loads of huge developments around here (SE) The little, cheaper 2 beds are snapped up, but are only about 10-20% of the developments. The vast majority of the large houses are just unaffordable and often sit unsold, sometimes for 2yrs!
It's not lack of housing, it's lack of AFFORDABLE housing.

It's extremely difficult and overly expensive for a family to be able to build one house on a modest patch of land with zero impact. Yet it seems to be easy for developers to cram in huge estates, with zero consideration for the lack of infrastructure and the problems that leaves behind.

The planning system is full of flaws and so short sighted.

If some of these species die out, so do you, ultimately. Or at least your descendants.

Those of you saying we should build on brownfield sites, fair enough, but plenty if them are massively contaminated with industrial pollution from times when there were no controls on disposal, that must be cleaned up to background levels.

This includes chemical and radioactive waste that is very expensive to remove and dispose of properly.

there are approximately 59 million acres of land in UK of which 5.9 million are already built on if 1% of remainder was built on at 12 houses per acre that would be 6.36million houses.

If at present there is 1 house for every 2 people in the uk it means at present approx 30 million homes so an extra 6 million homes would be roughly 25% more property than currently exists more than enough for a substantial increase in population

Trouble is, it feels different when you are in one of the rural areas marked for mass development. In every single village round here more houses are planned. The local market town is set to double its population. These are huge changes for us. We live here because we like the country. We don't want to live in a suburb and neither do most of our neighbours: not just the middle-class ones, but the farm labourer's son who goes beating at the weekend when there's shooting, and the builder's son who likes helping out with the horses. They like this village because it is in open countryside. Personally I am very fond of starry skies, which we still just about get. Not for much longer, I suspect.

Oneglassandpuzzled what would you do if you were in charge?

A genuine question: would those on the thread who are against more development for ecological reasons be prepared to vote for a mainstream party with policies such as:

• punitive tax on second and holiday homes
• macroeconomic policies designed to collapse house prices to the historical mean (which would mean a fall in housing values of more than 50%)
• higher inheritance tax rates and higher taxes in wealthy, asset-rich over-50s?

traininthe I'm not against more development but it should be properly thought through and PLANNED.

The vat on repairs and doing up.adding bathrooms etc. to existing empty houses should be removed (and on cleaning up brown field sites). Also the developers should be changing empty office blocks to low cost homes.

I agree there should be punitive taxes on 2nd\holiday homes. Local councils do sometimes make rules to encourage local residents to buy homes in the 'pretty' villages and that must be emphasised.

trainin - yes to the first two, more or less... house prices should be some affordable multiple of salaries; the third it would depend what was classified as 'wealthy, asset-rich'. Inheritance tax is also tricky - super-rich people seem adept at avoiding it.

No expert, so this is possibly far too simplistic, but if I was in government, I would invest lots of money in "re-purposing" failing high streets and town centres and making them in to mixed office, retail and residential areas (but upping the percentage of residences by a substantial amount). Town centres are much safer, friendlier, more civilised places when people actually live in them.

[Much more practical for the elderly to be within easy reach of shops and public transport too.]

With the rise of Internet shopping, more and more high streets are going to become defunct anyway. Why not make them in to pleasant, convenient, places to live? Perfect for apartments and single-occupation homes which I gather are in much demand.

Developers should be charged the cost of putting in flood defences and adding/widening roads and all building all the other services people need when they go and build on a greenfield site.

That will make them more willing to build on brownfield.

Much of the recent increase in flooding of homes is due to two things:

1. extra run off from paving over what were green fields;

1. putting homes in low lying places.

Its just easier to build on greenfield and dump all the costs and consequence on the local community who were there before.

Good idea Sans, there has been an element of that in the small town near me. However, the houses that I refer to have mainly remained empty, which is surprising, but then perhaps it is because there is nowhere nearby to park a car? Or maybe the rent is too expensive.

It might work better in bigger towns and I can see the attraction for people who work in a particular town or city to actually live there as well, particularly younger people who also socialise in the town.

And in these circumstances, it would not be necessary to own a car, especially as many cities have car clubs.

I also strongly feel that as the rise of internet shopping continues and out of town shopping centres that people should be encouraged to move back into high streets to set up businesses and live above shops like in the Medieval period.

My town is a Medieval town essentially and our high street has many empty shops that used to be quite grand merchants houses hundreds of years ago with families above and their own business below.

Lots of small business people would rejuvenate a high street if the big institutional landlords and banks were forced to sell their empty properties and Councils relax planning restrictions to encourage reconversion back to mixed residential business use.

Our high streets are economic death zones at the minute outside London and South East and need a new future and purpose.

portofino in England maybe. Living in a flat all your life isn't uncommon in urban Scotland. Some of the inner suburbs of Edinburgh make far better use of space thanttheir counterparts in England.

A village near us is rife with nimbyism. We live in the north of England and there is plenty of green space nearby.

Nevertheless, the residents of this village are rabidly opposing the building of a modest number of new houses. They claim it's because of concern for the green belt. The real reason, I suspect, is that they don't want the value of their own houses to be affected by new building (although they also complain vocally about local shops, pubs etc being underused).

This village has a station on the commuter line to a major city. You would think that most sensible people would be in favour of more people using public transport, wouldn't you? Oh no. The nimbys picket the station, telling commuters that unless they sign their petition, the trains will be so busy with the incoming barbarian hordes that we won't be able to fit on them any more.

I find this sort of thing so transparent. It's pure selfishness dressed up as worthy concern for the environment. A truthful slogan for these people would be, "let the poor people live in bedsits in old converted asbestos factories far away from us, so that our £500k houses retain their value".

Traininthedistance has it absolutely right.

We live in a very nice, big, village and I'd never dream of opposing new developments near us, of which there have been several. People have to live somewhere, and just because you have the good fortune to live somewhere pleasant it doesn't mean that you have the right to stop anybody else enjoying the same advantages.

I agree with Errol, MoreBeta.

Can pretty much guarantee that the piece of land we've been trying to get PP for to sell to developers for seven fecking years will still be green and pleasant when Wall-E is scuttling round earth parcelling up refuse.

Humph.