To think that people who object to planning applications for new homes are selfish

[LauderSyme]

My aim is not to be goady or induce a bunfight (though I well understand some of you might think that), but rather to try to understand a different point of view without judging it.
I live in a generally well-heeled and very "civilised" area; most of the properties are immaculately kept, many are sizable with large gardens, the public realm is well-maintained and crime rates are relatively low. It is amongst the top retirement hotspots in the UK. It is a lovely place to live and I appreciate our quality of life.
I am a tenant who has never owned a property. I work full-time but have a low household income, partly due to being a single parent. My flat is one of the ahem less desirable properties in my area. I would dearly like to have a secure home and a garden for my dc, but the only way I am likely to achieve this is if I am lucky enough to inherit.
The exorbitant cost of housing is mainly driven by an acute shortage of stock. Developers frequently put forward planning applications to build new homes in my area, but without fail, residents form protest groups to fight the proposals tooth and nail. Many applications are ultimately refused or watered down due to local opposition.
AIBU to think that this is selfish? Most of the protesters are fortunate enough to own their own home in a nice area, and it seems that they wish to deny this privilege to other people. Do they just not care that other people's lives are blighted by the housing crisis, as long as they are not inconvenienced? I feel that they are motivated purely by self-interest; does anyone have any other convincing arguments?

There is an enormous stock of empty property in need of complete renovation. The sad reality is developers won't touch them because they have to pay VAT at 20% on the renovations costs of existing property but new builds are VAT free. Why on earth would anyone bother take on a project with a 20% lower profit margin. It makes no commercial sense.

Until something is done to level the playing field developers will continue to favour green field sites, and large empty properties suitable for conversion to flats will be left empty. It is not uncommon for councils to offer large empty city centre buildings to developers for £1, and still they turn them down as the profits aren't there.

Margaret
Debating future populations is a distraction in this particular discussion.
It's a discussion we need to have, along with how to support the elderly population. In all seriousness, population increase is a Ponzi scheme: at some point, the population of the globe will plateau and (with any luck, for the sake of global warming/wildlife/resources) start to fall. We've got to discuss it. Preferably now.

In my local area, we have absorbed a significant increase in population, in converted industrial buildings. That was population increase in the 'right place', to use your terminology. The plans to build all over Grade A land are not in the 'right place'. Not when there is brownfield land in the area.

Hyacinth, its worth objecting. I've just co-ordinated my third successful campaign in eighteen months. Co-ordinate, get people to object in writing on the local authority website, get an action group together and attend local council planning meetings to see the grounds on which things are passed or refused, get your parish council or equivalent on board, and go and speak at the planning meeting.

Unfortunately, there is a presumption in favour of development that barely nods at sustainability at the moment, no matter how laughable and cynical some fatcat developer's gestures towards affordable housing, mitigating environmental impact etc. The kind of affordable housing the area desperately needs is not of the slightest interest to developers as it's not profitable enough.

I think the people who are calling the rest of us NIMBYS have never been subject to a planning application next to their house.

Because of course, you too, would want to make your life harder by having fewer school places, fewer opportunities to get a doctor's appointment within a reasonable timeframe, a harder commute, not getting a seat on the train, local woodlands being destroyed.

At the end of the day, that is the reality for the rest of us. Developer don't give a shiny shit about improving facilities, infrastructure or destroying natural habitats.

lumela great, let's discuss it. At the same time as we build a lot of new houses for the current population.

Clearly the amenities point is a chicken and egg situation.

There simply aren't half empty schools and unsubscribed GP clinics waiting for a development to happen.

Amenities will catch up. Yes, there'll be short term pain, but ultimately people need homes so a certain amount of getting over yourself will need to be done.

Can I just pipe up with a slightly different view of the same argument?
I have just moved to one of these new build estates that you speak of.

I'm very lucky, the house is gorgeous. The transport links are good. The house is affordable (ish! High cost for the area but much cheaper than the area I just left!)

So, I have recently found that, this little estate 280 houses, (there will be a further 90 flats to go up) which is the 2nd phase of a 3rd phase build project (first phase 300 luxury apartments and around 100 houses, all in all has put so much pressure on the local services, no schools, shops or drs surgery have been built to go with these additional houses.

I didn't consider these things until it came to trying to change a drs surgery, dentists and school.

As it turns out, the closest school with places is two miles away, and I was told by the reception ladies in the school, ah! We've a few kids from that estate, I think we've even got a few from your road.

It's not always just the house, it's the local services that the community requires not being enjoyed ugh to with.stand the extra strain.

I don't believe that everyone else bjects for this reason though.

Margaret. I said they are mostly holiday homes and investment properties. The sneaky bastards have gotten around the need to make affordable homes for young families by making the affordable homes retirement properties. So it probably won't affect the school that much but the GPs is in for a rinsing.

My point is that the homes aren't being built where they are needed or for whom they are needed. They are being built to maximise profit. People would get so angry if the development was at all proportionate. How is tripling the size of a small village in one fell swoop helpful to anyone but the developers?

Also, you might be interested to know that the starting price in the new properties is £350,000. Which sounds cheap if you are coming from Londonbut is totally unaffordable for anyone actually from the village or wanting to work here (considering the job prospects are farming/pub work/fine art appraiser.

There is a shortage of school places nationally, same with hospitals, GP etc. No one wants it in their area, someone else is expected to deal with it.
The same number of people will exist, new housing or not.

Sadly, I agree with the poster who says that it is worth campaigning, the most voiciferous near me are all employing QCs at several hundred pounds an hour. All paid for by locals who agree that there is a housing need but not near them.

Dolly, what about some consideration for the hundreds of thousands who won't ever own their own home because they're priced out due to lack of supply?

harderandharder2breathe
Yanbu OP and I love reading everyone's "I'm not a nimby BUT" posts

This is where Horley's new business park is due to be

MiL lives in very desirable area of the SW. The village is dying because the silly old goats who bought their enormous houses 40 years ago for a pittance keep protesting/enlisting the parish council to block planning.

Self same silly old goats can't understand why their Drs surgery/library/chemist/pub and village store have shut and why all the kids are now bussed out of the village because the school's gone.

I'll GYAC, if you drive a car you're a hypocrite to moan about traffic. If you live in a house you already ruin someones view.

Oh, don't worry, Margaret: those houses are being built. Mostly on good quality agricultural land which we need to feed ourselves.

So... what are we going to do about our ageing population? Once upon a time, we had a lot of dependent children. We coped then. I'm trying to find charts showing the dependency ratio in the UK over the decades (back to the 1930s), but clearly my google skills are not up to the mark.

LaurieMarlow
Clearly the amenities point is a chicken and egg situation.

This is a BS statement, the amenities should be planned in to the build and be part of the application.

There should be no "pain" involved at all.

I'm not saying don't build anywhere! I'm saying a bit more thought needs to be given to where and the existing/future infrastructure. That is what is not happening at the moment.

An estate went up recently which is opposite a National Trust park. It was a brownfield site (a former factory). We also have a couple of former MOD sites being developed locally.

I live in a small village which when you check Rightmove, lovely houses of all sizes stay on sale for months on end. Same for rental properties. There just isn't the demand here.

An application was put in to build 6 new properties at the end of my road which backs onto AONB land. Behind our houses is a stream. The new houses would have a detrimental effect on the stream and all properties downstream as it is already liable to flooding and yet the plans for the new houses state surface run off, drainage etc will be routed into the stream.

So 6 houses to be built outside the envelope of a village which needs no new properties as the demand isn't there, backing up onto AONB land, ruining habitats (it's a known local haven). Yes we objected to it and there has been strong local opposition. There are several sites within the village that have dilapidated buildings on that could do with rejuvenation so it makes no sense to develop on green belt land.

Our local council has to build a specified number of homes over the coming years, but this isn't the way. Not all cases are straightforward and I don't think you can call people who object selfish.

On the other hand, the area we lived in before was highly desirable and just as we moved away a large development was just getting underway with 100s of new houses and flats. It made sense and I had no objections to it (before we even knew we were moving). I think a degree of common sense and rationality is required. I absolutely think more homes are needed, but developing existing sites that are dilapidated should be the first way of doing it. Maybe it's more expensive though, I don't know.

I'm waffling but really I guess I'm a bit of a fence sitter. Oh and as far as I know, the 6 houses by me will be going ahead, well 5 will, the 6th was too visible from the AONB belt so plans have been revised.

A little bit outing to anyone local, but one of the objections on the planning site was 'you can't build here dude'.

I live in a Leicestershire village, the sort of place estate agents describe as "highly sought after". We have a large amount of development in the local area, new estates are springing up everywhere, all on greenfield sites, of course.

Meanwhile, down the road in Leicester itself, there are hundreds of acres of post-industrial brownfield land standing empty and unused. It is completely ridiculous that the authorities have not insisted that this land be developed before yet more identikit Barrett homes are built out of town.

I agree that Britain has a housing crisis, exacerbated by very high levels of immigration, and that tens of thousands of homes are desperately needed, and that building those homes would be good for our economy, but let's build them in the right place.

In the village I now live in, we have one new development that is nearly complete, and another one about to start construction, plus a third just outside the bounds of the village.

As other posters have said, we are not at all sure that the local roads will be able to take the extra traffic, and we doubt that the developers are being made to do anything to ensure that the extra inhabitants in the village don't put strain on a school system that is already at capacity.

Too often these developments are plonked down with little or no provision made to ensure local services can cope with the influx. And people are surprised when this causes anger.

We have lots of new built estates in our area... the problems are:

• not enough school places, resulting in school bus services to next town for secondary schools
• primary school: DD was squeezed into a class room with 29 children that was intended for 20.
• 8week wait for an routine appointment with my GP
• dentist impossible
• I have been discharged 1hour after giving birth with appointment for next day to check baby over
• some of the new housing is built on flood plains .... they built a "barrier" so the water moves further down the river...
• our town is already poor with low paid warehouse jobs...

Just a few things to consider when opposition against housing development is raised.

I don't oppose new housing estates, I just wish developers would be made to help with building an infrastructure. Like helping to build a new school, surgery, playgrounds.... and check out how the new home owners will be paying for their overpriced homes.

I think the people who are calling the rest of us NIMBYS have never been subject to a planning application next to their house

Just to be clear - as I've been one of the most vocal anti-NIMBYs on this thread - I live (and own a house) in a south-east commuter town which is currently having huge amounts of new housing built. I do worry about both my house price and local resources, but I then try and be a bit less selfish, and also remember that I'm sure some people didn't want my (1960s) house built, but I'm glad it, and the rest of the estate, is there now.

Where I live a local developer built a large estate some years back which had a condition with it that they had to build a link road in place of a little country lane across fields to link that end of town to the larger roads. They didn't do it and have since blamed everybody else including the local council and the government. Despite this they keep applying and getting approval to build more and more houses

A second huge estate is being built on an area sandwiched between an A road and a railway line so the only possible entrance and exit is onto that road which is already congested and frequently queued up. There is a new school planned but the hospital already cannot cope and local GPs and dentists are swamped

Developers should be told where houses are needed, not allowed to cherry pick the most profitable sites, which will always be in lovely country areas around National Parks or in London. There's a social cleansing going on in my village. Pretty soon you'll have to be hugely wealthy to afford to live here.

This is what one of my local groups has put up to stop 'incomers'

'you lot coming here' charming

Lots of NIMBYS in the area my parents live in. Several large developments have been stopped in the 15 years they've lived there however a few have gotten through. It's funny though that all their anger is directed towards the developers and not the lord who inherited the majority of the farmland in the area who sold off the land to the developers to fund his lifestyle. He's a "salt of the earth" type though so can do no wrong .

I get why people object and think there are a lot of valid reasons to do so pointed out on this thread. I still feel houses need to be built though. Obviously there isn't a simple answer.