To sell our house because of new developments

[Yorkie88]

We love our house and have only been here a few years. It's a great location for school, work and I think we got a bargain.

However we are in the countryside and there are plans to build 400 houses behind us and 300 houses in front of us. Planning permission not applied for yet but it feels inevitable. Big companies. Rubbish council.

Is it unreasonable to sell quickly? I feel bad selling a house that us surrounded by countryside with the knowledge that it will become surrounded by houses in years

Also is it even OK to be upset about housing developments? People need homes. But the thought of living in the middle of two huge building sites isn't great

With the current inflation/COL issue...is it a stupid idea to move? I don't really understand the implications but houses seem v expensive

@TaranThePigKeeper your post is really interesting. Our Labour council met their 5 year plan and then had it increased massively by central gov, while nearby Conservative councils have not had theirs increased. The local planning committee voted against a second proposed development on green belt land in our area but it has been approved by central gov. Our local planning committee and local council are completely powerless against developers building houses (that are not classed as affordable in this area) on green belt land.

Well, yes, there are circumstances where this can happen, though it’s rare - the relevant govt dept (known this week as Levelling up and Communities) can ‘call in’ plans for large developments, which essentially overrides the usual delegated system and allows them to take an executive decision. But it should be rare. I was describing the usual process you can expect to encounter.

I’ve lived in a building site since 2014. Apart from a brief time when four houses were built across the road, it hasn’t been horribly noisy. The most irritating thing has been subcontractor’s vehicles parking inconsiderately, because they aren’t blue to walk a few yards with their tools.

My son lives in a cul de sac. He comments on how quiet it is where we are. I’ve been out for a walk this afternoon, round the lake which is a five minute stroll away. I’ve watched the ducks fishing for food and seen the swans who have returned and have five cygnets.

If it's just local gossip then the solicitor will not find out about it as part of the conveyancing due-diligence process. She will only be searching official registers and until there's an application nothing will come up.

I would definitely sell up now.

@TaranThePigKeeper The neighbour tells me our local council has been forced to hand planning decisions to DCLG (is that what they're called nowadays?) as they've messed up so many decisions? Can that be right?

50% of respondents say to sell up and 50% say I sound mad for even considering it 😂

Yes, I suppose so - DCLG (now levelling up and messing about, or whatever) delegates these powers to LPAs, so they can also take them back, in theory. There used to be regional government offices which could carry out some functions like this when needed - including determining planning applications made by local authorities relating to their own building stock, so that the LPA wasn’t in a position of determining its own applications (which is never a good look, but is what happens under the current system). But those functions disappeared under austerity when the public sector was cut back. Sometimes call in decisions are made for good planning reasons, but obviously a government minister can also make them for political reasons, which brings national politics into a decision making process which is intended to be about local democracy, and is bound by legislation and guidance to try to ensure that decisions are taken within an impartial framework. It’s not as pure and simple as that in practice, but that’s the broad theory.

Will where you move to be better than where you are post-development? It sounds like you’ll be moving somewhere much smaller etc. Are you sure you actually want to do this, rather than are just gutted about development plans? IE are you moving to somewhere better suited than if you just stayed put, development and all?

Most edge-if-village locations are particularly vulnerable to this sort of issue,.

There's been noting added to my village. The primary school can't cope, the single shop is struggling to keep up, people on the new estate are complaining about not being able to get a GP or other services. It's grim.

I would look at who is building and what they are building. We live near two sites one is gleeson affordable homes who are the messiest builders ever. The other is a David Wilson site and you wouldn't know it's there if it wasn't for the signs. Around a 1000 new homes have been built around our town in the last 5yrs honestly the town has coped much better than anyone would have predicted

Are the developments allocated in the local plan? If so then they'll most lovely happen, if not it's more of a gamble. It's ok not wanting to live between two building sites, whilst still acknowledging people need homes. That's just human emotion.

most likely happen (where is that bloody edit button)

Move to a smaller house then with a potentially higher mortgage. I get not wanting to live somewhere with bad infrastructure, but what choice do you really have? You'll remain in an area with bad infrastructure, but be in a smaller house. That's not sensible.

Get a valuation and see where you stand. That's all you can do at the min?