That people object to council plans for selfish and uninformed reasons

[Bamboozle123]

I live in a village which has doubled in size over the last 5 years (still pretty small tbh).

It is well located, 5 miles from a major town and has potentially good public transport links but with really low service levels (hourly trains, no buses on a Sunday sort of thing). There are few amenities here - no petrol garage, supermarket, pub, cafe but does have a few corner shops and a primary school. Loads and loads of countryside and good walking.

The council plans to create loads more houses along the main road here, probably doubling the village in size again.

I'm really surprised that so many locals are objecting for what seem to be really weak reasons - e.g. don't support compulsory purchase of farmland, the village is "already too big".

Perhaps they are just going through the change curve but I don't see how they can't see the benefits in improving the amenities and services, providing more affordable housing in an area that desperately needs it, whilst still retaining almost all the countryside.

So AIBU to think they are being blinkered / selfish and actually this is a scheme for the greater good whilst also benefitting us residents.

and there is affordable housing going begging in some places, but no jobs to support it - because everything in the UK is ridiculously over focused on the South East of England.

NIMBY is such a ridiculous term. No-one is going to take an interest in my back yard like I do - it's just a stupid ill-considered insult.
In fact in my area we are bearing the brunt of local politicians dumping the new estates here so they aren't in their back yard.

Just more backhanders for the planning dept.
I don't believe our local planners are corrupt - they are just working in a ridiculous framework created by the government in which their job is to allow large housing developers to do whatever the fuck they like whilst pretending there is some regulation when there really isn't.

Planners have to write reams and reams of impenetrable arcane jargon designed to make it impossible to understand by anyone except planners so that there is an illusion they are doing something.

The council plans to create loads more houses along the main road here, probably doubling the village in size again.

Are you sure it is the council proposing this? Developers often come up with speculative schemes for public consultation which later get modified or rejected. Is there a Local Plan designating the area for housing? Developers are charged CIL (Community Infrastructure Levy) as a contribution towards upgrading local amenities and may include some additional facilities as part of their plans, although these are often at a late stage of development. Payments are released in stages depending on progress . CIL is used by the Local Council, and Village Council if there is one, to spend on all kinds of purposes including community buildings, play areas, parking, health centres, road safety.

We are in weird position of also not objecting to a big local development plan. We will lose a nice view & our country lane will swap for big road, & we still can't object. When we bought at edge of this urban area we thought of course future development will happen here. We are campaigning hard for good cycle & pedestrian paths; I can focus energy on those. Even though we will move away before it all happens...

I'm a little confused about "no new housing without more infrastructure" objections. I hear this a lot locally, but.. the infrastructure growth will never precede new residents, and everything is going to max out before any capacity increases (no more class sizes 22-26).

If the capacity was fixed at 100k school places for existing 95k kids, & then 10k more kids suddenly need school places then the whole system will be over capacity regardless of where those new kids are; they are going to overcrowd somewhere. May as well be here.

FWIW, DH & are looking to strongly downsize. Meanwhile our neighbours are all 1-2 people living in 4 bed houses, their kids long ago moved away. Who else is doing their bit to free up housing stock?

A lot of the problems are already well documented across the world now, the no new infrastructure/schools argument is as tired as 'just build on brown belt'.

The opposition is still there if the infrastructure and schools where to be built first, it has been tried and tested, because nobody wants to live near a school or build a school where they take their dog for a walk, the road improvements would mean it causes problems etc etc, much needed ring roads that have been needed for multiple towns and cities over the past decades have been hamstrung

The issue is that people are all for the generic feel good policies until it hits them personally.

One thing on Social media for the likes, and winning of arguments against the bad guys, but when it becomes a reality then there is caveats.

Nobody wants 100 houses built in their backyard whether they live in a big city, a town, a village or a tiny hamlet.

So yes you might have moved to a village for peace and quiet but if you’re living in a city (maybe not through choice..) and you have a tiny patch of green space near you and they decide to build yet more houses on there, then that could have a huge impact on your quality of life.

Every place needs to take their quota of new homes. Why should villages be exempt? Your house was a field once too.

I live in a market town with not enough amenities to go around. I don’t want a load more people moving here but I accept that if my kids want to stay here when they grow up, fields are going to have to be built on.

The real issue is this government who refuse to give councils real power to fight developers who renege on S106 agreements and who use viability assessments to wriggle out of providing a proportion of ‘affordable’ homes in each development.

Where I live they keep building massive developments but nothing is ever done with infrastructure, so yes people start to get pissed off with worsening traffic, no parking (due to ridiculous planning rules that don't allow for enough parking on new developments even though public transport is shit around here and most people have to travel to other bigger towns get to work so 'encouraging walking and cycling' is never going to work), no school places, and increasing pressures on already hard to get GP appointments

Not to mention that people tend to move to areas like you describe because that is exactly the type of place they want to live, not a much bigger village or small town

Intersting comparison thread

www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4719386-how-are-we-paying-to-house-asylum-seekers

Where we are they built a 400 house development on a road, which has a weak bridge (only one car at a time) on it.

This road is a nightmare at the best of times with huge queues at rush hour, so they were supposed to sort that out.

Of course they never did (suspect they did the surveys during lockdown and argued that there wasn't enough traffic to warrant it) , they put a roundabout at the other end but the end with the bridge is still the same as it ever was

YABU

Some people like living in a small village, 5 miles from a town. They don't mind not having (or even don't want) your list if 'amenities' if you do, you should move to somewhere that already has them.

it's hilarious that you think new build estates means additional amenities.

I liked our village, until they built two huge housing estates & not so much as a new corner shop, let alone Drs, post office, schools. It's technically still a village, just a bloody over crowded one now!

of course the existing houses are worth less as it's lost its charm, gained shoddily build new houses & now has 'issues' (too much traffic, not enough Drs, too many teenagers with nothing to do except cause trouble & take over the kids play park!

maybe I'm a nimby, but I chose to live here because it was a village with lots of green space & farming land. I wanted cows & sheep as neighbours!!! There are plenty of places in the U.K. that need regenerating & housing stock made nice or flattened & new houses built.

My previously tiny fairly rural estate has grown in size massively in recent years. Just like other posters have said the infrastructure and amenities haven't changed at all.

It's a ballache getting a doctors appointment you can't park anywhere near the little Tesco and school places have became very competitive. The worst thing imo is we have this tiny roundabout that now deals with a huge amount of traffic. It desperately needs changing - there have been two fatal accidents on it - but it doesn't look like it's happening.

7 years ago we brought a house, checked the planning zones etc and paid a premium for the views. That was actually the thing that swayed us. Now I have a 6 story apartment next door and might be surrounded by more in the future, and not only lose my views but any sunlight! Those are the breaks, but it's devastating as our house has dramatically dropped in value as well. If we had realised this would happen we never would have brought this house.
I can see the same if you buy in a village, you buy it because you want that 'lifestyle'.
I think in 100 years people will realise that planning should have been better thought out when all we are surrounded by is these box houses. But who knows, maybe also no one will care. Time will tell 🤷🏼‍♀️

This. It's stupid and simplistic to just say people are being NIMBYs

But that’s the problem houses needed to be built and obviously people who it affects don’t want it but then there is never a solution to the problem

Those that bought wanted the same as you the village feel.
I think MN would have crashed had it been about in the 60s when house building was much more than now. Most houses will have been green fields at one point, the problem to some isn't those it's the ones afterwards.

It's difficult. We obviously need more housing. But it really ought to be planned better with proper infrastructure.
There has to be some sacrifice I think. People need places to live. One person's desire to live in a peaceful village doesn't trump someone else need for a home. And lack of infrastructure is the fault of the government, not housing developments. I don't think we have half empty schools anywhere in the country, so this problem already existed, it's just moving to where the new houses are.
Personally I'd like to see better flats being built. Nice mid rises with pleasant communal gardens, soundproofing, parking etc. Urban redevelopment. Doughnutting is a huge problem with these new housing estates.

I have repeatedly said - I don't object to new houses. But massive new estates with no attendant provision worsens the quality of life for all - who would want that?

Nobody but it’s always backwards thinking and gentrification

You are completely neglecting to consider that a small village is a community, the nature of which might completely change if it doubles in size overnight. The scale of development is appropriate for an urban place but not for a village, which naturally develop slowly and organically.

Our in area people who had just moved into new build houses in a previously ti y village are the biggest objectors to more houses being built. Because they don’t want the village to be too large apparently (nothing to do with affordable/social housing being built). The mind boggles

@woodhill I agree that non doms are not my ideal NDNs but I seriously doubt they are going to outbid on a two up two down cottage in a village near Plymouth. Padstow is 40 miles (an hour by car) away, in a different, more gilded world. The two don't mix, at all.

This is a good point - many objections to one of our recent 200+ house estates came from people in the 2 year old estate right next to it - one woman claimed the developer had told them no new houses would be built next to their estate.

People think they can make any objection they like and it will carry weight. This isn't the case, whilst they can submit or voice objections, only specific grounds for objection would be considered.

So 'I don't like it' wouldn't be considered.

'This will affect xyz species of wild flower/animal that lives on that bit of land' or 'this will increase traffic on a stretch of road that cannot accomodate the traffic it already sees'... (for example) could be.