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.

You’d have to kill me and animate my corpse before I’d agree to compulsory purchase of farmland.
Yes, we need more affordable housing. But there are plenty of brownfield sites to build social housing on, which is what we really need, and I don’t see any justification, either personally or on a societal level, to destroy the countryside with shitty overpriced executive shoeboxes and the people that often come with them.

I'm definitely a bit of a YIMBY (Yes, in my back yard) - sometimes there are good reasons to object but a lot of the time people just don't want anything to change and they don't want the disruption of building next to them and I think the Brits are a bit over-obssessed with being 'overlooked' when it really doesn't matter that much.

We need more housing, and it has to go somewhere but people tend to try to find reasons to say something's 'out of character' or, in London, where I am 'what about parking?' despite the fact I think that will be less and less of an issue in London as time goes on. We live opposite the back of some shops that I am sure will be redeveloped into flats before we move out of this house, and doubtless everyone on the street will object, without thinking of the benefits. Currently, the back of the shops is a bit of an eyesore and attracts flytipping, for example - flats would actually make the top of the street much nicer. And I say this as someone whose house would be 'overlooked' by flats there and who would have to put up with the building noise, but we need more housing, and sometimes it has to go next to where we live.

I think housing should be led by communities. In a village near me they are currently building 10 HA houses. This is a number that is proportionate to the size of the village, which is tiny. The school has space for a few extra kids and crucially, the parish council invited the housing association in on behalf of residents who were concerned that locals were being priced out of the village. The development was designed in consultation with the community, most of whom were in favour. Ideal outcome for all.

Farmland doesn't generally need to be subject to compulsory purchase for new housing estates. Around here the owner of the farmland is actively trying to sell as much as possible to developers.

Well, we need more homes, but homes that are actually affordable on NMW; to house all the people, families, that carry out these necessary employments (eg: Social Carers, Cleaners, etc).

Yeah, yeah I know all the "council houses got sold under Thatcher", etc but no good blaming a dead woman, we are where we are. And leaving it to the Planning System, under any colour of Govt hasn't worked for a long time now has it?

The last thing that worked was the post-WW2 New Towns that included the necessary infrastructure for communities; and starting previously, the slum-clearances that created the council houses on the outskirts of every village, town and city. Well built housing that is quite sought after today.

All new developments over 6 properties should be 90% social housing, with a little section for private homes. It's not re-inventing the wheel to build social housing estates, for many years it was thought very necessary.

@Kinnorafron I’d say it was about 50/50 round here. The last lot was so badly planned even the council objected!

My opinion is that the main way to get this to happen is to campaign for the council to do this, rather than outright objecting to the plans which will go through anyway. The most effective way to get a lot of improvements is to object to the plans and get the improvements written in as a condition to the planning permission. Relatively few developments get stopped, but a great many are improved through the planning consultation process.

People sneer at NIMBYs, but how many times have you looked at a development and thought “I wouldn’t like to live in one of those houses next to it, I’d better object on their behalf”. If something is going to have a grave effect on your quality of life, the only person who will complain is you.

I get this from my sister all the time because of the new building developments in her village/small town - and yes, there is new infrastructure as well as houses. Last rant she made, I said I expected people probably objected to the development that she lives on, now about 30 years old, she moved there (four bedroomed house for one person) about five years ago.

I live in central London, the population of my borough has more than doubled since I moved here, and another 40% planned -I'm not complaining about that, but when I point it out to her, she can't see any comparison?!

But you live in Central London and she lives in a Village. Surely you can see why she might be annoyed?? What is the opposite of NIMBY?

I live in a small village. When I bought my house, there were 400 properties in my village, 1 small shop, 1 pub, 1 primary school and 1 small nursery.
I chose to buy here because I didn't want to live in an urban sprawl.
Now, 30 years later, there are over 4500 properties and building continues.
Much of the farmland has been sold to developers to develop plots of properties with inadequate parking, narrow roads, the school has been extended and still isn't large enough, so primary school children need to be transported to other areas, all more than 5 miles away to go to school.
Despite all of the promises, we still only have 1 small shop, 1 pub, 1 small nursery and 1 primary school.

Many people who have moved into the new properties claim they bought them because they wanted to live in a village, surrounded by countryside, countryside that is being developed on to build more and more properties.

FWIW, I believe we could build on every available square inch and we would STILL have a housing crisis. Perhaps some people don't want to wait until every piece of land has been built on to accept that this doesn't solve the housing crisis.

I'm led to believe that much of London has now run out of space to build on, and the same will happen in the SE.

People tend to fall into one of two camps. Those for and those against.
Neither wants their minds changed, only for people to see they are right.

I also think most people who moved to a village do accept that there will be more properties built, but feel there should be a limit to how many more.
Going from 400 properties to 4500+ and still growing, I ask myself, at what point has my village 'done its bit' for the housing crisis?

I line in a village that will probably soon connect up to next village due to housing development.
It’s lack of infrastructure like drs, schools.
I know when I checked the village school 15 intake was considered fine because the area overall had capacity. But if you build estates around an outstanding primary people want children to walk to village school not one several miles drive away down country lanes. Village school now been expanded.
No gp at all despite thousands of new people.

In my area extra building of houses etc has caused flooding of the existing houses.
It's pretty heartbreaking for those who's houses now get regularly flooded, (not mine so far, but it's been very close!) with the council and the water company passing the blame back and forth.

The resident who have lived in the area decades and never dreamed of having flooding in their houses, which started the year the development was built know there is a connection and the council shouldn't have agreed planning permission without ensuring the correct surveys and infrastructure would be in place.

It's one of the reasonsI would now be wary of a new housing development being built near me, before the flooding it wouldn't have crossed my mind.

With the crazy weather patterns which are sadly becoming normal due to climate change, flooding is going to be much more prevalent in the UK and we need to build with that in mind.

I'm aware that it's not just London and the SE that have taken their share of housing developments (my sister has many in Cornwall and I've seen the same in the Cotswolds).

But I'd say that the high density of existing population in parts of the SE makes it extremely difficult to absorb the planned large-scale additions. We have good public transport (we're on the Tube) but the roads still can't cope with the current volume of traffic.

Whereas my brother lives in a fairly deprived area of Yorkshire and he'd like to see redevelopment as some of the buildings are apparently dire. While there's a concentration of jobs near us, remote working presumably reduces the need to focus on the SE somewhat? Plus it costs over a million to buy a four bed semi here so i doubt it will help much with affordability long-term.

So no, I don't want to see green belt being built on and if that makes me a NIMBY, so be it. Our local area is turning into a concrete jungle and, as I mentioned earlier, air quality already fails the minimum standards. It's not selfish to want the odd pocket of green where people can walk and the trees improve the air quality.

Good point about flooding. Nearby village flooded badly a few years back (national news level flood) one of fields under many feet under water now says coming soon Redrow Houses! The water coming off hills needs to go somewhere.

The same where I live. The farmers can't wait to sell to the developers. Land sales to developers is easier and/or more lucrative than arable farming.

Anyone buying in a village 5 miles from a major town and expecting it to be preserved in aspic is daft.

Hundreds of thousands of homes are needed and 5 miles from a major town is a good location.

I live in a small village and grew up in a small village, I tried living in a city once and it had a horrible effect on my mental health I was never as glad to move back to a village. I don’t care how selfish it makes me I chose to live somewhere small and don’t expect it to be turned into a town.

it’s all fine and well saying build more surgeries etc good luck getting the GPs to staff them, the surgery I work in has been looking for gps to replace the ones who retired for nearly.a year now with no interest

there are enough empty properties, buildings, shops etc that should be looked at to tackle the housing crisis first before just firing up 1000s more houses on green sites

I used to work in the industry.
I cannot count the number of times these developers have wriggled out of their obligations to provide amenities that were part of the original planning permission. We end up with village schools that can only take half the children in the village so the rest have to be driven miles to other schools, no other amenities nearby so again they have to be driven to because the public transport is inadequate.
This is not progress, its madness and only benefits the developer.

Yes and the flooding factor

Plus the government keeps talking about climate change and not driving etc

Compulsory purchase of farmland to build house on? I didn't know that was even happening. That's reason enough to object.

I live in a similar sounding village, hundreds of houses have been built, hundreds more in planning and none of the amenities have appeared 🙄. No new doctors, dentists or schools, just a 2 hour gridlock on the roads twice a day.

We were promised a new secondary school opening in 2020, it's 2023 and the location hasn't even been agreed. It was intended for my dd's year group to be the first intake, at this rate she will have left school before the building starts.

When our (admittedly very old and small) station was re-developed we were told there would be a shopping piazza the size of a Wimbledon tennis court and a river walkway. What we got was a station forecourt the size of a tennis court, M&S Food, Sainsbury's Express and Puccino's. As for the walkway, the local joke was that the planners confused millimetres with feet and thought they were looking at another South Bank. Guess what, no walkway. Just lots of nice expensive flats over the station for the developer to sell, and increased traffic on an already gridlocked main road.

Yes massive housing development over 20 yrs ago on former asylum site. More and more houses added and still being added but no primary school that was on plans?! Village primary too small and can’t expand as no room. Kids driven miles to school. I went to exhibit about asylum and it stuck me how self contained it was - school, gym, theatre, butchers, shop, railway station etc all there - now it’s just houses on site and people drive to access anything.

Isn't there a national shortage of GPs, teachers, dentists?

Even if sparkly new buildings were created there literally are no professionals to staff them.