Really!? Gove!? and a sensible suggestion!? Inner city housing

[orangeleavesinautumn]

Gove appears to be making the first sensible suggestion of his career - more housing in inner cities, relaxing planning laws to allow this to happen.

This is desperately needed - we are in a vicious circle of needing parking because people can't live close to where they work, then people not being able to live close to where they work because so much space is needed for parking....

We need to get out of this, we need to put an end to the culture of driving in to work, and get rid of the inner city car parks, and put the land to better use.

We also need to get rid of the on street parking, and the awful concreting over of grass to park on front gardens, and start to scale back on the need and expectations of car ownership altogether.

More housing where it is actually needed is the first steps towards that - decades late, but better than nothing

I’ll probably horrify a lot of people on here by saying that Gove has had a lot of sensible ideas in his career, IMO. I don’t agree with all his ideas re education and I get he isn’t popular with a lot of teachers. However, the shift back towards a knowledge-focused curriculum was actually really good and necessary, and Gove also stayed the course and continued the push towards proper phonics teaching, which we are now benefiting from (see PIRLS results recently).

Totally agree with this idea of his. I live outside the UK in a central area with good PT and do not have a car (and yes, I have two children). It’s absolutely not the lifestyle for everyone, but some of us like this way of life and thrive this way - why not expand the range of housing available and create more options for more types of people?

My town is in rhe grip of empty huge offices spaces and building I Gren belt.

I have got family in a northern city. Within about 30 miles there are 3 universities, a huge teaching hospital and a couple of DGHs, several big shopping centres, national parks, theatres and cinemas, good transport networks, cinemas, restaurants. There are large numbers of empty office blocks and derelict buildings. Lots of scope for development on brownfield sites. Some of these buildings have been empty for decades. There have been some good renovation projects, but there could be so much more. I would much rather see investment in those buildings than ugly new estates built along the edge of the motorway.

As long as it is proper affordable housing and not luxury apartments selling for millions - then I am all for it!

Well they're already building absolutely loads of flats right in the centre of my city, or within less than a mile of it. Many of them on complexes that includes a city park, shops and an events space.

Not sure if the flats are family sized, or affordable to people on average incomes though.

Well, fine, but then we're going to need walkable schools. All the ones here are in the middle of suburban estates, or (secondaries) in the middle of nowhere to give space for playing fields.

It's really on focusing on a small amount of the housing issue.

You'd make much more impact on ending short term holiday lets (Air BnB and the like) and ending any more second homes. Secondly, ending the requirement it seems for all small scale city/town development (20 or fewer dwellings) to include retail or commercial property.

I'm not keen on abandoning planning permission being required- I'd prefer a requirement that it must be granted unless certain conditions are not met, the burden of proof being that they are not.

Finally, if the government processed asylum claims promptly, a lot of hotel space would be freed which could replace the holiday lets I referred to above, and/or provide housing.

This is where there needs to be strict rules enforced. Unfortunately there is a lot of corruption and incompetence in planning. Building firms should be heavily fined if they don't fulfil the social housing part of their contracts. They get away with far too much.
And we should stop foreign investors buying up loads of properties and leaving them empty. In other countries this is against the law and strictly enforced.

You always hear people trotting out “relax planning laws!” but what planning laws do you think need to be relaxed? The main planning requirement that tends to halt a new developmental is the affordable housing criteria, so I’m not sure how removing that really helps.
Lots and lots of things are built in city centres, there are loads of flats. What we don’t need are slum developments.

Yes to restricting foreign investors as well.

And also as per another PP, all these new homes should not be able to become 2nd homes or holiday lets etc. They should be for people to actually live in!

And yes- Gove will also need to address all the infrastructure - Dr's, Schools, parks etc.

Its a nice idea - I can't see it happening. Sigh.

Not sure if the flats are family sized, or affordable to people on average incomes though.

Yes, this is an issue. All very well throwing up masses of 1 or 2 bed “luxury” flats with open plan living areas that are only affordable to young professional couples with double incomes and no childcare costs, but where do people go for the next stages of their lives? Lots of people are happy to raise their families in densely populated, walkable urban areas, but often the housing stock is not suitable.

Strong disagree. Getting wrapped up in endless gate keeping about “housing has to be affordable” “housing has to be this” “housing has to be that” is how you end up with nothing being built, which is the mess that the UK is currently in. The UK has already wasted decades stuck in these circular arguments while building next to nothing.

In Tokyo, where I live, they’ve just built A LOT instead of worrying about, is it affordable/luxury/social housing, or whatever. The ultimate long-term result is more affordable housing for everyone, because even building “luxury” housing eventually exerts downward pressure on prices for everyone.

https://takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/building-luxury-homes-for-millionaires

There would be less of a problem if there wasn’t such a British obsession around big houses over practical apartments and if more people’s aspirations and expectations around housing were more realistic. You only have to read an MN property thread to realise that what too many British people think should be the norm for every family is a detached house with two reception rooms, upstairs and downstairs bathrooms and toilets and en-suites aplenty, a big kitchen diner, enough bedrooms to have one for each child and one kept solely for occasional guests, a huge back as well as landed frontage, and off-street parking for three cars. But you can’t build those for everyone who wants them either cheaply or on small plots of land or on urban brownfield sites.

I think you're being very naive, you're seriously suggesting that people should be dependent on public transport?.

Look at the train strikes for an idea on the reality of that.

I live in a city and I won't be giving up my car.

You might like the idea of being squeezed into a sardine tin of a flat (because that's what these "homes" will be) but I don't.

It will create huge ghettos.

The solution is for people to stop having children. Reduce the population and you reduce the pollution.

Just Stop Oil should be, Just Stop Children.

There's a middle ground that's not being met though. We fortunately live in a flat built in the 70s. Even the smallest bedroom is big enough for a single bed, wardrobe and chest of drawers. I'd love to have a garden etc but we are comfortably housed beyond that. There are 3 built in storage cupboards and room for normal furniture options.

Modern apartments and houses built from the 90s onwards have an atrociously small living footprint. No storage options, absolutely tiny room measurements where a 'bedroom' can't actually fit a normal single bed. This places most "2 bedroom" properties firmly in the category of only being suitable for a couple with the 2nd room used as a study/office/wardrobe. Meaning finding a family home even 2 adults and 1 child becomes even more competitive.

Something key that needs to happen in UK building regs is increasing the minimum size that can be called a 'bedroom' and making it mandatory to have a set amount of storage space per square meter of living space. This needs to happen across houses and apartments, so if someone is renting/buying a 2 bedroom flat, they are getting 2 fully functional bedrooms, a living space, a cooking space, a washing space and decent room for storage. That could adequately house a family of 4...but that also won't happen because greed abounds.

Manchester City Centre, block after block of expensive empty flats, bought as investments by foreign based consortiums … whilst people who might actually want to live & spend money in the city centre are driven out by the prices.

@LittleLegsKeepGoing Exactly. UK wide planning regs have optional requirements for things like bedroom size, whereas something like The London Plan actually have minimum planning requirements for bedroom sizes.

The UK actually needs more and better planning regulations not less.

Many developers will build to the lowest common denominator if you let them. Removing planning regulations only lines their pockets, it doesn't provide the UK with better housing.

I very think it depends where up you live. I live in a northern town outside Manchester. Absolutely dead on its feet. Our M and S shut in April, no other department stores, rest just vape, charity, bargain basement type. Falling over yourself avoiding beggars and unfortunate homeless. For a town of 300,000 it’s a disgrace and footfall has dropped dramatically. And yet our council thinks building hundreds of housing association houses and flats is the answer. How it will regenerate the place who knows. A lot of these tenants won’t have the disposable income to spend and if they did, there are hardly any decent shops or amenities anyway. Most seem to think it will just become yet another no go area.

It ought to be social housing with tight rent controls. Otherwise it will just be more unaffordable places for everyday people.

They are doing this a lot in my city, lots of 2/3 bed shared ownership flats popping up in the city centre. We looked around a couple and they were nice/practical with DC - had balconies and storage space etc (Didn't go for it in the end as there was no parking for the shared ownership option).

yes, to this,

Exactly! And those people still have the same jobs (usually) and now need to drive to work (but hey let's get rid of parking).
I saw an OU video for one of their maths modules that showed if everyone had an "average sized" family home with space for parking, we would need several planets to fit everyone in. Never mind fitting it all into one city centre.
Someone has to live on the periphery, we can't house 68 million people in Zones 1-2!

I’d like to be confident that “brownfield” actually means ex-industrial land, rather than bits of green space that happen to be within city limits.

And I echo what a PP said about needing to change people’s attitudes to living in flats. We own a large (more than 1k sq ft) flat in a really popular area. New kitchen and bathrooms. Really nice views, balcony, and none of the windows are overlooked. We tried to sell it earlier this year, and barely got any interest because people would rather have a smaller house in a less nice area for the same price. And Grenfell, the appalling state of leasehold rules and lockdown have made that worse.

Something key that needs to happen in UK building regs is increasing the minimum size that can be called a 'bedroom' and making it mandatory to have a set amount of storage space per square meter of living space. This needs to happen across houses and apartments, so if someone is renting/buying a 2 bedroom flat, they are getting 2 fully functional bedrooms, a living space, a cooking space, a washing space and decent room for storage. Thatcould adequately house a family of 4...but that also won't happen because greed abounds

There used to be what was known as the 'Parker Morris' standards.

We currently live in a 2 bed ex council semi that I believe is built in line with these. We've also had a council flat that was also the same. Both built post WW2.

While the kitchen and bathroom in our current house are quite small, we have a large walk in cupboard off the kitchen and the same in our bedroom. Both bedrooms are doubles, not huge, but enough. All the houses on our estate also have an outside brick built store, that could be used for storing bikes, gardening equipment, coal, that sort of thing.

The living room is very large - around 6 m x 4 m - originally there was a serving hatch between the kitchen and the living room, so it could function as a living room/diner, but sadly this was blocked up before we moved in.

The flat we lived in had a serving hatch, which I really missed when we moved. These need to come back into fashion (yes I know we could just open ours up, but I mean in more general, which they might do if people move away from open plan living due to higher energy costs.

I don't think flats will ever be desirable without leasehold being abolished, which this government promised to do (but of course, didn't do).