House building is out of control

[Caterpillarsleftfoot]

Every where I turn at the moment the countryside is being turned into housing developments. If we carry on like this our habitats and green spaces will be decimated. Not to mention the flood risks. Also our beautiful rural way of life that we associate England with will be lost.

There is no way we need this many new developments. The latest one I saw is on the edge of a beautiful historical town in the countryside in a neighbouring county.

We need flats for council properties to save space and fewer air BnB properties.

This is about preferred taste isn't it? You don't have lots of asylum seekers moving into the countryside estates, but Brits who are culturally attuned to "Englishman's home is his castle". People want detached houses, it's half the reason the current inhabitants want to be there imo. You will not stop British people wanting these places; they are places better specified, with more space for their family, and this is the demand.

I live in London. Compared to 20 years ago it is very crowded. Maybe there are 10 million people now. The cost of even a flat is outrageous.

If you have a family, can WFH a few days a week and are tired of city or suburban living these places are ideal. I appreciate the current residents may not think so; but developers are built to where the demand is, and what sells.

Because even if there were no boats coming in it wouldn't really impact the immigration figures. The boats are a distraction technique for the fact that legal net migration is annually in the hundreds of thousands under a Tory government that talks big on stopping/slowing immigration.

The U.K. isn't the most densely populated country in Europe, but England is. It's pointless to talk about the U.K., when it is only England which has had a huge population increase over the last 20 years, almost entirely from immigration.

And figures about how much of the country is built on can be misleading. Some of them only include the land taken up by the house/building, whereas I would argue the garden and the driveway/yard should be counted as built on.

It also ignores the blight and the noise pollution. Houses need roads, and you can hardly get away from the noise of traffic as it is.

Of course people need decent housing; we have to build enough to make sure everyone is housed adequately. But we should also be doing whatever it takes to stop our population from increasing in such huge numbers, or preferably at all. We can never keep up.

There's lots of suggestions as to how we can increase the housing stock without building on the countryside, but even in the unlikely event we did manage to implement them, they would only solve the problem for a year or two.

Yeah, there isn't an overpopulation crisis in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Cardiff or the Welsh valleys.

The population of London alone is not far off double that of Scotland and treble that of Wales.

The amount of people in the UK is a lot but it'd be less of an issue if it was distributed better. Even so, there's a tipping point. 60 million would be more realistic but once you're getting over 70 million on the island it's too many and where will it stop?

We don't have a housing shortage, we have a problem with distribution of housing.

Too many second and holiday homes

Too many empty homes

Get as many of those back into residential use - either owner occupied, or rented, and we won't have a housing shortage.

We don't need loads of poorly built houses on green field developments.

only England which has had a huge population increase over the last 20 years, almost entirely from immigration

I am not sure it is almost entirely down to immigration - I see lots of White families with multiple kids. Even though people are apparently having fewer kids, it doesn't seem like it!

I appreciate the current residents may not think so; but developers are built to where the demand is, and what sells

I think they build where they can get the land.

And yes, they often do sell, but leaving empty properties elsewhere. It doesn't solve the housing problem. We should have stricter rules on foreigners owing property here too, like other countries (Denmark, New Zealand) do.

Not all white families in this country are English. Many Polish and other ethnicities. But that's a discussion for another thread.

There has been a lot of building in my rural area lately too. While the houses are probably needed the people who need them most - youngsters just starting out - aren't going to be able to afford £250K plus. Those rented out by the council are 'affordable' rent rather than social rent so £800 plus a month. Then there is the problem of service and infrastructure not being factored in.

There needs to be cheaper and smaller properties built too for the younger generation who might not be on much more than min wage or starting wages.

The kind of changes people are talking about re restrictions on sale or who can buy would certainly drive prices down - but the issues are that these new builds are better than what can be afforded in cities and if you have a traditional set up of one parent at home you can afford your detached home. This is what people, a quite a lot on Mumsnet consider desirable!

The trouble is that those who support endless building in our disappearing spaces put no value on wildlife.
We need bees and insects to sustain life; when every blade of grass and tree has been destroyed, you might find life becomes unsustainable.
And what is wrong with living in a flat?
We can’t all live in McMansions beloved of developers.

fewer people are having children and many countries in Western Europe are reporting population decline.
Who are these new houses for?

Exactly.

Population decline will help with climate issues too

Infertility is devastating, as is the fear of making babies. But it's fine because the less humans there are, the cooler the planet becomes. Are you insane?

Been happening for years

The Elephant and Castle neighbourhood is being physically, socially and ethnically transformed. This started with the demolition of the Heygate estate, a classic for stigmatised perceptions of council housing and the people who live in it. As the local 35% Campaign has meticulously documented, a succession of promises to Heygate residents were broken to arrive at a situation where 1,214 council homes were demolished, to be replaced with 2,704 new homes, of which only 82 (3%) are for social rent. The HA partner was London and Quadrant. To be eligible for the cheapest one-bedroom home built by them on the Heygate site, people needed a minimum household income of £57,500. The average household income in that part of Southwark is £24,324

Flats are great if they have sound insulation, balconies, well-maintained communal areas, provision for drying clothes, lifts that are kept working, kitchens that aren’t a windowless afterthought… but often they don’t have any of those things, because they’re built with the ROI for pension funds in mind, not to provide a home for residents. We shouldn’t allow land and building materials to be squandered on ugly, uncomfortable, unsustainable human cages that will hang around for a few decades and then be bulldozed. It’s fucked up that nearly all of Europe’s most attractive towns and cities are beautiful because they’re full of centuries-old buildings that are still lived in, and now we can barely manage to build houses that will be habitable in 50 years, never mind that actually add something to their surroundings.

Who is this to? Not sure who is meant to be ‘insane’

I can’t see any mention of a fear of pg or infertility, yes they are very sad but not the only factors to lower birth rate

The issue with flats is NOISE.
If one couldn’t hear or smell ( cooking smells, smoking smells) one’s neighbours, it wouldn’t be as bad.
Tower blocks sound like hell with antisocial behaviours added on.

Absolutely!
I had a boyfriend years ago who lived on the Ille St Louis in Paris in a 17th Century apartment- it was so characterful and gorgeous.
Venice and Amsterdam too- old houses that look great despite their great ages.
Most modern builds ( unless made of green oak and traditional materials) are hard on the eye, and will not age well.

Trouble with retail is that it's mostly owned by pension funds, and the pension scheme rules/laws prohibit residential use, so the pension funds themselves can't convert to rent them out as residential units. Neither can they sell them at currently depressed values as that shows the pension fund to be undervalued and risks causing sell offs of assets to meet liquidity criteria (as happened with Liz Truss and the minor market collapse she caused). The only way to get large amounts of empty retail space (and empty flats above used retail space) is to change the pension scheme rules to allow them to own residential property. Gordon Brown proposed that but then changed his mind!!

@JenniferBooth - the Elephant and Castle is a great example. 30 years ago it was considered dangerous. Now the gentrification is so fast it beggars belief.

Those people who are calling for social housing in cities, this is what you don't get. These flats are built for investment or few well heeled city workers to live in. You would need big money to afford a three bed flat in these places, and since most can't, they move where they can, to the countryside, because they can get so much more for their money and the incentives are better.

Central London isn't just gentrified, it's a place where an entry level flat is around 600k. It's making a new city.

That's why you have housing being built in places where the land costs are cheaper.

Depends on quality of build really. In my son's flat (small block of 18 units over 3 floors, him on the top floor), there's no noise, smells, etc at all. He's never heard his neighbours, never smells their food, etc.

Instead of quoting that ‘only 8%’ of England is built on - can anyone state what percentage of ‘build-suitable’ land has been used up already?

I’m not talking about including essential agricultural land either.

There are huge swathes of hills and dales , national parks etc that would never be available for houses.

If anyone doubts the surge in greenfield builds that have happened in the last 30 years ; just look at satellite mapping.

Yes , decent homes must be available for all , that means re-regulating builds and enforcement. Building Local Authority homes for local people and not allowing same to be bought at all.

Right to buy was a political tool that began this cycle- buy to let was just as bad .

Second homes in tourist areas mean those villages are dead in the winter and local services die too. Here in the South West there are severe shortages of NHS staff and teachers causing real problems as there is nowhere for them to live.

Some people still think Thatcherism ; deregulation and privatisation was a good thing
Chickens coming home to roost don’t even have a roof now ….

I live in a one bedroom flat with DH No way of drying clothes. HA seems to think you dont need to wear or wash clothes if you dont have kids.