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.

And this is what's scary. We should be prioritising our farms and our food security.

I'm not saying we should never import anything, but we should be able to rely on our own food in a crisis.

I don't think there's any suggestion that the service charge is exploitative. What people get upset about is that it (not unreasonably) continues being liable after the person living there has died (until the flat / bungalow is sold basically), therefore taking a big gouge out of the inheritance. There was a whole thread about it recently.

I've been saying for years that we're going to have issues with food security. And in my part of the world, which is being concreted over like there's no tomorrow, water as well.

The whole feel of where I live has really changed in the last 5 years. Loads more traffic.

The reliance of big house builders created a system where city centres are underdeveloped but all the building work is done on the outskirts.
What we end up in this country is lots of low rise new developments around towns where the car is essential.
My sister lives in one of them in Milton Keynes, huge development where all the major house builders builds have been building for the past 5 years. However they don't have a single shop. So to get some milk you need to drive to Tesco.
Complete idiotic hypocrisy when you think about it. Councils try to ban cars in the city centres but encourage all the house developers to build on outskirts where car is the only way of transport. Predictably you are left with a dying and derelict town centres.

This is where my views are. Start switching to higher food security and hopefully use changing tech / AI to jump off the pyramid scheme we have bern using for a while.

That applies to high net immigration and increasing birth rate

Avoid the pyramid for the climate and security due to climate issues

I would alway make sure that the property included a share of the freehold. In most cases this means that owners of the properties have more say in the running of the management company. Of course this is not alway possible, and many people will just buy on the basis of the property with the lowest service charge, even if the charge is out of their control.

Service charges still have to be levied on the estate after a lessee has died - the building doesn't stop having to be maintained or cleaned just because one flat out of, say 50, does not have someone living in it.

The key thing when buying a flat is to look at what sort of building it is and what the charges may be. If you go for a building with a concierge, shared facilties and beautifully maintained gardens etc.. of course the charge is going to be higher than a building with no onsite staff and minimal shared facilities.

We should be a lot more self sufficient in many ways, particularly critical areas like power, food, manufacture of essentials, etc. We've become way too reliant on imports. Not only does that make us vulnerably, it also causes the balance of payments deficit.

As we saw during covid and the suez blockage, it's not good to rely on imports, as supplies of basic foodstuffs and building materials were badly hit. We're relying on imported gas and coal! Madness!

I'm not saying we shouldn't import anything - that would be crazy. But, we should be producing/making more than we do at the moment. It's insane to pay farmers to keep fields empty when we're importing so much produce from abroad. We need to produce what we can here, and only import the "extras" we need that we can't produce ourselves.

So are electricity bills. Nimbyism is for the benefit of the well heeled.

Workhouse? what sort of misogynistic, right wing idea is that. Where are the men responsible for 'knocking up' said woman who is going to be sent to a life of shame and grim austerity? The same people who would implement that would exacerbate the issue by banning abortion.
Stop families breaking up, usually means 'wife beating continues' or having to put up with other half's drinking, gambling, extra curricular sexual exploits or financial irresponsibility.

The only sensible point. Build more properties is purely a matter of government will, something the UK hasn't had for nearly 50 years. Has been left to market forces and as we know house building is not subject to market forces in the UK. Here we have land banking and drip feeding the market for obscene profit and zero government will to change the status quo as they are all up to their necks in it.

Your sarcasm detector is faulty

Oops!, I normally pick these things up. Maybe have seen too many posts in social media where they really do mean these things.

@Shrammed
"Pre kids we lived for years in flats - some converted central building other times above shops central locations giving us easy access to things we needed - transport work shops cinema pubs etc.
I could be tempted back to a flat in older age in central location though fees do put us off that idea a bit".

We are older and have moved back into a flat, in the greater London area but close to parks, canals and river. Maintenance charges are very high but we don't have a boiler to maintain (central system) and no outside maintenance to do. Gardens are also managed by professionals.

We love it here, have two members of family very close, and don't regret leaving a much larger house in a beautiful city elsewhere.
It's a shame that more older people aren't willing to give up large family homes, they might find that they enjoy living on a smaller scale.

That is my exact plan. If I'm lucky enough to enjoy old age then I'm hoping we have finished renovating our nice home. We will have the mortgage paid off, solar panels and a heat pump so I'm not oaying heating bills and qe are living out our days in the home we love with a big garden to grow veg. I'm not selling it to make space like I'm over and done with.

Well what used to happen is the family home would be retained but the adult child (usually the eldest son) would take over the family home and the aging parents would downgrade to an annex or cottage (if wealthy) or a room (if not).