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.

In my view we need significant financial penalties for holding empty properties. And harsh taxation on second homes.

I'd agree with second home and Air b and b - but prolonged absence/empty properties would need protections - prolonged hospital stays if it's not clear older people may get home - sometime it's not possible to rent their houses out we couldn't for DGP told we'd need to get house re-wired to do so at time paying for care homes - and DGP were still hopeful at getting home. Even legal delays round death forced renting or extra taxes could easily get problematic when no-one done anything wrong.

I'm surprised so many areas have brown field sites left - where I grew up Tory council in rapidly de-industrial area they were very strict with planing application for decades and developers did pay to clean up sites and build estates. Though in contrast brown field site near IL had to go to the sectary of state to get past planning in end - as so many local objects to any building work at all.

City I'm in doing lots of work getting building above shops renovated for renting - it'a a mix of council/quango/development doing it - they seem to be renting and selling when done at fast rate.

I do think we need to rebalance economy though as exiting housing stock, work and where people want to live isn't matched up - though even if it did due to population numbers and increasingly smaller households we still need more housing.

Do you own your home OP?
If not do you not feel a bit insecure that lack of housing will push your rent up and you will be forced out when you retire?
(or are you council housing so not worried because you got one and can't be moved)

You can build loads of residential property without concreting over the green belt, or adding more and more housing estates to places that just don't have the infrastructure to deal with it.

Whilst I totally understand the sadness felt when you see a field turned into a housing estate or factory, etc, it helps me to remind myself that the facts say we still have a vast amount of land that is not built upon.

There are various studies attempting to assess this but maybe the Gov is the most recent and reliable - certainly it's the most 'pessimistic' in the % it gives - and even then, it shows only 8.7% of England is developed. As England tends have the higher % of the UK countries, it might also be safe to assume Scotland, Wales, NI are all at less that 8.7%.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/land-use-in-england-2022/land-use-statistics-england-2022

belgium and the Netherlands are considerably more heavily populated than Uk

Belgium 383 per sq km, Netherlands 424, turkey 512, UK 277 per sq Km
the UK is 4th if you ignore tiny places like Monaco, the Vatican City Gibralar jersey , Guernsey etc Luxembourg and Germany are next

however Fance and Denmark are about half the density

Yep! Whilst hospitals/gp surgery's/schools can't cope.....it's a worrying situation

There’s far too much land in the countryside, you can drive for miles & see nothing but empty fields

😂

@AffIt see this baffles me also. A huge push to be greener, take public transport, LEZ zone etc then these multiple sprawls of new "exec" housing estates all clearly geared towards two-car families, miles from the nearest public transport and not exactly cheap. No joined-up thinking going on at all.

138,930 children are living in temporary accommodation in the UK, in many cases this will mean that entire families are living in a single room.
I think that concern is misplaced, people need somewhere to live.

Yes they do but there are other avenues like making use of the empty buildings we already have

Where we live rurally in village westcountry the local countryside is being decimated by developers. They have put up hundreds of new builds utterly tasteless and without any shops, doctors, schools etc. Apparently you can hear through the walls. I just don't understand why with all our modern knowledge we are going backwards and so many people much prefer Victorian and Georgian properties with lovely light and better room heights and proportions.

Why can’t we build carbon neutral houses so people don’t have to waste money on fossil fuels and reduce carbon at the same time? It won’t cost the government they just need to make the rules for developers. Here the developers come in, take greenfield sites, destroy trees and the habitats of birds, bats, etc, put up hideous soulless houses with tiny poor quality gardens, then move on somewhere else with their vast profits. I am pretty sure the CE don’t live in one of these homes.

We definitely need to think how to manage our problem with population growth as otherwise there will never be enough homes, healthcare and education for all . We will constantly need more and it 8s not sustainable.

Totally agree with PP who said that we should build attractive bungalows with gardens for older people who will then be happy to leave large family homes which are much needed. It’s a no brainer. Build them with a health centre, shops, chemist, leisure facilities nearby and cycle/walk waysand car use will also drop.

We rarely use brownfield sites because it's "too expensive", even though those are the areas we should be focussing on because they often have supporting infrastructure around them, they help support local high streets in towns and cities, and they don't waste agricultural land

Brownfield sites are expensive to build on.

A lot of them are contaminated with industrial waste - chemicals, radioactive waste, toxic metals, dumped in times when there wasn't any environmental legislation stopping companies from just dumping waste anywhere they wanted.

If they want to build on them, the waste has to be removed and replaced with clean soil. Then the waste needs to be disposed of elsewhere, which often requires specialist disposal, costing eyewatering sums.

Unless you don't mind living in a house built on a toxic waste dump?

It isn't impossible - 2000+ new houses in our small town in the last decade, plans for 3000+ more, no infrastructure improvements. All large applications are passed - on appeal if not at the first go.

A whole new town has been put up on beautiful farm land (in the SW, not in a touristy area) near us. I just checked out the price of houses - £425,000 for a 4 bed on a huge estate. Building 5,500 houses has not made the housing noticeably cheaper so exactly how many houses would we need to build to actually bring house prices down to something affordable?

We have a population problem at the end of the day - we are the 7th most densely populated country in Europe and that is after the likes of Vatican city, Monaco and San Marino.

This country is being ruined in almost every way possible IMO.

Exactly. My old home town in Wales has grown by 1/3 minimum since I lived there 20 odd years ago. At least, so many new developments. Same number of GP surgeries (huge complaints about appointments like many places), same number of schools, same number of everything else needed in communities. It’s never affordable housing but nice new estates.

I'd also like to see new houses built with more space between them (ie wider roads with green verges and trees) and for gardens - so that everyone has a better chance of being surrounded by some nature.

However, I fear if we did that, homeowners would still pull it all up, chop trees down and put down plastic grass or something else sterile. We might do better to say there should be a field near every x number of houses with a playground and allotment space for local residents. Something that made sure there was protected green spaces.

But that cost should be seen as an investment, otherwise the land stays unused and unusable. It isn’t benefiting anyone like that, other than the owners who can just sit back and watch the value increase.

I live in the city. There is a house being built everywhere by I have no idea how they are being allocated because there is still such a huge housing crisis! I walked through a Development of estates - in an area where most of those flats probably had penthouses. Each plat was at least 30 stories high and I though to myself that this area must House 1000 people alone - how has the housing crisis become so bad - the the point where they are expecting 20000 + to become homeless - I’d say the public sector has sold off everything and the private sector is so out of control, anyone that rents is at the mercy of landlords that at this point can do anything.

Only about 10% of the UK is Built up areas.

I think the 3 floor town houses you see more and more are more efficient for families (can be 4 bedrooms with small garden). Apartments too but I get that most families prefer a house.

The density in urban areas is important to prevent American style, car centric, sprawling cities. At least with density public transport becomes viable and efficient.

Well.
We need new homes up to a point, but there is a massive housing inequity problem as well as a simple lack of houses. Second homes in the country and foreign investors buying to leave in the city have already been mentioned, but there are a lot of massive houses under occupied by wealthy pensioners out there.

For example, I live in a small development that is 2/3 social housing and 1/3 market price housing (and props to the council for holding the developer's feet to the fire on that one) in an attractive, very desirable rural village, built on former farmland. The market price houses have all got 4-5 bedrooms, sold for 650k and are all occupied by older well off couples who have profited from the increase in equity in their houses in the areas they came from and have moved down here to retire. In contrast, many of the HA homes are technically or actually overcrowded, with kids sharing bedrooms. The footprint taken up by these 6 houses would probably accommodate about 12 modestly sized HA homes.

I see this all over our area- developers are chucking up massive detached houses because they're more profitable, rather than the small/ medium sized starter homes that the population actually needs.

I've got a whole other rant about design, infrastructure etc, but that can wait.

You’re so right, wading through floods and heatwaves are so much more acceptable than trying to tack climate change with solar power … what an eye sore 🙄

You are right. Importing 750,000 people a year is not helping. They all need housing, feeding, somewhere to park. We can't keep our head in the sand indefinitely on this one. Many of the problems are inter-related.

How much should we build on? 20%? 50%? more?

I wouldn’t mind if the new homes were of decent quality. Most people who live in new builds can tell you how poor the regs are now checking quality. In one recent case developer had to admit they only build to last ~70 years

@LongDarkTeatime of course concreting over green space isn’t going to help with the effects of climate change either, colour me
sceptical when those in charge continue to fly about, drive gas guzzlers and live in their massive homes, whilst allowing all of this housing to built on ground which is needed to soak up all of this excess rain water