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.

My village has been ruined by ugly new builds everywhere. Fields that were teaming with wildlife are now horrible rabbit warrens with plastic grass.

Meanwhile my children and I have to go to a dentist 2 towns away because there’s no longer a space because the village has tripled in size.

We have a huge housing shortage and are massively under building compared to what we need, and have been for years. But I agree that big out of town developments where people will have to rely on cars are not the answer. We need more high density housing with good public transport infrastructure, this is the lowest carbon approach to housing and also creates more coherent and happier, healthier communities.

What is also a huge issue is that underlying infrastructure projects are not part of the same system that plans housing. So water, sewage, electricity, etc are often inadequate for the housing we are building. That doesn't mean we should have fewer homes. It means we need more infrastructure!

MORE SOCIAL HOUSING, MORE TRAINS, MORE BUSES, MORE INFRASTRUCTURE, MORE SOLAR PANELS, MORE WIND TURBINES!

we need it all, we need thriving hubs across the entire country not5 just london.

fewer air BnB properties.

That's the sole part of your post with which I can agree.

People need homes, and every second home* prevents a first home.

*or AirBnB, or short term lets, or whatever you want to call them.

As a point of interest, I live on an estate that was built on a brownfield site in the 70's (a dock, canal, warehousing and a railway). It did take a long time to clean up and build but now has 600 properties, which includes social housing, private rentals and owner-occupiers. Virtually all are flats or maisonettes and its a very nice community to live in.

It's a population surplus mostly of immigrants, with the birth rates among the natives dropping like a stone. Many blame climate change, high taxes, unable to buy a house and settle, safety fears (stabbings etc) etc for the reasons why they're not having children. Not including infertility. This in turn is creating a labour shortage, so instead of encouraging couples to have children, we're importing from abroad instead. It's a quick and easy short term fix. Those people from abroad need somewhere to live.

We either change society's attitude towards families and making babies, ie make it more popular to shun career and have children and raise families.... or we continue to import.

Can't have it both ways.

Not sure why you’re being adversarial as I agree. However this is a both/and situation, not either/or. Needing to rebuild in ~70yrs (homes which are better insulated but still don’t have mandatory multiple renewable sources) is not a helpful use of resources.

Lots of houses going up around here too - with no additional infrastructure to go with it. The few 2 bed houses they build are snapped up immediately and every week there's an article in the local paper about a developer who has gone back to planning to get the affordable housing reduced/removed as the development isn't viable with it.

Not too much green belt land being built on but far too much maize being grown - not as food for humans or cattle but to rot down in the anaerobic digester in the nearby town. Maize is the blot on the landscape around here especially when it blocks public footpaths

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.

A soon as we had kids wanted a house - garden washing line. I do know people who've raised kids in flats - but we never wanted to - sound proofing is variable kids mean more washing so outdoor line more important - being able to open door to sit out also nice.

I could be tempted back to a flat in older age in central location though fees do put us off that idea a bit.

I thought the current level of annual net migration (legal) is 700000.

There is no way we can keep up with the level of housing or infrastructure needed for that many people. Even if we could, we shouldn’t.

The UK will cease to exist as we know it, and the English countryside will become a myth to our great grandchildren.

I imagine more people will get angry about it once this stops only affecting poorer people, eventually even money won’t be able to insulate anyone from the downsides of such massive migration.

My experience of living in a block of flats:

• Noisy, inconsiderate neighbours
• Constant bang boom bang of footsteps
• Leasehold
• Lack of parking
• A whopping monthly service charge (£300 pcm and increasing)
• No outside space
• Lift breaking down
• Lift doors kicked in and holes punched into walls by neighbour off his face
• Parcels constantly going missing
• Neighbour's children screaming daily outside my front door
• People waking me up at 3am coming in drunk
• A bin room where people fly-tip and bins are overflowing
• Nowhere to store my bike
• Constant noisy maintenance work going on

This faux naive 'what's wrong with living in a flat', 'what's wrong with living in a converted office block', 'what's wrong with living in a converted shop' from NIMBY homeowners is so very irritating.

Oh but it's okay that your home was built. Enough. Why should all council homes be flats? Is it only okay to build on land as long as people are buying the homes? Easy for people sitting in their lovely rural homes to say enough have been built. There is a severe shortage of housing where I live so in my opinion we need to continue building until there are enough affordable homes for people.

The problem we have with limiting immigration is our working age population is declining but the over all population isn't declining due to people living longer and the large baby boom bulge moving in to retirement age.

Some older people seem to want it all ways - hate immigration, don't want to pay the costs associated with higher wages and moan about automation ( the alternatvie to low skilled labour shortages)

I live in a flat.

The problem is your neighbours, not living in a flat.

Because well off people want to enjoy their large homes with a countryside view.
The poor people should all just live in flats in a City I would never even set foot in.

And they always ignore that lots of buildings in Cities are being converted. The cost of housing makes it worthwhile. There is constant building in the City I live in.

I live in a flat. It is fine and I very much like it. It is a well built and spacious private block with its own gardens and car parking spaces. But people seem to be obsessed in this country with having a detached house with a private garden and then moan about too much house building.

It's like drivers who complain about congestion and lack of parking.

Less than 5% of the UK is built on. Yabu and precious, and anecdote is not data.

Housing development needs much more control. There needs to be more affordable, terraced 2 bed houses with proper gardens built. Instead theres estates of “executive” homes being built with postage stamp gardens.

immigration is a massive problem. Having more than 2 kids is
a big problem.

We have big issues round here. Massive (and I mean massive) influx of people from Hong Kong. It’s meant big bulges in senior school age kids without the ability of the council to plan as the kids went through junior school. This was on top of a previous change in demographics with people who generally have larger families moving into the area. Senior schools started the year with 100+ on waiting lists.

Theyve been cramming in housing estates, effectively small villages, no more secondary schools have been built. Acres of farm land destroyed, no further hospitals though. Roads gridlocked -queues to get into retail parks and supermarkets.

Old peoples flats with very low occupancy yet there is a shortage of starter homes. Many of these flats would make great starter homes, but there’s a limit on age. These age limited flats should be banned.

Property developer profits should be capped. Building on green field sights should only be allowed where there are no brownfield sites in a 10 mile radius. Building on green field sights should only be allowed if the developer pays a levy to either clean up a local brownfield sight or builds at least 25% affordable homes (ie no more than 4x the value of the average wage for local under 30s (who should have a 6month first refusal on these homes).

Second home ownership should be banned. Holiday lets should only be permitted after renting out a property long term for 5 years.

With 750k net migration in flows there isn't a lot of choice but to build.

I think we do need more houses though, but I think where they’re building the houses is wrong. They choose greenfield sites because they’re cheaper to build on than brownfield sites which is really sad :(

The problem is your neighbours, not living in a flat.

Many UK flats also seem to have garbage soundproofing.
But that aside, even if the issue is the neighbours, it isn't something one has any control over. A detached house at least increases the amount of control you have over your environment.

Really, all the fields round my way have either been sown with crops which will start to grow in the spring ready for harvesting next year or they are grass fields which may have some sheep in now but most will be currently be lying dormant as grass doesn't grow in December and cattle will be housed to avoid the land being poached. By next summer they will either be being used to graze animals, or they may be being rested to allow grass regrowth having already been grazed in the spring or they might be mowed for silage or hay to be used as winter feed when the grass growth stops in late autumn.
I suspect you may not have much experience of how agriculture works.

Ugly solar panels???? So we shouldn’t be looking at more sustainable energy because you think solar panels are ugly??? Seriously?

The UK is a very tiny island, it has farms on it (for now) to grow food and it has natural flood plains and soakaways. But keep on building. We import a lot of our food and the flooding that we've always had due to not keeping the drains clear and continuous house-building? Well that's just climate change, right?

They arnt selling! We have loads of houses in my area not shifting even some social housing is empty so we are building more houses for sale none of them social houses four bedrooms on fields that are currently growing food 😀 none of the others have sold why will these? (They won't no-one can afford them) best of all they are currently knocking buildings down to create "green space" while simultaneously building on green space......you just couldn't make it up!