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.

If it were up to me every house built would have solar panels as standard make people think before they build low quality builds

This thread seems to have a lot of NIMBY's x

Actually, the biggest problem is the service charge, which I have no control over and the increase of which over the years (450%) has left me with no other option but to sell.

It's fine to live in a flat; I will most likely never be able to afford to live in a house. It's not fine to expect the majority of future homeowners to live in flats because people in houses don't want their view spoiled by more houses, which is the general impression I'm getting from a lot of people in this thread. I was simply pointing out the downsides of living in a flat, in my experience.

0.7% of the power today is coming from solar. The rest is coming from gas and nuclear and very teeny-tiny amount of wind. Solar farms are no more than giant mirrors this time of year.

I was one of the posters who suggested converted offices and shops as homes and yes I would live in one if I was desperate for a home

I was responding to a comment about social housing.

If it's fine for someone like me to live in a flat, it's fine for people in social housing to live in flats.

And herein lies the problem. People on £34k a year, in their mid-to-late 30s, should not be finding themselves 'desperate for a home'. Yet here my friends and I are.

I’ve got a great way to settle this argument discussion, let’s have a General Election and see if the population want the same we’ve had for 13yrs or to try something new 😁

Building houses on farmland makes absolutely no sense at all. The houses are needed because the population is increasing, but we also need to increase the amount of food we produce.

We own quite a bit of land and we’re trying to sell it for building in our village. We don’t want to but need the money

Let's start by not letting an extra 700,000 people into the country every year, eh?

And before you start with 'wHaT aBoUt tHe NhS?', maybe we could train up some of the millions of current UK residents on benefits, rather than raiding poorer countries for their health staff. It's utterly immoral for a rich country to be stripping poorer countries of healthcare staff they have trained there and desperately need.

Anyway, mass immigration is one giant ponzi scheme that only benefits the wealthiest business owners and a small section the privileged who will never actually be affected by its downsides.

It just makes not a bit of sense that there are so many empty houses/buildings/shops/offices/second homes lying unused yet we continue to build it just does not make sense. They should all be put to use first

This Government has made legally binding obligations to increase immigration from countries who have agreed to speedy treaties with us, so reducing it is not going to happen.

But this seems such a silly temporary sticking plaster to me.

It will just keep getting worse because immigrants and their plentiful dependants (due to the Tory’s relaxation on the rules around dependants) will ALSO will need schooling, healthcare and will get old.

We can’t just keep increasing the population year on year.

Well, we can. But say goodbye to a civilised country, social order and decent mental health as we cram more and more people in like cattle.

That isn’t a long term solution.

We need to move away from the simplistic notion that all migration is equally as good for the country, we are seeing what is happening when it is left unchecked. It is benefitting very few, mainly the very rich. It is actively making many people lives worse.

I’m worried about what huge demographic changes are going to cause AND about this fuelling a far right mivement which would harm us all. All it will take is someone to rally people and at least pretend to listen to the millions who are unhappy about this.

@lollo8 I agree to some extent but not about forcing those on benefits to fill nhs jobs, some are just not suited to caring roles and it shows not to mention some of them will not be educated to the standard required to fill nurse and doctor posts. They need to bring the bursary back on England and try to be more flexible with staff especially considering a lot of the workforce is female many of child bearing age and so are restricted by rubbish shifts, unfair rostering and then when actually training lack of flexibility around placements

So, essentially, OP and her loved ones have homes, so screw everyone else?

@lollo8 We either need to start having a lot more babies or we have to keep immigration high. We need population growth to support our aging population and those are our choices, unless we can start growing people on trees.

Whilst airBNB and holiday lets are a problem, the numbers are insignificant on a national scale, though I accept, in some localities they're a local problem.

The truth is the growth in population due to immigration means we need to build more homes, both flats and houses.

A lot of the immigration is students going to UK unis driving up demand for student accommodation in Uni cities that the modern blocks of student flats just can't cope with - they can't build them fast enough, so students continue to rent what were previously "normal" homes converted into multi occupancy student flats.

Until we either drastically reduce immigration, or drastically increase home building so they've somewhere to live, the situation is unsustainable.

Yes, I think that is the gist of it x

Trouble is it's a pyramid scheme as the "new babies" or immigrants we need today will one day be old and need care themselves so population will be forever increasing on your plan.

What is actually needed is a long term plan to cope with care but in a controlled manner that includes provision for housing, education, healthcare, etc., but also carefully planned to control numbers so that the population isn't ever increasing and drawing in more and more. It can be done with a long term plan, working out numbers, birth rates, death rates/ages, etc - needs a small army of insurance actuaries to work out the numbers after all, actuaries work with all that data for life insurance, health insurance etc., so the same data could be tapped into to create a long term "plan" for population.

There's nothing wrong with flats, but they need to nice! Around here they have built flats targeting boomers/the elderly, spacious, light & airy, 2 bedrooms, lots of green space around and close to a big park where you can go for a walk but you don't have to maintain anything, good size balcony. Not too tall buildings, 4 stories high.

They are very popular, not scam like those retirement flats you can't sell afterwards.

The service charge is about a 100 pounds a month, but the upside to that is you don't have to do any outside maintenance.

How will all this house building help with our standing as the worlds most nature depleted country?? There are so many competing issues in this country, people, nature, agriculture, parks and protected areas. Basically we just have too many people in this country, but apparently no effective way of being able to balance all these different needs.

Curiously, the UK also doesn’t have a housing unit shortage. There are estimated >1 million dwellings more than there are households. But some of these dwellings aren’t where people want to live, and the ones that are in the right place are hoarded by people who don’t live there (second home owners or overseas investors).

Solving this holistically would be deeply unpopular with Conservative voters. So the “solution” is more and more executive estates, often making profits for the same people who have contributed to the issue in the first place.

Son is on £30k in his first graduate job since leaving Uni. It took him six months to find a flat to rent, and is currently having to pay £1k per month for an unfurnished one bed attic flat out of town. Some of his colleagues on the same wage are still living in hostels as they couldn't get a flat at all, not even at that price. That's a small Northern city. The high demand and low supply is a travesty so, yes, we desperately need to build new homes. I just can't see how anyone on minimum wage can afford to even rent their own home in some places.