Labour’s plans to build thousands of new homes

[dnac]

Anyone else feeling dismayed at the plans announced today to build huge numbers of new homes on the “grey” belt? Why not just concrete over the UK? It’s not just the homes, it’s the infrastructure that will need to go with it that will almost certainly involve cutting down trees, spoiling natural habitats and losing more green space. Plus the boundary between grey and geeen belt will blur over time. Why can’t we put more effort into refurbishing existing properties (or just rebuilding on the same sites?). So much for refreshing, positive ideas from the new administration. Just more of the same ill thought out sound bites that make me despair for the future of the planet.

@Feelingstrange2 Yes, the sanctioned hoarding of homes has much to answer for. It is totally disingenuous to talk about a housing crisis if one is not also advocating for a cessation of second home ownership.

@dnac Degrowth is the elephant in the room, isn't it? Again, it is disingenuous to invoke sustainability if simultaneously framing the future in terms of a growth economy. Why are we having such a hard time taking this in, and acting as if what is known about sustainable development is real? What will it take? I work with people from all over the world, including many climate refugees: I count myself extremely lucky to be living in the British Isles which are still fairly insulated from the impacts of the climate crisis.

Agree.

I’d also like to see conversation about rewilding as well as densification.

There are quite a lot of declining areas in places like pit villages where people are disappearing. While some of these areas could potentially be turned into something else, some probably have no economic raison d’etre, not pretty enough to be a tourist spot, the housing stock is poor and there is no easy way to rebuild it as nice stuff because of all the subsidence in the area.

I’d like to see some sort of “rewilding credit” system. Areas wanting to expand and build on their surrounds (say, Oxford) could be required to pay for “rewilding credits” (a certain amount of money for whatever number of square km the area they want to build on is). And then, if you are a municipality with shrinking and declining areas, you can make the decision (after consultations with residents) to close some areas down and rewild them, earning “rewilding credits” in the process, which can be used to pay for the rewilding process itself and to offer cash grants to any remaining residents to help them relocate to a new area.

Yes, it seems unnecessary to build new structures when there are already so many vacant buildings. High streets are becoming derelict, so it would be great if you didn't have to get planning permission to transform from retail to residential

I do think it's the antiquated planning departments that have been holding things up, honestly. No previous government has ever met the previous target of 300,000 homes per year because of how long it takes to get things through planning. So we do need more homes, but we don't need to be building them on greenbelt, we need to improve the buildings we've already got, make them higher, more insulated, build on ruins not greenbelt

What about contamination that may lie under "ruins"?
Would you live on an ex power station site for example?
The cost of proper clean up is immense.
Or would you just chuck a bunch of social housing there?

I was thinking more of retail rather than industrial aand derelict high streets around the UK - if changing building use e.g from retail to residential was easier, that could increase housing stock very quickly

@Alicewinn that would b-e fine. Many landowners would fight it though as retail land is usually worth more.

I think it would be worth a lot more if the option of “build lots of flats with retail at ground floor” option was added. Imagine how the footfall would increase!

This is an interesting idea. I don’t know if you have heard of the biodiversity net gain credits. They are similar in a way to what you’re saying but not applied back to the benefit of the community like you say. That is a really nice idea and would only need a bit of tweaking to work in the current system.

Would have to be handled really carefully, though, as the UK tends to react very strongly to any suggestion of closing down declining places, even if done sensitively and through consulting with and obtaining the consent of the areas in question.

Some countries like the US and even Germany are much more willing to look squarely at this kind of stuff - Detroit has succeeded in turning itself around to an extent through "shrink to greatness" where they have removed unwanted housing stock and emerged as a smaller and more viable city. Germany has apparently closed some ex-mining areas in ways which have brought better life chances to the former residents after they moved away.

Tricky sell in the UK though. There is a sentimental strain of "everything that looks like a community must be kept on life support for ever, even if you're basically just paying young people to waste their lives in a failing area" in the UK, especially in the north. And I say that as someone who comes from the north!

I live in capitalism, not communism. Buying a house/houses for yourself isn’t considered selfish by capitalist social construct.

Breaking the law by occupying someone else’s territory or migrating on small boats across the border of the country with no prerequisite of paperwork of proving one’s status and illegally from another safe country (France), now that is selfish.

Not going to happen in the green belt like Cotswolds. It’s not the planning legislation that stops houses built here, it’s the environmental la, that we who live here abide by. And Labour can’t be seen going against environment, they are trying to please green people. So it’s defo not gonna happen here 😏

And Labour can’t be seen going against environment, they are trying to please green people. So it’s defo not gonna happen here 😏

The definition of "green" is up for grabs at the moment though. Increasingly, it's becoming obvious that there are two ways in which people think of themselves as being "green."

There's the "neon green" people (my word, not theirs) for whom environmentalism is increasingly about building stuff for decarbonization - solar, nuclear, pylons to carry it all about, taller and denser housing combined with rewilding. Tends to be urban.

And there's the "muddy green" people (again, my word) who are into traditionalism, farming-type landscapes, views that look nice, building as little as possible. Tends to be rural (not necessarily agricultural - most people living in "rural" areas in the UK do not actually do farming or particularly rural jobs these days).

A clash is developing between these two schools, as their aims and philosophies are increasingly incompatible.

Starmer's Labour party fits most decidedly into the neon green category. The Tories and quite a lot of rural Green party politicians tend towards the muddy green category.

Housing in the Cotswalds might not exactly fit into the neon green category, but solar, wind farms and pylons most definitely do. You may get a lot of those things instead!

Why not invest in those areas instead with jobs and relocation of industry/services from the south? The people will still need somewhere to live?
Enforced abandonment of villages/towns is a cruel policy.
Could you see this happening in Oxford for example?

Someone, somewhere is profiting from biodiversity net gain.

Why not invest in those areas instead with jobs and relocation of industry/services from the south? The people will still need somewhere to live?

The UK does need to reduce the huge imbalance between the south and the north, but realistically this will mostly mean stuff like industries being moved to Manchester, Leeds and the like. Nobody is going to move jobs and industries to a pit village with substandard housing and so much subsidence that you won't be able to get developers to build anything there anyway.

I don't think anything should be forced on anybody, just that there should be honest conversations with people living in areas where depopulation is happening anyway. If you don't have these conversations with people in declining areas, services and the QOL will get worse, the people who are left there will get older and less able to move, then you end up with serious welfare issues. At that point, everyone gets upset and asks why this situation was allowed to develop. It seems useless at that point to say things like "Because when we tried to talk to people honestly about this at an earlier stage, before things got really bad, we were told that this was cruel and that it would be kinder to give everyone the idea that it would be better for them to stay put forever."

Immigration is being used to fill jobs and prop up the economy because the birth rate is very low in the UK and there are so few working age people compared to retired people.

If you want to have less immigration then we need to make changes to increase the birth rate and/or retain older people in the workforce for longer.

@NotAlexa "buying a house/houses for yourself isn’t considered selfish by capitalist social construct."

I didn't say it was.

"I intend on signing against every single plan around here that pops up."

That is the selfish part. You are deliberately (and apparently unashamedly) trying to prevent other people from enjoying the same type of lifestyle that you enjoy. Why is that, if not pure selfishness?

Exactly this. We are an island and we have no control of our borders. I’m expecting immigration to get a lot worse under Labour - where are they all supposed to live? We need to introduce a points based system like they have in Australia. We need more doctors not ubereats drivers. And if we build on vast swathes of countryside all that’s going to do is mean there’s less land to farm and grow food on, further increasing our reliance on importing what we need from other countries. Tell that to most on here though and they will just label you a knuckle dragging racist. Once the countryside is gone it’s gone.

@traytablestowed Because I like badgers and deer and owls in my area and would much prefer seeing them than new built houses standing empty that nobody would be able to afford anyway 😅

i mean let’s be realistic - building new homes isn’t going to do it, the prices for these would be market value. And that’s OK, means people need to shop around where they can afford to live or find better jobs/ additional income streams. Quite simple really!

Of course they wouldn’t be sat empty! They would sell to people like you, people who like to pretend that hard work alone is what got them where they are, rather than the luck of when they happened to have been born. That in turn would free up houses lower down the ladder elsewhere for all those people who need to “shop around”. And so on and so on.

Would it kill you to have a few more houses down the road? Obviously not. But you would fight to prevent it from happening regardless. I can sympathise with people who block planning applications because they ACTUALLY care about the environment - as I mentioned I grew up in the Cotswolds myself so I know how precious it is. But you don't even care about that! You just don't want to ruin your own view. So let’s call a spade a spade - you are selfish.

@traytablestowed i was born to Soviet parents, in a 90s crash, came to this country alone with one suitcase, not knowing English, got scholarship to study medical science, learn English, worked from a waitress up to a director level and yes, it’s is solely hard work that gets you where you want to be. 🤣

Wow that's so interesting. When did you move to this country? How did you earn money to support yourself if you didn't speak any English? Where did you live? When did you buy your first house?

A developer bought a big house and garden near us with a huge woodland garden. He fenced off the top third of the garden. Cut down the woodland one weekend, one tree was a rookery.

He then sold the house and put in planning for two huge houses which would sell for around a million each. Offering the council £30k in offset affordable housing charges which they accepted.

There's a lot of building on big gardens here that has gone on.

Also knocking down big old houses and putting up luxury apartments.

The government is not planning to build on the green belt. They are planning to build on 'grey field' sites which are as follows:

Greyfields are sites with existing commercial development and public utilities that over time have become obsolete, outdated, or underutilized. Greyfields are vacant or underutilized former commercial spaces.

There are many of these sites throughout the country - they are ugly, decaying and attract some pretty unsavoury characters. I know - I live near such a site. We're not talking about the lush green British uplands here!

I'd rather have pleasant modern family homes near me than a disused commercial development any day. It's a no-brainier!

@NotAlexa

"@traytablestowed Because I like badgers and deer and owls in my area and would much prefer seeing them than new built houses standing empty that nobody would be able to afford anyway 😅 "

Firstly the houses wouldn't stand empty- that would be a pretty poor business decision by the builders to build them and not sell them. If they initially can't sell them for the price they want then they would look to reduce the price. And if more and more houses are being built it would make sense to sell as quickly as possible.

Secondly if you like owls, badgers and deer then you would be far better off planning out agricultural fields in natural woodland. 10 acres of natural woodland has far more biodiversity than 10 acres of rapeseed.

Thirdly I find it hard to prioritise securing the homes of owls, deer and badgers over children wanting to move out of perilous rented accommodation to be in their own homes. By building a lot more houses the price will come down and I would support the continued building of houses until the price does come down.