Nature vs Building houses

[JoyousPinkPeer]

Do people agree with Angela Rayner's belief that we need to desecrate our greenspaces/nature to build houses on greenbelt rather than brownfield.

We won't debate on this thread the fact she had two houses and didn't pay CGT when she sold the second, which she did not live in.

She's typical Labour op...do as i say not as i do! No i do not think we should be building on green belt land.

No I don't agree with her. I don't want solar farms covering large swathes of our greenbelt either. There are many new Labour MPs in rural seats now who won't be very popular.

No I don’t agree. I think building and planning regs need a massive overhaul. Firstly, anything that needs planning needs an ecological report, you can’t protect and mitigate if you don’t know what’s there. In many many cases people know what’s there but choose to protect it as it stops what they want to do. This can’t be allowed.

We need houses that can cope with climate change, and don’t cause flooding.
We need more trees and better thought out planting in developments (Beth chatto development for instance). We need places for wildlife. Hedges in places of fences, and where we have to use fences, hedgehog holes.
Every roof should be green or solar (Paris have this), rain water tanks for toilets.
think 1930-1950 developments, bigger plots leaving more room for wildlife and proper parking with charging points. Maisonettes with gardens which work for families or down sizers.
yes it will cost more and there will be less profit. But there will be fewer objections, happier households and we might stop the mass extinction we are seeing.

France are putting solar panels over car parks, this seems sensible. It provides cover and shade for cars, and saves farm land and greenbelt.

yes we should be building houses. green belt or not. Though where I live in south herts there are lots of massive mansions taking up land lots of them remain empty and unsold. I would buy and build on those spaces.

Well I guess it depends on how you phrase the question, alternatively you could ask:

"All the buildings in the UK - houses, shops, offices, factories, greenhouses - cover only 1.4% of the total land surface. Looking at England alone, the figure still rises to only 2%.

Or put a different way buildings cover less of Britain than the land revealed when the tide goes out.

At the same time the UK has a backlog of 4.3 million homes compared to other European countries which would need 440k being built every year for 25 years.

This shortage of supply has led to ever increasing prices with the average house price to income ratio rises from 3 in the 1990s to 7 today meaning an ever increasing number of families are unable to afford a home.

AIBU to hope that more homes can be built to prevent homelessness and allow more families to own their own homes."

www.centreforcities.org/publication/the-housebuilding-crisis/

www.economicshelp.org/blog/5568/housing/uk-house-price-affordability/

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41901297.amp

It's not either/or. Housing developments could and should be havens for nature, as illustrated by the new biodiversity net gain legislation- brought in by the Tories, weirdly enough. We could be building well insulated, innovative eco homes surrounded by trees, ponds and wildflower meadows, where cars are kept out of central areas, with new infrastructure and new public transport connections and cycle paths. Compared to the featureless monocultures typical of modern agriculture, these developments could be positive, both environmentally and aesthetically.

Could being the operative word. I haven't yet seen any signs that the current government has considered the actual quality of newbuilds any more than the previous one.

Green belts are not rich in wildlife; indeed, a more accurate term for them might well be ‘green deserts’.

Farming in Britain is pesticide intensive, which limits the number of insects (and, by extension, animals) which can live off green belt land. Green belt land is now simply too toxic to be able to support a variety of creatures. Indeed English Nature remarked that lowdensity developments with gardens and public open spaces would provide more favourable habitats for species than the giant pesticide-treated cereal fields that dominate much of the countryside now.

I mean rent prices are driven by supply and demand and this crisis could of been mitigated decades ago by massively restricting immigration. But no now we have to keep letting people flood in while attempting to build enough houses for everyone to live. They will NEVER be able to keep up with the level of immigration each year.
People need to live somewhere but it's sad seeing all the local fields and forests being ripped up

We've got too many people living in our tiny island so immigration needs to be reduced significantly or we will lose something very precious. Once the countryside is concreted over with identical box houses, super prisons and solar panels it's gone and I rather love the countryside. Building on the green belt is much easier than brownfield sites and much cheaper (particularly as Labour are going to wreck farming and therefore reduce land value) and so that's where Ange will ruthlessly target and there's nothing any of us can do to stop her. Next generations will look back sadly at the destruction Labour will have caused to the beauty of this country, as they have done before. But at least we will have "diversity" just not of species and habitat.

I don't agree. There are 1.5m homes in the UK which are currently derelict and should be renovated or redeveloped first, and there are over a million existing planning permissions which have not been built out.

Where I live, in the south east, the need is for smaller 1 and 2 bedroom units for young people and downsizers on relatively low incomes. Instead every planning permission is overwhelmingly for 3+ bedroom units"executive homes" starting at £600k. Once granted the permissions are built out at a snail's pace, if at all, because developers do not want to risk their profit margin by building at pace. Our local council could grant 1000 permissions every day all on fields and it wouldn't impact on the number of houses delivered or affordability, although it would mean isolated half built estates all over the place (as now, only worse). The housing shortage is nothing to do with the planning system and everything to do with relying on the private sector for delivery. Labour are pissing into the wind with their current strategy.

Yes the south east countryside is going to go sadly.

Do people agree with Angela Rayner's belief that we need to desecrate our greenspaces

There’s a nice neutral not-at-all loaded question to start us off 🙄

I think it sums things up pretty well. She wants to build over the green belt. I don't know how else you would describe it if you care about the countryside and wildlife.

Until all the derelict houses are bought back in use, green space should not be sacrificed

I'd have more sympathy for building on some greenbelt if it was the type of housing needed, built in a way that was environmentally friendly and had infrastructure put in.

But mainly I want to invest in bits of the country that aren't the south east so we don't try to cram the whole UK population as close to London as possible.

There aren't the jobs in the large rural counties but Labour still insist on building thousands and thousands of small houses there, such as in the north east. If that's social housing predominantly, they are sending people (mostly immigrants) to poorer areas without employment prospects to get off benefits. The north south divide will just get worse. That is the pull of London unfortunately.

We need housing, whist brownfield development is great it not the total solution, in some parts of the country where I am, there's no empty brownfield sites to develop and people needing housing as they are in tiny flats and want to have a family.

It's not a party issue, it's a practical issue, where to put people

Yes but my thought wasn't building houses in large rural counties with no jobs, which isn't a good idea.

it was about investing in infrastructure such as roads/rail between the larger northern towns and incentives for businesses to locate in that area so there are jobs. The pull of London is partly a political choice.

@Nordione1

So where to you suggest the people who otherwise would like in these houses live instead? Perhaps even more housing in the south east???

There's lots of ways that we can be approaching this, the first in higher density housing, this means more apartments, more town houses (all terraced housing should be on a minimum of 3 floors and ideally have basement garages with a utility) and detached houses should again have rooms in the attic as standard. The second is clamping down on holiday homes, that if you own more than one property per adult (which means you can have 2 for a couple) any additional properties must be managed as either long term or short term rental properties - and yes the royal family can downsize too (though not sure how many takers there are for castles. But the biggest thing we can do is to incentivise companies to move to places with excess housing and capacity for brownfield development, get good jobs out of the overcrowded areas

We don't need housing.

In no particular order:

a/ Plenty in the north.
b/They built a whole new town in the sw on green fields. Most of it is still unsold.
c/ Raynor wants housing for developers to sell to wealthy (retirees, second home owners, BTL). If they wanted to build housing for first time buyers, for example, they would convert underused car parks and empty high street buildings. They are not doing this.
d/ I'm selling 2 small affordable homes in sw city - one sold, the other has been sitting unsold so clearly the market for buying is not that hot.
e/Our local council say they desperately need single person accommodation yet literally all the new estates going up are 4-5 beds!

Yes all good. Just not the green belt please. Once that red line is crossed its all over.

The pull of London is highly detrimental to the country but unfortunately in many towns up north the main employer is the state. There's not the private enterprise that will draw people so theres no wealth eco system. It's a vicious circle. Covid messed up the push for levelling up and I don't see Labour supporting the private sector which could be the solution.

They are also waiting to build thousands of houses in the north west, on greenbelt. Loads of brownfield sites and thousands of unoccupied houses.