Labour wants to build huge amounts of new houses

[RudsyFarmer]

I’ve just been listening to it being discussed in the radio. The conservatives are not building enough to support the growing population.

i completely understand the need for millions of new homes but man I feel so sad for the loss of green space. Is it just me being ridiculous? Make me feel better about it as in my local area there is just continuous new housing every here. I can’t imagine that quadrupling year on. 900 houses in the next village alone. 5,000 homes have created a new town a few miles away. I want my kids to be able to live in a house but also want them to see the odd field.

There is no way that the big housing companies will build houses at such a rate that they will cause a meaningful drop in prices or rents.

They just won't. They won't. They won't. It's common sense and no government will be able to make them build faster than they want to.

This is just buying votes with hot air

Agreed. It’s hardly in their interests to do so.

Labour won’t do shit about building.
’Common Sense’ would say any government since Thatcher could have borrowed the money to start social home building, and created/bought a national builder to do it. Buy the land cheap, give it planning permission, build. Then use the rents to start paying the debt and investing in more housing. At some point it would be practically self funding if no profit was being taken.
This has not happened in the last 40 years, and it won’t happen now either.

GPs, dentists, people working in hospitals and schools also need to be able to afford to live somewhere. Our local primary schools are now massively under subscribed with teachers having to leave or be reallocated as people can't afford the cost of family housing plus multiple lots of childcare fees in the early years. GP surgeries are funded according to patient numbers and a complex formula (which I'm not going to pretend to understand). The reason you can't get an appointment is that there are now less practicing GPs than there were 6 years ago in the UK, nothing to do with housing. Immigration is a separate matter that needs its own thread but we've massively underbuilt homes for the last 20 years including social housing in view of household growth. The other option is to tax the baby boomer empty nesters out of their 4 bed homes but I can see that as being politically and morally unpalatable.

Thatcher could have started by NOT giving council tenants the right to buy

A developer was going to build some low cost housing on a brown field sight near where I live. They'd had pre development discussions with the planning department. Fast forward a year and they put in a planning application. It was turned down due to a new environmental/noise survey being carried out. There is noise from the nearby industrial estate. The council say noise levels have increased. Bizarrely, just over the other side of the hedge from this site, work has started on another housing development which already had planning permission - and they aren't low cost houses. It's totally bonkers. The area needs low cost and smaller housing - too many 4 bed detached being built. My adult DS is living at home because the very few 2 bed houses that come on the market are snatched up immediately.

The other option is to tax the baby boomer empty nesters out of their 4 bed homes but I can see that as being politically and morally unpalatable.
And decent them into what? - the greatest shortage in many areas is in the smaller 2-bed end of the market.

It’s the pensions which make it hard to give nhs staff a pay rise - you aren’t just paying more now you are also paying more for decades of retirement

I believe our children deserve to be in a position to start a family if they choose before age 40 and to live in a clean, safe, affordable home. This generation have been so let down they are likely to vote with social conscience unlike the previous generation.

Well said.

They never did this though, the Govt, industry and ultimately, the voters changed the rules and the schemes, making working in these sectors far less attractive.

A little foresight would have seen this is what would happen & steps taken to avoid.

Quite. Also many European countries have tenancies for life, at affordable rents, which are highly regulated. Its not that people in the UK feel its their divine right to own a house, its that the alternative in the rental sector is so unstable and expensive.

There is no point comparing UK rentals to European, when it's completely different systems.

🙈

very interesting. Off to read.

It needs to be the right type of housing, in the right places, with the infrastructure to support it.

I am sure we could fit couple of new towns in. Modern garden cities.

Right to buy wasn't a problem in itself. There were, however, two big problems. Firstly, councils weren't allowed to use the money raised to buy/build replacement houses. Secondly, the discounts to buyers were insanely generous. As is often the case, what was a good idea in theory turned out to be a disaster due to the implementation flaws. A bit like Brown's 10% basic rate tax rate and his tax credits.

We need 2-3 bed homes that would suit most people, that is families with up to 2/3 children and older people downsizing. They should come up with attractive pro forma homes that will suit most people long term.

For example, many European flats do have cellars for storage of summer and winter equipment and private outside space (small garden area or balcony). We need this as well as really good noise insulation in communal living. We also need actual enforcement against antisocial type behaviour so certain types of people can’t terrorise others.

Regarding the elderly generation, even if they are asset and pension rich, many also feel worried and insecure due to worries around healthcare and lack of help/lack of care and the prospect of a terrible death. There is a lot of insecurity and worry across society so whatever politicians come into power next, we need some positivity, some rethinking etc The country is rich and there is a lot of talent. If people feel positive again and feel there is a good future ahead, things will change. It is almost like the country as a whole is suffering from depression.

Housebuilders are like cartels and will only release/build when there is money to be made. Most act for their own shareholders, typically funds including pension funds.

What was the reasoning behind not allowed to build?

It sounds like the wrong way to go, was there any logic behind it stated?

I think the policy was a problem from the start because Thatcher had no intention of ever allowing the rebuilding of more council properties.

It was a cynical vote winning ploy and nothing more so no wonder the discounts to buyers were insanely generous. She got what she wanted which was to gain a whole new big group of working class people voting Conservative.

I don't think there was any logic, certainly can't remember any explanations.

What was worse is that councils couldn't spend the money on anything else either, hence why so many councils had (and still have) shedloads of money invested that they can't actually spend on services. Lots of councils lost money in the Icelandic bank scandals as they were sat on piles of cash they had to invest and the Icelandic banks were offering stupidly high interest rates, so councils "invested" their reserves to gain income in the form of interest. Ironically, they're allowed to spend the income from the investments, but aren't allowed to spend the investment reserves. (That's certainly how I saw it explained many times over the years at that time, maybe it's changed now??)

Whenever you fly into the UK and you see it via air the sheer amount of green fields is just mind blowing. I think we’ve a long way to go before it’s an issue build in a couple of thousand new houses.

Right to buy, was directly linked with strikes and rioting. People up to the eyeballs in Debt won’t strike. And people receiving enormous discounts on their housing assets also won’t strike.

Yes, that too. She basically tried to buy the working class and it worked.

Yay neo-feudalism! Yay no countryside or farms, meaning helpless dependency on imports, leaving us vulnerable to attack by hostile foreign powers! Yay to balkanisation and inter-ethnic / religious violence! Yay to teeming slums filled with poverty and despair!

Don't worry about the NHS or the welfare state, because we won't be able to afford those anymore, so they just won't exist.

Should have gone back to being the grovelling slaves of your Anglo Norman overlords and their banker chums, shouldn't you, but no. You had to go and insist on your rights, you silly sods, and that just won't do. So here's lots and lots of foreigners who will depress your wages infinitely, and there's plenty more where they came from. And we've taught them to hate and despise you as much as we do on the way in.

And the next time Something Nasty rears its hideous head in Europe, the working class will tell them to swivel this time, and the hilarious part is that this will come as a huge shock to the bosses.

A glorious vision of the future...I can't wait.

The existing housing stock is largely depleted though in terms of energy efficiency and not fit for 21st century living anymore given lack of insulation, high cost of fossil fuels, both literally and the cost to the environment. Nobody expected many of the Victorian workers cottages to have to last this long.
So mass building now is not a bad idea - it is how it is organised and thought through and planned that matters. Building for the new generation and the downsizers is important. Using recycled materials where possible is also important.
I think with the right vision and investment and very careful and clever planning it can be done, in a successful way. In places like London, we need Singapore type housing and it needs to be carefully planned and maintained so people value it for many many years to come.

Sounds crap to me too. All this selling in bigger population here.

People will get angrier. They already are in some countries.