If you live in a leafy village, has new affordable housing negatively changed your area

[Yesimanimby]

Almost 1,000 new homes are being built in fields surrounding our semi-rural, leafy village. The new homes will become part of the village, doubling the size it is now.

Atm we have hardly any affordable or social housing here, nor flats. The new development will be 30% affordable housing with blocks of flats in a prominent position at the village entrance.

I appreciate there's a housing shortage and new homes, especially affordable and social housing, are needed.

Up until now it's been quiet (sleepy) here and with a very low crime rate. Public transport links are terrible and will remain poor.

We won't be directly backing onto the new homes but everything is within easy walking distance.

DH and I are debating whether to move as it's very likely to change the nature of the place we've enjoyed for many years.

If you've had a big development like this on your doorstep - either newly-built or older, what has been the impact?
Pros and cons, although I'm probably more interested in the downsides as that will tip the balance on whether to sell up.

@Yesimanimby There is quite a lot to unpick here. I live in a sleepy settlement in the AONB. What do I have in the valley below? HS2. You can buy in a protected area but the government does care about that. So the best advice is to move to an AONB and hope.

The housing shortage will mean development increases. Not decreases. The land presumably was included in your regional plan so you must have realised it was coming. It’s not possible to build 1000 houses without a very lengthy planning process. It’s also a ludicrously expensive process. If this is doubling the size of your village, you are a big village already and presumably have a school
that can be extended? The developers will make contributions to infrastructure. Also roads are narrow to slow down traffic! It’s a design for safety.

Brown field sites are hugely expensive to clean up. It means developers sink in vast amounts and need the money back. That’s often difficult in a low price area. It’s not an economic proposition. If it was, Liverpool docks would be fully renovated and all those mills in the northern cities. Only a few cities can support this expense and there’s few large brown field sites in the countryside. The closing RAF site near us will be developed near us and is obviously brown field. It’s better than using fields.

There is a massive need for social housing and starter homes folk can afford. No one wants new housing near them. You possibly live in a house no one wanted 50 years ago. There won’t be any change to this policy and around here a load of run down barns cannot get pp. There’s meant to be a presumption of planning for brown field but councillors don’t agree. Planning is a mess and has been anti housing for too long. I doubt Labour will sort it out but we shall see.

Not quite, Hopelessinhomecounties

A dear friend lives in a prestigious village bordered by farmland which the owner's known to be very keen to sell, and I must admit that when she moved and raved about the outlook I said "You do realise this is almost certain to be developed?"

She smiled and pointed out that quite a few of the LA's "cabinet members" live there so wouldn't allow it ... and for 17 years she's been right

Yes, we did this.

It's easy to call people names.

The experiences of posters in this thread (not just fears of what might happen) would indicate that the concerns are legitimate.

Bear in mind that the local authority only takes an initial decision (which has to be justified on planning considerations, not just because they don't want a development). If permission is refused the developers invariably appeal to central government who will just overrule the local authority if the reasoning isn't sound (and the financial incentives mean that developers put a lot of resources into appeals).

We live in a sleepy village, buy luckily its in a valley and most of the landscape was underground stone mines so cannot be built on, plus AONB.
A large housing development with social housing would see me putting my house on the market ASAP.
There will be a rise in crime, strains on doctors surgery, traffic from building.
Sell sell sell.

People are allowed to be worried about their neighbourhoods changing but by Jove there are some thinnly veiled snobby posts on this thread. My child receives the pupil premium because we were going through a rough time financially when he started school. His behaviour is impeccable, if anything it's the spoilt children who cause trouble always bragging about the latest thing their parents have brought them

Not guilty, but there are a few in our village. They tend to be the worst sort as they assume they’re smarter than all of us bumpkins who already live here.

I know, Daphodils, but all that can be said is that it's worked so far

That said, this may have been helped by the fact that other attractive areas are available to which builders have so far been redirected, knowing that residents are likely to be less strident in their objections and appeals more easily avoided

Just the first bit? Or the first bit and the second bit?

Yeah, they’re usually far more sophisticated than the locals in London, too. I think some of them think they’re doing the locals a favour by moving there and everyone should be grateful.

I find it really sad that (infrastructure concerns aside) that people make so many sweeping judgements about affordable housing. Firstly, not all council estates have poor reputations. Some are worse than others. Many are just normal people living normal lives. Secondly, affordable housing includes shared ownership and it’s not that ‘affordable’ as you’re expected to be on quite a considerable salary! There’s a lot of underlying snobbery. For those who want to move into another area, I do hope your neighbours aren’t the sort of people who are unfriendly to “outsiders”.

Of course it’s important that large new housing estates have the relevant associated infrastructure, particularly GP surgery places and schools but as always on MN, a lot is just snobbery.

I mean I think they all go hand in hand!

Inevitably by buying we displaced someone else who has indeed lived here a long time, and by increasing demand we would have made prices (a bit) higher than they would have been if we weren't in the market competing with other buyers.

Londoners made money on house appreciation. Now residents in leafy villages are doing the same. Around me locals are selling up at massive price tags and moving to cheaper leafy villages, mortgage free. They will sit and wait for a Londoner to buy their house rather than drop their price and sell to a local.

The problem is that local authorities don't give a damn about infrastructure.

People living in the big local development not too far from us, which was built on what were fields, have come to realise that their houses were thrown up on a flood plain, despite official warnings this would be problematic.

Surprise, suprise, they now have flooding and damp.

They also believed the salespeople's lies that playgrounds, community centres and schools would be built fairly soon. I know from a friend who works for a developer that companies are very canny in this regard.

They'll put up the number of homes which take them just below the number which triggers them building the infrastructure they're contracted to provide. Then, citing poor market conditions, they stop short of that total and the infrastructure isn't built.

So, families are stranded in sub-standard housing with nothing at all for kids to do and not even a shop or cafe to walk to.

And, we can be a politically correct as we like, but even if a small proportion of the social housing tenants are problematic, that can have a disproportionate impact.

I was interested in hearing other people's actual experiences in similar situations - that's being realistic, not snobbish.

Look at this way, as long as your own house isn’t 70s 80s 90s it will seem more desirable when the majority on offer is identikit new build. Older houses sell fast here, the second-hand new builds and <50 yrs old not so quick.

At nearly 70, having lived in a village for 35 years, we will probably move overseas -- for better weather primarily, but also for tax reasons and property prices. We're looking at passive income visas, and the price we shall pay is that we will end up living in an environment that is partly an elderly migrant zone. I'm not bad at learning languages but at 69, I am unlikely to acquire the fluency to integrate with the local population, so new friends and acquaintances will be people who are equally citizens of nowhere. I just hope that we are not going to be the last straw that turns the local population against people like DH and I.

Dsil bought one of these kinds of new builds with the promise of better bus links and a new secondary school (the local is poorly rated). When she moved her daughter was 18 months - her daughter is now not far off secondary age and school plans have never come to fruition and I'm pretty sure they've been scrapped. No new bus. The local small convenience store serves a massive number of new houses. There's no new infrastructure at all to support the thousands of new families. Truly bonkers. What makes it worse is that she can't sell as the new ones all have deals to encourage sales.

Bedfordshire, yes.

Ah - just seen op's reply above. Very similar situation to dsil. It all seems very underhand - promising the world and not delivering anything beyond bare minimum.

With that latest post at 20.08 you've now got me wondering if we lived in the same area, @Yesimanimby - the similarities are uncanny

The really depressing thought is that it's not likely, but seems that way because of just how common this sort of thing is

It is likely to be shit OP.
Ignore any virtue signalling from anyone who hasn't been in a similar position and who throw accusations of snobbery around.
When me and DH bought our first house together there were a number of "affordable" houses built nearby. We had no preconceptions at all and were happy to be friends with everyone.
It was awful, some kids objected to my nice company car and decided to vandalise it. Then The Council decided to use some of the houses for problem families, including one as safe house. I could list everything that happened but just believe me it was awful!
We manged to part x our house to a developer less than 2 years after we bought it for slightly less than we paid

I’ve got a slightly different take. I live on a newish estate, 50/50 owner occupier/social housing. Big expensive properties and then the smaller social housing houses (perfectly nice homes). Guess where all the problems are? Guess where the police are called out to? If I posted pictures of the gardens, you’d be able to tell which was which right away. I do not want the stereotypes to be true, but they are in our case, with the odd exception.

I know what the OP is getting at.

Anyhow. They build so-called 'affordable' housing round here, but they are 3-bed semis with garages on some sort of shared ownership scheme. Affordable for commuters moving out of London, but for local young people, not so much.

Real affordable housing would be if they built small flats or rows of little terraced homes and had some on 50% shared ownership schemes so people could get a foot on the ladder, but no. They don't build those. And even if they did, they'd be snapped up off-plan by BTL landlords. The developers make far more money out of the bigger homes, and the planners are, regrettably, easily swayed by the developers and the local bigwigs on the council.

Mostly people complain about the social housing element on new estates being cut right back as the housing associations don’t have the money for them. Few get increased here! Also in my nearest town we have seen two new secondary schools and several new primary schools. There is a whole new road infrastructure and a new doctors’ surgery. I would say it’s been planned fairly well. However the town expanded around the arrival of the railway in the 19th century and has kept on expanding!