In Britain, Austerity Is Changing Everything (NYT Article)

dowie said:
There is a limited supply of housing, there is also plenty of land that could be developed on!
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but here lies another problem.

take, for example - Wycombe district council.

10k homes in the next 5 years. mostly within a greenbelt area:

problem: no provision for extra transport capacity
problem: lack of additional facilities for health care
problem: no further provision for policing

everything is just so... lastminute.com and we, the taxpayer, ultimately pay for other peoples short sightedness

Meh!
 
FoxEye said:
Tbh developers have to shoulder some of the blame.

Down here the Planning Inspectorate (govt planning officer) has approved on appeal many developments that the council declined to approve.

In doing so the Inspectorate stated that more houses needed to be built, and quickly, and that the council did not have a good enough plant to build them quickly.

So many planning appeals are being successful because the govt wants houses to be built.

However the developers are sitting on land and saying, "Not profitable enough for us to build." And because they sub-contract all the actual building work, they don't have to lay their own staff off; they just let the sub-contractors struggle with no work instead.

The system sucks. Developers have gotten so greedy they won't even build with guaranteed sales for everything they build down here (there are waiting lists and all housing - all of it - is bought well before it's built).
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More good points Fox. But I come back to the only entity able to stop this is Government. Developers will do what makes the most money. This highlights my earlier point about moderate capitalism being the best kind. But you need a strong state prepared to step in. It is a shame ours is *****.

I think it is pretty disgusting how easily the new build affordable housing percentages can be worked around.
 
People keep voting for a party so against their interests, the power of the Tory PR/media machine is stronger with the older generation for sure. The DM/Telegraph/Times lot. The youth are - I would say - much better informed. I don't think it is understating it to say many people are brainwashed.
 
Gigabit said:
People keep voting for a party so against their interests, the power of the Tory PR/media machine is stronger with the older generation for sure. The DM/Telegraph/Times lot. The youth are - I would say - much better informed. I don't think it is understating it to say many people are brainwashed.
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I think this time the pendulum has swung the other way

Labour just needs a coherent position, avoid some obvious PR gaffs (Hi Diane!) and I think the next government will be a labour one, hopefully with lib dems in a coalition sort of thing.
 
dowie said:
There is a limited supply of housing, there is also plenty of land that could be developed on!
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Not as much as people often seem to think - though that is compounded by a certain amount of land being bought up and held onto unused or poorly used for various reasons usually profit.

Though we could change the way some types of dwelling are developed to build on some types of land not suitable for traditional housing but people generally don't want to put the money to what that would cost and/or the reduction in their profits.

People are a bit blasé IMO about how much land we should be leaving for environmental reasons as well as supporting infrastructure and farming, etc.
 
Rroff said:
Not as much as people often seem to think - though that is compounded by a certain amount of land being bought up and held onto unused or poorly used for various reasons usually profit.

Though we could change the way some types of dwelling are developed to build on some types of land not suitable for traditional housing but people generally don't want to put the money to what that would cost and/or the reduction in their profits.

People are a bit blasé IMO about how much land we should be leaving for environmental reasons as well as supporting infrastructure and farming, etc.
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I spent a lot of time up north and it is staggering the amount of fields that run for miles and miles with no housing built on them.
 
Gigabit said:
You read what you want to read. As somebody else said, comprehension isn't your strength
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nah I can quote it for you right here:

Gigabit said:
Are you seriously suggesting there’s not enough space for housing? Ever heard of the green belt?
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as for the comprehension issues, I've had multiple quotes from you and the other poster attacking things that have nothing to do with what I actually posted about so it is a tad ironic to be making that accusation
 
@dowie Just wondering, do you think the Government is to blame for any of this? I happen to think it is a failure in Government policy that has led to the housing crisis we find ourselves in. I don't think it is the fault of immigration, or population growth. These things have an impact but any sensible Government would account for them and plan ahead. Ours seems incapable. So again I return to them being the thing to blame. Do you agree?
 
Gigabit said:
I spent a lot of time up north and it is staggering the amount of fields that run for miles and miles with no housing built on them.
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You might also note that there's a relative lack of (rather expensive to build) infrastructure.

That a fair chunk of the non urban land in the 'North' sits within national parks (that aren't particular suitably for urbanisation regardless of any arguments about whether they should be paved over in the first place) and as Tefal points out a lot of that land is set aside for (quite intensive) farming in a country that already could not feed its own population if needed.

You can't just say 'build more houses' as an answer.... even in the 'North' a lot of new housing is being built in places that are either on flood plains or in areas which will cause problems of greater water run off into water courses potentially increasing the risk of flooding elsewhere (to just give one example of the issues of building more housing) .

The 'answers' to the problem of housing shortages are all rather expensive ones....which is not great when the state (quite sensibly) is looking to keep its deficit down.
 
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