MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
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Amazing how much the issue of building on the green belt recedes when after all your moaning your told you might get offered £300,000,000 for your house and few acres of land. Kills the inner nimby for sure. 😉
(Pretty sure it was 300 mill.... But I stand to be corrected of "only" 30 mill.)
No they were stating it was around a million an acre, the family that owned the entire area of 300 acres were obviously quite keen to sell. The couple in the house that would be surrounded by the new estate wouldn't be getting the 300 mil.
sorry,I misheard!
Their royal change in demeanour made me think they were offered it. 😉
That said, their plot must be with a fortune now. Turning down the first (undisclosed) offer in the hope of getting an even better one.
No building on the green belt
The real issue here IMHO is our economy is too focused on the South East, fix that and the pressure on the green belt goes away
Nice big fat tax on overseas buyers would cool the market.
Folks keep on breeding and need somewhere to live.
Stop 'em breeding I say.
I would say that last point ("breeding") is a global issue not reserved for the UK.
Anyway, who is going to pay tax to keep an aging population from being treated little better than cattle ?
If you're getting £300 million I'm sure you could afford to keep the neighbour happy with a nice sweetener. It's not difficult.
The biggest issue with building on green belt is there are shit loads of brownfield sites that could be developed first but the profits aren't quite as sweet, there are works required prior to the start of the housing build which are deemed too much trouble. Our town is suffering from this with dangerous derelict sites, which are mainly old mills and factories being left to rot rather than dropped and built upon.
There are lots of problems with the current system.
I agree with wrightson about leaving brownfield sites ... but also a bit on the other side is the attempt to plug every green space not in the greenbelt.
Both our neighbours just extended and I had no feeling of raising an objection. Then just before XMAS the neighbour at the end of our garden put in a application for sticking 3 houses in his garden, Apparently this was because he was advised the original 5 would be turned down...
Its not a huge garden and has no access to the roads except a path 1 car wide.. and its triangular. The idea was to stick a house as far into the triangle as physically possible (and the doors still open) then build 2 more behind it and stick in traffic lights so people can get in and out.
As it happened that basically put a 2 story house overlooking our living area.
What amazed me were the lies and misdirection the architect submitted or that they thought they could get away with that were obvious to anyone with a A0 printer. e.g. claims the angle of the houses minimised any overlooking - when obviously viewed at 100% the "angle" was about 3 degrees...
There was a claim that the overlooking windows would be obscured en-suites and bathrooms... yet the detailed plan (submitted with a completely different North reference) clearly showed these to be bedrooms... and the bungalows they overlook .. well 4/5 are not bungalows.
My impression is they didn't expect anyone from planning to actually LOOK in any detail. That rotating the North point on the plan would be overlooked ... or no-one would say .. hey those are not bungalows... or even how a fire engine could even approach the buildings should one ever be needed.
Perhaps they though submitting this on 20th December would ensure that ??
I guess I'm a bit amazed that the planning dept didn't check and then insist the application was factually correct before sending notices out....
The traffic around Culham has been diabolical for years. Culham and Clifton Hampden bridges are both ancient single file bridges controlled by traffic lights with weight restrictions, both of which are closed when the river floods. The route into Abingdon queues from Culham as the centre of Abingdon is a mess at rush hour. The railway station is not walking distance from the current viallge.
Disaster in the making in my opinion without major infrastructure changes. There was talk of a new bridge and road to Didcot, but then they found the route was across a medieval burial site or something, so now jury is out on whether that would ever be built as it would destroy something that has been buried underground for hundreds of years which no-one can appreciate anyway. You just can't win!
"<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #444444; font-size: 12px;">Nice big fat tax on overseas buyers would cool the market."</span>
I couldn't agree more. Also compulsory purchase at bottom market value on houses bought as investment and left purposely empty. With limited space, unless we want to concrete over everything, houses need to be viewed as homes and not investment opportunities for the wealthy.
If we do need to build new houses then we need to be looking at more affordable options for example houses suitable for first time buyers rather than another "stunning development of 4 and 5 bedroom executive homes." The countryside and green space is not an infinite resource. Once it's built on, it's gone.
^ Seriously??? What is it with all that "span style" shit?
Most architects and estate agents should be burried on brown field sites and then they should be turned into public open spaces
the upgrades to the site are ... what was wrong with the old site?
Councils should be forced to lay out the plots and designate the house size not just sell an open field, that way you'd have the social housing sorted
and yes, tax on overseas purchase, compulsory purchase of vacant properties
Councils should offer brownfield plots to registered self-builders at peppercorn prices if the commercial developers don't option
My recent experience suggests the council don't even look in any detail at plans submitted to them.
It seems all about using magic words and ratio's.
e.g. There are minimum requirements for plot area but these are just checked at a top level.
Obviously a plot 4m x 5m has 20 m^2 for example but so does a triangular plot 5m x8m but they can hardly fit the same housing on comfortably.
The request I read was full of this sort of metric. Indeed the area of the plot included a long drive that you need to pull in the mirrors on a family car to drive down.
The request I read was also packed full of inaccuracies and misleading statements.
If this was a contract for example that someone purchased then the company would end up in court for misrepresentation and fall well under advertising standards.
I'd guess the planning department has no means to sanction a company that submits deliberately misleading applications other than viewing others with skepticism. That only really works when the planning company/architects are local though.
The system seems set up to reward those who are deliberately obtuse and misleading and I don't really know if this applies equally to a big development vs a small one
i.e. Does the "Quality, affordable housing for 50 families" score higher than the "budget affordable houses for 30 families"? (for the same plot) Even when the latter is honest and the former isn't?
It was also interesting to hear that the "affordable housing" on a new estate similar to the one being planned on the show had affordable housing FROM £350,000 up....
Croydonisation - my new word i learnt when objecting to a neighbouring 14 story application. Local mp has objected as have all local residents. Access is dangerous and a school would have to move.
If you know croydon you would understand, its massively overdeveloped.
Sad really, if i was offered say a 100k premium over the mkt price i may be bribed off. However, it is a lovely quiet residential area.
Perhaps they though submitting this on 20th December would ensure that ??
Top tip for anyone putting in an undesirable planning application; if you do it in December you effectively reduce the time people have to comment. We scan the local planning web site carefully around the end of the year as without fail that's when the dodgy stuff goes in - mini-estates in former gardens, dubious commercial activities, greenfield rabbit-hutch estates etc. You'd think it wouldn't work but it must do or they wouldn't do it.
@Rio ....
Yep.... you'd think it would be working days or an automatic extension when XMAS week.... you'd even think they could get in some trouble for deliberately misleading applications...
I'm just guessing but I think it's a combination of nothing to lose except the planning fee and possibility to gain in something ridiculous getting through lack of time and objections and absences in an already overworked planning office.
I didn't see it, they just make me angry.
"Greenbelt" was a way to keep values high back when the public thought it was a good thing (most still do) and through the recession.
"Brownfield" sites on the other hand tend to be flats, lots of shiny boxes for the BTL market to buy, they don't ease the housing crisis, they add to it.
As someone else said, the focus on the South East doesn't help, it seems that house prices are pushed up around the country because of the south east by some kind of weird osmosis.
I'd bet my balls to a barn dance that the UK is completely different in 10 years, Concord didn't die because of the accident, it died because less and less people wanted or needed to travel across the Atlantic for a meeting and return in time for Neighbours. When they were designing Concord you couldn't pick up a phone in London and call New York, you have to schedule a call and it took time and effort to do so, a few years later you could send a fax directly from Europe to the US and by the time wide-spread e-mailing became the norm in the late 90s Concord was obsolete and only survived because of political pressure and a bit of status for BA and Air France.
The BBC has largely left London, if it wasn't for their 'talent pool' being disgusted at the idea of moving to The North they'd have completely gone by now, lots of our suppliers (technology firms) are leaving London because they can't justify the rents and salaries of London based premises and staff when they work globally and more and more organisations are offering the chance for staff to work from home so they can reduce their over-heads.
The technology is already here, it works brilliantly, most of us office monkey already think it's perfectly normal to e-mail, IM or call the person who works a few metres away from us. I'm absolutely certain that before the next decade has ended, the idea of an 'office' seems as outdated going to a shop to rent a film on physical media. There will be some resistance of course, partly from 'managers' (who really don't need to exist in this age) who think if they cannot see staff with their own eyes they'll just stop working and from workers themselves who've bought / rented homes far too small for set-up a little home office of their own, mostly because they've rented / bought a place need to a city or town where they work - but it will change and we can all spread out a bit.
We won't solve the housing crisis by building flats in town on the sites of old factories, we'll solve when we stop forcing people into towns to find work.
@PJ.... well agree about not forcing people into cities but there are lots of other brownfield sites.
A lot of the problem is just the cost of development is higher because there is some existing mess to clean up. The thing is that mess doesn't then go away.... and hence brownfield becomes more economic in inner cities.
This can be exaggerated for rural brownfield as the reason the industrial brownfield was out there in the first place can be due to it being something too unpleasant to be in a town (like a power station)
The other cost is the infrastructure, water supply, sewage and gas/electricity and this is much higher in rural locations.
Personally I'm working from my home office this week in a semi rural location. Last week I did have to take Concord (express train) though for F2F meetings.
>Folks keep on breeding and need somewhere to live.
Less and less it would seem.....
The real issue here IMHO is our economy is too focused on the South East, fix that and the pressure on the green belt goes away
This mainly.
Fat tax on overseas buyers
Plus some of this.
Plus, increase tax on holiday homes/ second homes not let out.
Plus, many more 'Derbyshire' clauses of buyers have to live in area for 2+ years before you can buy majority of property.
>Councils should be forced to lay out the plots and designate the house size not just sell an open field, that way you’d have the social housing sorted
They do in Cambridge and then get overturned my the Government each time. Every developer who gets knocked back just appeals to the Tories and they wave it through, over ruling the local planning department. All the sites earmarked for new homes are being turned into huge tower blocks of ridiculously dense student flats (same layout as a prison, tiny bedrooms, one small kitchen shared by 20 or so students).
It should be required that changes to re-submitted plans should be highlighted and obvious.
It's a common trick to get planning for something, then change a note on the plans and resubmit.
It's happened on a development around here - swapping real stone for reconstituted stone and the planners didn't notice it - approved! Protests since have forced the developers to cave, but it took a huge amount of effort!
The problem with green field sites is they tend to be away from everything, so becomes carparks.
Apparments make good cheap(er) housing but in the UK they are always built tiny, with no storage and no designated lockup, and poor communal space and high anual management fees with little done for the money. And hence people then say that apartments are bad.
Anyway, who is going to pay tax to keep an aging population from being treated little better than cattle ?
How about educated at others expense skilled immigrants many of whom return home after a period, pay taxes and take very little from the system. Let's make sure they are nearby and culturally similar so make integration easier...
We've noticed a recent thing whereby developers hold community engagement events, take on board all the local complaints, ignore them, and then submit planning applications having ticked the 'community engagement' box.
Worse yet, because people think they've done their bit for the community by turning up and lodging their objections, they don't realise that they have to do it all again when it becomes a formal planning application. In effect the community engagement exercise becomes a 'sponge' to soak up any local ire.
Also the planning portal (in Edinburgh anyway) doesn't seem to recognise issues to do with local infrastructure as being relevant to a planning application, e.g. a criminally congested village crossroads that will need to handle an additional 100 cars isn't deemed a relevant objection, nor is lack of school places, dilapidated and already failing sewerage system etc. etc. These are all deemed non-material, or some such term, and ignored.
It's a horrible situation that we find ourselves in made worse by people living longer and more and more people living no on their own. My grandparents rattle around in a big five bedroom house in Sheffield and whinge it costs a lot to heat but can't get their heads around downsizing.
Our older housing stock uses land inefficiently too - my house is pretty small (three bed end terrace) but has a garden that's nearly 70 metres long factor in the house and drive out the front and times by five (accounting for the other houses) and it's a pretty big piece of land that could house more people than it does now.
The values of new build houses are sky high though; their idea of affordable housing is nuts.
The planning system is broken too and far too open for abuse. Developers and their consultants are always looking for loopholes to get squiffy applications through. I remember from my planning module at uni the lecturer who was an ex-developer telling a story about a development near a quarry that the planning officer had raised concerns of noise. The day the noise readings where to be taken he bunged the quarry some cash to keep activity to a minimum. Whether this was true or not, I don't know but I'm sure that stuff like that goes on.
Living in the middle of it here in West Oxon. Much of the land owned by that benevolent charity St Johns College, Oxford. District councils are rubber stamping planning apps with landowners and developers in a feeding frenzy.
No thought given to supporting infrastructure: schools bursting at the seams and major routes static mornings & evening. No sign of any S106 monies finding their way into local projects. Creating dormitories for commuters, not sustainable communities.
As noted elsewhere lots of 'stunning' executive 4/5 beds - nothing our kids will ever be able to afford.
Boils my p!ss.
It's always about money! People are greedy and when big money is bandied about they drop principles double fast and become horrible shit house rats. The construction and property sectors are full of hard faced opportunists at all levels.
You have got private sector builders who's only aim is to make as much easy money as quickly as possible. It has never been part of their remit to solve problems for the poorest in society on behalf of the government! MPs pathetic diversionary noise will not change it. VAT incentives made no difference and the so called affordable housing is a resented joke.
The current government and the last two governments have avoided spending money on housing the poorest in society like the plague. Instead doing the opposite selling off stock and forcing the burden onto the private sector, whilst at the same time cutting the subsidies/benefits. A familiar pattern in public private arrangements no?
The majority of the public are only interested in their own well being, with many conflicting interests, preserving rising house prices, landlords, local environment/amenities, land interests etc.
Everyone is pulling in different directions and no one is prepared to give an inch (well the government has been cowed by developers who have always wanted to open up land opportunities!), so they resort to lies, disruption and pressure tactics. It's a vicious circle with the losers ****ed over by everyone else.
AlexSimon- I was going to mention that story.:-)
where I live they’re cramming houses onto every tiny piece of land- including the bowling green, and a former rubbish dump on a steep hill (the developer has come unstuck with that one, serves them right for being greedy).
Meanwhile, a mile or 2 away, the development of ginormous mansions where people can rattle around in massive spaces never ends - unfortunately the people living in those mansions never use the local shops etc so it hasn’t brought prosperity to the heart of the village - it has died.
Central Sheffield brown field is being developed at a huge rate but primarily as student flats as a, they can be built to a lower (cheaper) standard than residential flats and b, it's good investment for the rich.
They say it's good for the city but I can't see how generic buildings designed to house people for a max of 4 years helps... Where do these people move when they have a family? There's very little family housing being developed so surely people just leave.
Side note to this. I recently drove through Manchester and the variety of their new architecture is miles ahead. No two buildings seem the same and each looks interesting ,Sheffield seems to accept anything out of thebuilder's Argos catalogue.