How blatant is this ?

Discuss

blatantly letting local people decide whether or not to build some houses for their kids to live in?

Could be a good move, could be a stalking horse for developers.

Undecided until I see some detail but some safeguards needed.

Would it help at all if I said they are envisaging a requirement for 80% of the local population to vote in favour? i.e. its the exact reverse of what they are touting.

(I know anecdote is not data, but) It pisses me off when locally a couple wanting to build their own house have been refused pp, yet a developer has stuffed two more ugly bungalows into the village for profit.

so a scheme asking for 80% local agreement to a build sounds good to me.

(I just took another look at the BBC article and I'd swear they've edited it since I first read it earlier this morning)

This is a great idea, but as TJ states needs to be caveated by some strict guidelines. Villages around where i live are prime candidates for this, all our kids can't afford to stay in the village due to the average house costing about £400k. This will really help them out and also maintain a balance of population meaning that in 20 years time all these villages will be populated solely by the elderly.

I work around the Peak District and some local control would be great – trouble is, in some places the recently arrived "locals" may outnumber the "local loclas" and may want the area to remain the scenic theme park they moved to rather than a viable place to live and work for people on (often low) incomes

i'm not convinced we need more houses (where are all the homeless people who can afford to buy a house?), we just need to discourage people from owning more than one, and so bring house prices down.

councils charging full (or more) council tax on second homes would be a good start.

taxing the ***t out of buy-to-let landlords would be another…

(a landlord buys a house, the rest of us have to enter a bidding war against each other – and the landlord – to buy the houses left = house prices rise)

i promise you, this new scheme will be mis-used.

I think you are all missing the point. The chance of getting 80% of any population to vote one way is between slim and a lot less than that. In rural Conservative England the chances of an 80% majority of the population voting in favour of a development of affordable housing is about as much chance of Nick Clegg being taken seriously by Spitting Image.

This is the exact opposite of what is being presented and is a very thinly veiled Tory ploy for preventing rural development. Think about it.

If you read the plan the development still has to go through the whole planning rigmorole, there is absolutely no benefit in that context, so whats this actually going to achieve??

thread title made me think 'Dangerous Dave' was an stw member who'd been putting it about a bit.

i'm not convinced we need more houses (where are all the homeless people who can afford to buy a house?), we just need to discourage people from owning more than one, and so bring house prices down.

I think you're missing the point, it's not necessarily about homeless people 😀 – I know quite a few people who are "homed" by their parents/relatives and can't afford to buy a house (full stop, let alone where they live now) so will stay cramped in an existing property, causing massive parking over-crowding on the streets and making life a little cramped for them. If more houses existed, in nice places rather than horrific holes with massive crime rates, prices may come down and be achievable by more people.

Berm Bandit – Thank you!

I feel far less cynical when someone else shares my opinion. The whole 'Big Society' plan is a thinly veiled Tory ploy with the sole purpose of benefitting just one group in society.

I used to be a community councillor in North Wales many years ago, and we used to have lengthy debates about what constituted local – born here, lived here for 5 years or 10 years, parents born here etc etc it is almost impossible.

As for low-cost housing – fine – but again the problem is defining who is eligible – most communities will support the need for the housing – but don't want the "undesirable poor" moving in from outside the community.

Ideally you want a strong local authority – who will build low cost homes – shared equity or wholly owned by the LA – with practical residency qualifications – and for the houses to be owned free hold by the local community.

I feel far less cynical when someone else shares my opinion. The whole 'Big Society' plan is a thinly veiled Tory ploy with the sole purpose of benefitting just one group in society.

You can read things in many ways. I know more than a few places where most of the locals would love there to be some new affordable (not horrible trashy flats made of concrete, proper homes) built locally so that their family could remain nearby and so that there's fewer people crammed into the existing housing. I reckon they could easily get an 80%+ vote in my old village if they proposed a *nice* extension to the village. A lot of the dislike of modern housebuilding comes from the fact that they build 140 houses on 5 square metres, with no garden, no parking, rammed together like prison buildings and then expect people to buy them, the prices fall through the floor because they can't shift them because no-one with any taste and interest in having a little room of their own wants to buy them, so they're then bought by less pleasant types who don't care about the area or the place they live and they rapidly become rat-runs and mini crime areas. I've seen it happen at least twice in the last decade. They don't necessarily even need to build "affordable" homes, just nice ones. If people have the option of nice homes to go to, it frees up the whole market.

I tried (spectacularly unsuccessfully) to argue for this kind of approach to house building regulations on here some time ago. I strongly believe that such a plan (correctly and fairly implemented) makes sense – why should huge swathes of desirable land be excluded from development just because some central body has said so? Why should field A be brown field, field B be greenbelt and field C be of 'special scientific interest' etc etc etc.

very Royston Vasey though..

local houses for local people..

but seriously, great idea – people will not be able to say that authorities etc are 'forcing or imposing development on them'

Ok coffeeking, valid point maybe. However, I live but a stones throw away from Dangerous Dave. Infact his (alleged) local is the very same pub that is my local. I do not beleive for even the briefest of seconds that Dave will be offering his actual support to have new affordable homes built near him. Yes, yes, it all sounds great and makes for wonderful PR, but when nothing really happens to help the less fortunate in the area…

DD: 'well it's not my fault,it's what the Big Society wants'

I do not beleive for even the briefest of seconds that Dave will be offering his actual support to have new affordable homes built near him.

who can say?

who can say?

Only Dave himself, but if he's anything like the average Tory voter in his constituency…..

For Example: I live in a staunch Tory rural constituency. As a village we own and operate our own facilites, such as playing field, village hall and so on.

We, (the duly elected community and parish councils) came up with a plan to redevelop the existing playing field, which is approx. half the recommended size for the number of bods using it. The development was on the outskirts of the village, had no impact on traffic volumes and effected a toal of 6 existing properties which currently over look the existing playing field. These properties were subject to an exceptionally generous compensation package that went from a full market price purchase of the property with an assisted move to a simialr property of the owners choosing through to an extremely generous one off payment for loss of view. The deal included a number of starter properties, tastefully designed and built to a high spec. From a village viewpoint, we gained a fully developed ready to use new playing field twice the size of the existing one, with all mod cons including all weather playing surfaces and so on.We also got on that site a brand new hall/sports barn/pavilion, car park, doctors surgery, (again current one is way too small), and the sum of £1,000,000 in a trust fund to pay for the ongoing upkeep and running of these facilities. To me that seemed like a better than OK deal

The outcome? The councillers were lucky to escape without being lynched!

Nimbyism is much more powerful than people seem to think on here. I am prepared to gurantee from my own expereinces that there is virtually no chance of any rural locality "benefitting" from this policy. The opportunity to build new start proeprties is likely to much better under the current system, where every new development has to include a percentage of affordable housing.

BB I could give a few equally interesting tales of the same nature in a north west community which has been labour controlled for nearly 20 years – your annecdote means nothing and proves a point…

Nimbyism is much more powerful than people seem to think on here.

Yes, but it exists equally in all political regions. The Nimbyism that would stop you putting cheap tat houses in my old village (an old mining village between two large mining/industrial towns with plenty of depravation) is from a staunch labour-voting majority. I don't think nimbyism, or common sense and self-preservation instinct, is owned by any one side in this argument – no-one wants a block of drug addicts round the corner from them, be it in a city centre or in a rural village, labour, lib dem or conservative.

To assign it to any one in particular, I find, is counter to the evidence in front of me and simply being mistakenly used by those supporting the opposition as a point to their side.

Lovely village down the road from me where I can't to buy wonder if they will knock me a cheap house up 😉

Yes, but it exists equally in all political regions.

No dispute with that. However, I don't think anyone else is dressing up a measure that is aimed at preventing affordable housing in rural areas from being built as the precise opposite.

Affordable housing in Affluent area's? I'm sure the locals will jump at the chance to have these properties in their neck of the woods devaluing their property prices.

no-one wants a block of drug addicts round the corner from them, be it in a city centre or in a rural village, labour, lib dem or conservative.

Affordable housing=drug addicts? Never a truer word spoken from middle England.

I tried (spectacularly unsuccessfully) to argue for this kind of approach to house building regulations on here some time ago. I strongly believe that such a plan (correctly and fairly implemented) makes sense – why should huge swathes of desirable land be excluded from development just because some central body has said so? Why should field A be brown field, field B be greenbelt and field C be of 'special scientific interest' etc etc etc.

Well, what happens when all the individual councils build over the green belt?

Well, what happens when all the individual councils build over the green belt?

Well a large part of my argument was why on earth is there green belt in the first place in rural areas – set by some arbitrary committee. My in-laws live on green belt and I see, first hand, the absurd rules that stop them from developing on their own land although to the left and right there is housing. Not far from them they (very recently) allowed a football pitch, changing facilities and floodlighting and a bypass cut straight through the middle of the belt. But they have massive restrictions on improving their home and the rules stop us from buying a piece of land from them to build our own house on.

Go down the hill 200 metres from their house and it stops being green belt (although, somewhat absurdly, this is closer to the river and woods that you would think would be the environment they would want to ringfence).

I understand that certain areas should be protected from development but I have never understood how these random bits of land are suddenly deemed to be greenbelt and that is the point I tried to communicate then, and no doubt will fail at again now.

I have never understood how these random bits of land are suddenly deemed to be greenbelt

Do you think if you actually bothered to find something out about the process it might be a little bit less bewildering?

Do you think if you actually bothered to find something out about the process it might be a little bit less bewildering?

🙄

Clearly the policy isn’t as blatant and obviously fraudulent as I first thought, so lets try another tack.

Here are some facts :-

1) The majority of Tory constituencies are rural
2) The majority of Tory voters tend to not need nor welcome “affordable” housing on their door step.
3) The majority of Tory voters do not welcome change
4) The majority of Tory voters believe in market forces
5) The majority of Tory voters are not in favour of State intervention

So here we have a policy which is superficially aimed at

1) Increasing the amount of Affordable Housing in their traditional heartland despite the fact that their own voters are likely to be diametrically opposed to the concept.
2) Encouraging a change in the makeup of rural communities via state intervention. (Remember here that market forces is what has caused the problem in the first place)

So clearly it’s a bit of an odd one.

So how does this marvellous big society system work?

Well apparently according to the Minister on the news this morning, they are talking about 80% of the local electorate needing to vote in favour of a development for it to bypass the normal planning system and go……. Wait for it …… into the planning system.

Its virtually impossible to achieve an 80% majority of the entire electorate in any system, besides whats the need for 80%? This government of all people should realise that you don’t even need a numerical majority to make your views count!! Surely if this policy were genuine all that would be necessary would be 50% of turnout (as opposed to electorate) plus 1. That’s how democracy works surely?

Think about it. It is the exact opposite of what they are saying it is. What it actually is, is a situation where you only need a combined 20% of the electoral register either to abstain from voting, or to vote against to stop any new development. It is definately not an exercise in social regeneration of rural England.

Another idea (not a policy) off the conveyor belt – i guess the Tories are going the 'Policy a day keeps the media at bay' approach.

Trouble is, this, like most other 'policy announcements' lacks any detail. What counts as a village? 20 affordable homes for a village of 4000 people isn't going to make much difference.

"taxing the ***t out of buy-to-let landlords"
Will lead to a lack of affordable rents.

Spoken in village halls everywhere: "if we allow cheap houses to be built nearby, it will lower the value of our houses"

So no, it wont work.

Would it help at all if I said they are envisaging a requirement for 80% of the local population to vote in favour?

Good. It should be at least 80%.

mastiles_fanylion – you're saying you don't understand how it happens. At least if you understood the process you could disagree with it intelligently.