Wherever has the most green land can support more new homes.
The idea of scaling by population is insane, so you want to pile new homes on top of existing ones do you?
Building futuristic cities would be a better objective than allowing suburban sprawl all over the countryside.
If people want that, then great, and they will choose that. But if people want a house and garden of their own then why should we force people high into slums with no open spaces and no private gardens of their own?
Sprawling into the countryside is far superior, it means everyone can have a house of their own, with a garden of their own.
Remarkable how many people propose this who live in a house with a garden themselves. Really mean they want plebs to be in cities and not spoiling their view.
If you compare the cost of a one-bed tenement in Edinburgh with a detached house in Bathgate, it's clear what people want.
Not really, that's just comparing Edinburgh with Bathgate.
Comparing like for like, its clear that everywhere people prefer detached houses over semis, semis over terraces, and terraces over flats. That's consistent everywhere.
Let people build what they want and let them choose. If they choose flats then great and if they choose homes then great, let them have what they want.
I would like a mansion personally.
Please cater for me too.
Good.
You should be able to build a mansion wherever you want in my eyes, so long as its your land.
If that's what you want, then what's stopping you?
All the other selfish arseholes trying to build their own mansions
No that's not a problem, there's plenty of land out there that's not been developed.
You're not really interested in housing people at all. For you it's all about how much of the countryside you can cover in concrete.
I couldn't care less how much of the countryside gets covered in concrete.
I want everyone to be able to have a house of their own. Not a shitty flat.
Countryside is a secondary concern. Its a place that houses could be built on, that haven't been.
Given that about 80% of farmland is used to raise animals: grazing, barns and agricultural land used to grow crops to feed the animals, you being a carnivore shouldn't be keen to concrete over the countryside.
I've never once advocated we concrete over the entire countryside, just as much of it as people want to live on.
We currently have [from memory] 70% of land used for agriculture and 5% for housing.
If we changed that to 65% and 10% respectively we could double the amount of land for housing, while reducing the land for agriculture by less than 10%. More realistically if my policies were adapted I expect we might go to something like 68% and 7% which would be enough.
Oh and we can import meat easier than we can import land/houses.
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
I did engage with it.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
You've expressed horror about having considerably more housing in a given area than you want. You call it "piling them on top", "shitty flats", "concrete jungles", etc. Perhaps you're the real NIMBY.
Except for the fact I've said every time if people want to build or live in shitty flats, that would be their choice and I'm pro-choice and would respect their right to make that choice if that's what they want.
What I oppose is forcing people to live in urban slums piled on top of each other when they want a house of thei own, not to live in a slum, because those who live in houses are saying no more houses near me.
But the words "shitty" and "slum" are your words, not anyone else's. And they really don't have to follow.
Wherever has the most green land can support more new homes.
The idea of scaling by population is insane, so you want to pile new homes on top of existing ones do you?
Building futuristic cities would be a better objective than allowing suburban sprawl all over the countryside.
If people want that, then great, and they will choose that. But if people want a house and garden of their own then why should we force people high into slums with no open spaces and no private gardens of their own?
Sprawling into the countryside is far superior, it means everyone can have a house of their own, with a garden of their own.
Remarkable how many people propose this who live in a house with a garden themselves. Really mean they want plebs to be in cities and not spoiling their view.
If you compare the cost of a one-bed tenement in Edinburgh with a detached house in Bathgate, it's clear what people want.
Not really, that's just comparing Edinburgh with Bathgate.
Comparing like for like, its clear that everywhere people prefer detached houses over semis, semis over terraces, and terraces over flats. That's consistent everywhere.
Let people build what they want and let them choose. If they choose flats then great and if they choose homes then great, let them have what they want.
I would like a mansion personally.
Please cater for me too.
Good.
You should be able to build a mansion wherever you want in my eyes, so long as its your land.
If that's what you want, then what's stopping you?
All the other selfish arseholes trying to build their own mansions
No that's not a problem, there's plenty of land out there that's not been developed.
You're not really interested in housing people at all. For you it's all about how much of the countryside you can cover in concrete.
I couldn't care less how much of the countryside gets covered in concrete.
I want everyone to be able to have a house of their own. Not a shitty flat.
Countryside is a secondary concern. Its a place that houses could be built on, that haven't been.
There is a total contradiction between your aesthetic dislike of "shitty flats" and your advocacy of indefinite population growth.
Not really since we have the entire population in less than 5% of England's land and over 80% of people live in houses, not flats.
Everyone could afford a house and we could quite literally double our population and we still wouldn't have covered most of the countryside with housing.
How big would London be if everyone lived in a house?
They already tried this in the capital of Ireland and the city just kept Dublin.
The problem with all these cowboy builders is that they never build towns that are big enough for the both of us.
Her speech, in my opinion, bordered on the banal. Sweeping generalities about what she hopes to achieve, no specifics at all about how that might be done. It was perhaps sufficient for the occasion but this lack of detail is becoming troubling. It helps, a lot, that her opponent is a mad, old, corrupt, sociopath with a predilection for law breaking, indeed it might even be enough. But the lack of clarity about her objectives or her means as President is going to make actual progress difficult.
It's a convention speech. It did what it needed to do.
Hillary had a policy paper for any issue you could mention; ditto Warren in the 2020 primaries. Did them no good at all.
And they're running against someone whose lengthy manifesto - which he claims never to have seen - has already been officially disavowed.
She's part of an administration which has a shedload of policy - infrastructure; deindustrialization; a border bill, rejected by the GOP in Congress, which will be reintroduced; support for Ukraine, etc.
You're making it seem she's some kind of tabula rasa. That's clearly not the case. And there's two full months of campaigning to go.
Wherever has the most green land can support more new homes.
The idea of scaling by population is insane, so you want to pile new homes on top of existing ones do you?
Building futuristic cities would be a better objective than allowing suburban sprawl all over the countryside.
If people want that, then great, and they will choose that. But if people want a house and garden of their own then why should we force people high into slums with no open spaces and no private gardens of their own?
Sprawling into the countryside is far superior, it means everyone can have a house of their own, with a garden of their own.
Remarkable how many people propose this who live in a house with a garden themselves. Really mean they want plebs to be in cities and not spoiling their view.
If you compare the cost of a one-bed tenement in Edinburgh with a detached house in Bathgate, it's clear what people want.
Not really, that's just comparing Edinburgh with Bathgate.
Comparing like for like, its clear that everywhere people prefer detached houses over semis, semis over terraces, and terraces over flats. That's consistent everywhere.
Let people build what they want and let them choose. If they choose flats then great and if they choose homes then great, let them have what they want.
I would like a mansion personally.
Please cater for me too.
Good.
You should be able to build a mansion wherever you want in my eyes, so long as its your land.
If that's what you want, then what's stopping you?
All the other selfish arseholes trying to build their own mansions
No that's not a problem, there's plenty of land out there that's not been developed.
You're not really interested in housing people at all. For you it's all about how much of the countryside you can cover in concrete.
I couldn't care less how much of the countryside gets covered in concrete.
I want everyone to be able to have a house of their own. Not a shitty flat.
Countryside is a secondary concern. Its a place that houses could be built on, that haven't been.
Given that about 80% of farmland is used to raise animals: grazing, barns and agricultural land used to grow crops to feed the animals, you being a carnivore shouldn't be keen to concrete over the countryside.
I've never once advocated we concrete over the entire countryside, just as much of it as people want to live on.
We currently have [from memory] 70% of land used for agriculture and 5% for housing.
If we changed that to 65% and 10% respectively we could double the amount of land for housing, while reducing the land for agriculture by less than 10%. More realistically if my policies were adapted I expect we might go to something like 68% and 7% which would be enough.
Oh and we can import meat easier than we can import land/houses.
Britain really shouldn't be importing basic meats.
Wherever has the most green land can support more new homes.
The idea of scaling by population is insane, so you want to pile new homes on top of existing ones do you?
Building futuristic cities would be a better objective than allowing suburban sprawl all over the countryside.
If people want that, then great, and they will choose that. But if people want a house and garden of their own then why should we force people high into slums with no open spaces and no private gardens of their own?
Sprawling into the countryside is far superior, it means everyone can have a house of their own, with a garden of their own.
Remarkable how many people propose this who live in a house with a garden themselves. Really mean they want plebs to be in cities and not spoiling their view.
If you compare the cost of a one-bed tenement in Edinburgh with a detached house in Bathgate, it's clear what people want.
Not really, that's just comparing Edinburgh with Bathgate.
Comparing like for like, its clear that everywhere people prefer detached houses over semis, semis over terraces, and terraces over flats. That's consistent everywhere.
Let people build what they want and let them choose. If they choose flats then great and if they choose homes then great, let them have what they want.
I would like a mansion personally.
Please cater for me too.
Good.
You should be able to build a mansion wherever you want in my eyes, so long as its your land.
If that's what you want, then what's stopping you?
All the other selfish arseholes trying to build their own mansions
No that's not a problem, there's plenty of land out there that's not been developed.
You're not really interested in housing people at all. For you it's all about how much of the countryside you can cover in concrete.
I couldn't care less how much of the countryside gets covered in concrete.
I want everyone to be able to have a house of their own. Not a shitty flat.
Countryside is a secondary concern. Its a place that houses could be built on, that haven't been.
There is a total contradiction between your aesthetic dislike of "shitty flats" and your advocacy of indefinite population growth.
Not really since we have the entire population in less than 5% of England's land and over 80% of people live in houses, not flats.
Everyone could afford a house and we could quite literally double our population and we still wouldn't have covered most of the countryside with housing.
We don't want a concrete jungle either, new homes should be focused on brownbelt land and high rise first if possible
Yes you are right. But the planners are not so keen in practice. Brownfield land typically is not on existing bus routes and some planning policies do not allow development for that reason. As for high rise anything above 3 or 4 storeys will have problems as not being in keeping with the area or taking someone's light for part of the day. The planning process is so slow and cumbersome that developers often run out of money or enthusiasm on a site, and accept conditions or s106 payments that make the development unviable. Then they either wait to see if the market improves to make the development viable, or sell it.to someone else who puts in a new application that is more viable, and more likely to succeed than it would have been at the outset since many of the objections have been addressed or defeated.
Wherever has the most green land can support more new homes.
The idea of scaling by population is insane, so you want to pile new homes on top of existing ones do you?
Building futuristic cities would be a better objective than allowing suburban sprawl all over the countryside.
If people want that, then great, and they will choose that. But if people want a house and garden of their own then why should we force people high into slums with no open spaces and no private gardens of their own?
Sprawling into the countryside is far superior, it means everyone can have a house of their own, with a garden of their own.
Remarkable how many people propose this who live in a house with a garden themselves. Really mean they want plebs to be in cities and not spoiling their view.
If you compare the cost of a one-bed tenement in Edinburgh with a detached house in Bathgate, it's clear what people want.
Not really, that's just comparing Edinburgh with Bathgate.
Comparing like for like, its clear that everywhere people prefer detached houses over semis, semis over terraces, and terraces over flats. That's consistent everywhere.
Let people build what they want and let them choose. If they choose flats then great and if they choose homes then great, let them have what they want.
I would like a mansion personally.
Please cater for me too.
Good.
You should be able to build a mansion wherever you want in my eyes, so long as its your land.
If that's what you want, then what's stopping you?
All the other selfish arseholes trying to build their own mansions
No that's not a problem, there's plenty of land out there that's not been developed.
You're not really interested in housing people at all. For you it's all about how much of the countryside you can cover in concrete.
I couldn't care less how much of the countryside gets covered in concrete.
I want everyone to be able to have a house of their own. Not a shitty flat.
Countryside is a secondary concern. Its a place that houses could be built on, that haven't been.
There is a total contradiction between your aesthetic dislike of "shitty flats" and your advocacy of indefinite population growth.
Not really since we have the entire population in less than 5% of England's land and over 80% of people live in houses, not flats.
Everyone could afford a house and we could quite literally double our population and we still wouldn't have covered most of the countryside with housing.
We don't want a concrete jungle either, new homes should be focused on brownbelt land and high rise first if possible
Shitty high rise flats is a concrete jungle.
Suburban spawl of pleasant [semi-]detached houses with gardens is the precise opposite of a concrete jungle.
There are some beautiful high rise flats for young people with great views over London now even in Sratford with private balconies etc. Some come with on site gyms, pools, concierges, porters etc too
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
I did engage with it.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
You've expressed horror about having considerably more housing in a given area than you want. You call it "piling them on top", "shitty flats", "concrete jungles", etc. Perhaps you're the real NIMBY.
Except for the fact I've said every time if people want to build or live in shitty flats, that would be their choice and I'm pro-choice and would respect their right to make that choice if that's what they want.
What I oppose is forcing people to live in urban slums piled on top of each other when they want a house of thei own, not to live in a slum, because those who live in houses are saying no more houses near me.
But the words "shitty" and "slum" are your words, not anyone else's. And they really don't have to follow.
Perfectly reasonable words to use - I'm allowed to have an opinion aren't I?
And most of the people banging on about how they want others living in high rises don't live in one themselves. I'm being consistent in saying I want people to be able to choose a house over a flat, I've lived in both myself and I disliked the flat and much prefer the house and am glad my kids have a garden of their own to play in - and I would not deny the same choices I've made to anyone else.
If people want to choose a flat, that's their choice. But the evidence is the overwhelming majority of people in this country (including those who advocate it for others but not themselves) do not want that for themselves.
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
I did engage with it.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
If I took you seriously, I'd quit what I'm doing.
Fortunately, I don't.
You have no idea about the issues, you have no idea about planning and the planning framework and what is and isn't needed (hell, you had no idea that my LDO proposal is very close to giving the powers you say you want to see, nor that the LDO in my ward means that Milton Park don't need planning permission for any science/tech development within the LDO constraints now), you have no idea about infrastructure and how to get it, or the issues with sewerage, schools, and surgeries and the constraints around each, no idea about how many houses are actually needed (you've not supported your "10 million" number even once), no idea about the rates of construction in various Local Authorities (you even cited Pulpstar's work but obviously hadn't read it, as you were surprised when I got the figures from it), no idea about the constraints and issues on developers, and simply resort to namecalling when people don't accept your airy assertions and made-up numbers.
As I said earlier, for someone who purports to dislike NIMBYs, what you advocate would make far more of them.
And when you made far more of them, under a democracy, we'd see much less building. Which is ironic, really.
Meanwhile, if other LAs had increased their housing stock at our rates over that seven year period you cite (which includes the five+ years of my being a councillor here), we'd already have two million more houses in England than we currently have (taking us to three houses for every five adults in England). And in seven more years, we'd be four million ahead of the rate, and ahead of pretty much everywhere else in Western Europe instead of being one of the stragglers and not far off of two houses for every three adults.
Let's face it, if we were on target for ten million houses in the next five years, you'd simply come up with a number of fifteen million. Or twenty million.
Wherever has the most green land can support more new homes.
The idea of scaling by population is insane, so you want to pile new homes on top of existing ones do you?
Building futuristic cities would be a better objective than allowing suburban sprawl all over the countryside.
If people want that, then great, and they will choose that. But if people want a house and garden of their own then why should we force people high into slums with no open spaces and no private gardens of their own?
Sprawling into the countryside is far superior, it means everyone can have a house of their own, with a garden of their own.
Remarkable how many people propose this who live in a house with a garden themselves. Really mean they want plebs to be in cities and not spoiling their view.
If you compare the cost of a one-bed tenement in Edinburgh with a detached house in Bathgate, it's clear what people want.
Not really, that's just comparing Edinburgh with Bathgate.
Comparing like for like, its clear that everywhere people prefer detached houses over semis, semis over terraces, and terraces over flats. That's consistent everywhere.
Let people build what they want and let them choose. If they choose flats then great and if they choose homes then great, let them have what they want.
I would like a mansion personally.
Please cater for me too.
Good.
You should be able to build a mansion wherever you want in my eyes, so long as its your land.
If that's what you want, then what's stopping you?
All the other selfish arseholes trying to build their own mansions
No that's not a problem, there's plenty of land out there that's not been developed.
You're not really interested in housing people at all. For you it's all about how much of the countryside you can cover in concrete.
I couldn't care less how much of the countryside gets covered in concrete.
I want everyone to be able to have a house of their own. Not a shitty flat.
Countryside is a secondary concern. Its a place that houses could be built on, that haven't been.
Given that about 80% of farmland is used to raise animals: grazing, barns and agricultural land used to grow crops to feed the animals, you being a carnivore shouldn't be keen to concrete over the countryside.
I've never once advocated we concrete over the entire countryside, just as much of it as people want to live on.
We currently have [from memory] 70% of land used for agriculture and 5% for housing.
If we changed that to 65% and 10% respectively we could double the amount of land for housing, while reducing the land for agriculture by less than 10%. More realistically if my policies were adapted I expect we might go to something like 68% and 7% which would be enough.
Oh and we can import meat easier than we can import land/houses.
Britain really shouldn't be importing basic meats.
If I take one of our pigs and we slaughter it and butcher it and we turn it into sausages and we sell it here, it costs us 74p. "If I buy imported pig meat it is 18p. So, something is wrong with the food system in this country." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp35vzewv1wo
Wherever has the most green land can support more new homes.
The idea of scaling by population is insane, so you want to pile new homes on top of existing ones do you?
Building futuristic cities would be a better objective than allowing suburban sprawl all over the countryside.
If people want that, then great, and they will choose that. But if people want a house and garden of their own then why should we force people high into slums with no open spaces and no private gardens of their own?
Sprawling into the countryside is far superior, it means everyone can have a house of their own, with a garden of their own.
Remarkable how many people propose this who live in a house with a garden themselves. Really mean they want plebs to be in cities and not spoiling their view.
If you compare the cost of a one-bed tenement in Edinburgh with a detached house in Bathgate, it's clear what people want.
Not really, that's just comparing Edinburgh with Bathgate.
Comparing like for like, its clear that everywhere people prefer detached houses over semis, semis over terraces, and terraces over flats. That's consistent everywhere.
Let people build what they want and let them choose. If they choose flats then great and if they choose homes then great, let them have what they want.
I would like a mansion personally.
Please cater for me too.
Good.
You should be able to build a mansion wherever you want in my eyes, so long as its your land.
If that's what you want, then what's stopping you?
All the other selfish arseholes trying to build their own mansions
No that's not a problem, there's plenty of land out there that's not been developed.
You're not really interested in housing people at all. For you it's all about how much of the countryside you can cover in concrete.
I couldn't care less how much of the countryside gets covered in concrete.
I want everyone to be able to have a house of their own. Not a shitty flat.
Countryside is a secondary concern. Its a place that houses could be built on, that haven't been.
Given that about 80% of farmland is used to raise animals: grazing, barns and agricultural land used to grow crops to feed the animals, you being a carnivore shouldn't be keen to concrete over the countryside.
I've never once advocated we concrete over the entire countryside, just as much of it as people want to live on.
We currently have [from memory] 70% of land used for agriculture and 5% for housing.
If we changed that to 65% and 10% respectively we could double the amount of land for housing, while reducing the land for agriculture by less than 10%. More realistically if my policies were adapted I expect we might go to something like 68% and 7% which would be enough.
Oh and we can import meat easier than we can import land/houses.
Britain really shouldn't be importing basic meats.
Wherever has the most green land can support more new homes.
The idea of scaling by population is insane, so you want to pile new homes on top of existing ones do you?
Building futuristic cities would be a better objective than allowing suburban sprawl all over the countryside.
If people want that, then great, and they will choose that. But if people want a house and garden of their own then why should we force people high into slums with no open spaces and no private gardens of their own?
Sprawling into the countryside is far superior, it means everyone can have a house of their own, with a garden of their own.
Remarkable how many people propose this who live in a house with a garden themselves. Really mean they want plebs to be in cities and not spoiling their view.
If you compare the cost of a one-bed tenement in Edinburgh with a detached house in Bathgate, it's clear what people want.
Not really, that's just comparing Edinburgh with Bathgate.
Comparing like for like, its clear that everywhere people prefer detached houses over semis, semis over terraces, and terraces over flats. That's consistent everywhere.
Let people build what they want and let them choose. If they choose flats then great and if they choose homes then great, let them have what they want.
I would like a mansion personally.
Please cater for me too.
Good.
You should be able to build a mansion wherever you want in my eyes, so long as its your land.
If that's what you want, then what's stopping you?
All the other selfish arseholes trying to build their own mansions
No that's not a problem, there's plenty of land out there that's not been developed.
You're not really interested in housing people at all. For you it's all about how much of the countryside you can cover in concrete.
I couldn't care less how much of the countryside gets covered in concrete.
I want everyone to be able to have a house of their own. Not a shitty flat.
Countryside is a secondary concern. Its a place that houses could be built on, that haven't been.
Given that about 80% of farmland is used to raise animals: grazing, barns and agricultural land used to grow crops to feed the animals, you being a carnivore shouldn't be keen to concrete over the countryside.
I've never once advocated we concrete over the entire countryside, just as much of it as people want to live on.
We currently have [from memory] 70% of land used for agriculture and 5% for housing.
If we changed that to 65% and 10% respectively we could double the amount of land for housing, while reducing the land for agriculture by less than 10%. More realistically if my policies were adapted I expect we might go to something like 68% and 7% which would be enough.
Oh and we can import meat easier than we can import land/houses.
Britain really shouldn't be importing basic meats.
If I take one of our pigs and we slaughter it and butcher it and we turn it into sausages and we sell it here, it costs us 74p. "If I buy imported pig meat it is 18p. So, something is wrong with the food system in this country." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp35vzewv1wo
Wherever has the most green land can support more new homes.
The idea of scaling by population is insane, so you want to pile new homes on top of existing ones do you?
Building futuristic cities would be a better objective than allowing suburban sprawl all over the countryside.
If people want that, then great, and they will choose that. But if people want a house and garden of their own then why should we force people high into slums with no open spaces and no private gardens of their own?
Sprawling into the countryside is far superior, it means everyone can have a house of their own, with a garden of their own.
Remarkable how many people propose this who live in a house with a garden themselves. Really mean they want plebs to be in cities and not spoiling their view.
If you compare the cost of a one-bed tenement in Edinburgh with a detached house in Bathgate, it's clear what people want.
Not really, that's just comparing Edinburgh with Bathgate.
Comparing like for like, its clear that everywhere people prefer detached houses over semis, semis over terraces, and terraces over flats. That's consistent everywhere.
Let people build what they want and let them choose. If they choose flats then great and if they choose homes then great, let them have what they want.
And people prefer mansions with 10 acres of land over detached houses, but not everyone can have one. Your problem is that you don't recognise the reality of scarcity.
Land, and everything that we need land for, are the only things that are strictly limited. Technology cannot create more land (until it helps us get to the land on Mars).
Insofar as technology helps with the limit on the amount of land it does so by enabling the more efficient use of land - taller buildings, vertical agriculture, mass transit, etc.
It makes sense to use land efficiently so that there is land left over for wild species, and as a leisure amenity for countryside walks, and a very large number of other uses.
If you simply have everyone build a house on their half an acre share of England then you have no room for stadiums, no room for motorways, no room for wildlife, no room for anything else, no room even for large-scale agriculture. Two houses in every acre and nothing else.
Wherever has the most green land can support more new homes.
The idea of scaling by population is insane, so you want to pile new homes on top of existing ones do you?
Building futuristic cities would be a better objective than allowing suburban sprawl all over the countryside.
If people want that, then great, and they will choose that. But if people want a house and garden of their own then why should we force people high into slums with no open spaces and no private gardens of their own?
Sprawling into the countryside is far superior, it means everyone can have a house of their own, with a garden of their own.
Remarkable how many people propose this who live in a house with a garden themselves. Really mean they want plebs to be in cities and not spoiling their view.
If you compare the cost of a one-bed tenement in Edinburgh with a detached house in Bathgate, it's clear what people want.
Not really, that's just comparing Edinburgh with Bathgate.
Comparing like for like, its clear that everywhere people prefer detached houses over semis, semis over terraces, and terraces over flats. That's consistent everywhere.
Let people build what they want and let them choose. If they choose flats then great and if they choose homes then great, let them have what they want.
I would like a mansion personally.
Please cater for me too.
Good.
You should be able to build a mansion wherever you want in my eyes, so long as its your land.
If that's what you want, then what's stopping you?
All the other selfish arseholes trying to build their own mansions
No that's not a problem, there's plenty of land out there that's not been developed.
You're not really interested in housing people at all. For you it's all about how much of the countryside you can cover in concrete.
I couldn't care less how much of the countryside gets covered in concrete.
I want everyone to be able to have a house of their own. Not a shitty flat.
Countryside is a secondary concern. Its a place that houses could be built on, that haven't been.
There is a total contradiction between your aesthetic dislike of "shitty flats" and your advocacy of indefinite population growth.
Not really since we have the entire population in less than 5% of England's land and over 80% of people live in houses, not flats.
Everyone could afford a house and we could quite literally double our population and we still wouldn't have covered most of the countryside with housing.
We don't want a concrete jungle either, new homes should be focused on brownbelt land and high rise first if possible
Shitty high rise flats is a concrete jungle.
Suburban spawl of pleasant [semi-]detached houses with gardens is the precise opposite of a concrete jungle.
There are some beautiful high rise flats for young people with great views over London now even in Sratford with private balconies etc. Some come with on site gyms, pools, concierges, porters etc too
Her speech, in my opinion, bordered on the banal. Sweeping generalities about what she hopes to achieve, no specifics at all about how that might be done. It was perhaps sufficient for the occasion but this lack of detail is becoming troubling. It helps, a lot, that her opponent is a mad, old, corrupt, sociopath with a predilection for law breaking, indeed it might even be enough. But the lack of clarity about her objectives or her means as President is going to make actual progress difficult.
It's a convention speech. It did what it needed to do.
Hillary had a policy paper for any issue you could mention; ditto Warren in the 2020 primaries. Did them no good at all.
And they're running against someone whose lengthy manifesto - which he claims never to have seen - has already been officially disavowed.
She's part of an administration which has a shedload of policy - infrastructure; deindustrialization; a border bill, rejected by the GOP in Congress, which will be reintroduced; support for Ukraine, etc.
You're making it seem she's some kind of tabula rasa. That's clearly not the case. And there's two full months of campaigning to go.
Autocorrect mischievously turned 'reindustrialisation' into 'deindustrialisation' in that.
Wherever has the most green land can support more new homes.
The idea of scaling by population is insane, so you want to pile new homes on top of existing ones do you?
Building futuristic cities would be a better objective than allowing suburban sprawl all over the countryside.
If people want that, then great, and they will choose that. But if people want a house and garden of their own then why should we force people high into slums with no open spaces and no private gardens of their own?
Sprawling into the countryside is far superior, it means everyone can have a house of their own, with a garden of their own.
Remarkable how many people propose this who live in a house with a garden themselves. Really mean they want plebs to be in cities and not spoiling their view.
If you compare the cost of a one-bed tenement in Edinburgh with a detached house in Bathgate, it's clear what people want.
Not really, that's just comparing Edinburgh with Bathgate.
Comparing like for like, its clear that everywhere people prefer detached houses over semis, semis over terraces, and terraces over flats. That's consistent everywhere.
Let people build what they want and let them choose. If they choose flats then great and if they choose homes then great, let them have what they want.
I would like a mansion personally.
Please cater for me too.
Good.
You should be able to build a mansion wherever you want in my eyes, so long as its your land.
If that's what you want, then what's stopping you?
All the other selfish arseholes trying to build their own mansions
No that's not a problem, there's plenty of land out there that's not been developed.
You're not really interested in housing people at all. For you it's all about how much of the countryside you can cover in concrete.
I couldn't care less how much of the countryside gets covered in concrete.
I want everyone to be able to have a house of their own. Not a shitty flat.
Countryside is a secondary concern. Its a place that houses could be built on, that haven't been.
Given that about 80% of farmland is used to raise animals: grazing, barns and agricultural land used to grow crops to feed the animals, you being a carnivore shouldn't be keen to concrete over the countryside.
I've never once advocated we concrete over the entire countryside, just as much of it as people want to live on.
We currently have [from memory] 70% of land used for agriculture and 5% for housing.
If we changed that to 65% and 10% respectively we could double the amount of land for housing, while reducing the land for agriculture by less than 10%. More realistically if my policies were adapted I expect we might go to something like 68% and 7% which would be enough.
Oh and we can import meat easier than we can import land/houses.
Britain really shouldn't be importing basic meats.
Since you are discussing housing, an observation from American experience: When there is a disaster in the US that destroys hundreds, or even thousands, of homes, the Federal Emergency Management Agency usually moves in, quickly, with trailers. Which shows to me just how quickly you can provide large quantities of housing -- if you are willing to accept manufactured homes.
And it turns out that for a signficant portion of the people that move in to them, those trailers are better than where they were living. Here's a video walk through of one, if you need an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiMtrZkCZSw
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
I did engage with it.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
If I took you seriously, I'd quit what I'm doing.
Fortunately, I don't.
You have no idea about the issues, you have no idea about planning and the planning framework and what is and isn't needed (hell, you had no idea that my LDO proposal is very close to giving the powers you say you want to see, nor that the LDO in my ward means that Milton Park don't need planning permission for any science/tech development within the LDO constraints now), you have no idea about infrastructure and how to get it, or the issues with sewerage, schools, and surgeries and the constraints around each, no idea about how many houses are actually needed (you've not supported your "10 million" number even once), no idea about the rates of construction in various Local Authorities (you even cited Pulpstar's work but obviously hadn't read it, as you were surprised when I got the figures from it), no idea about the constraints and issues on developers, and simply resort to namecalling when people don't accept your airy assertions and made-up numbers.
As I said earlier, for someone who purports to dislike NIMBYs, what you advocate would make far more of them.
And when you made far more of them, under a democracy, we'd see much less building. Which is ironic, really.
Meanwhile, if other LAs had increased their housing stock at our rates over that seven year period you cite (which includes the five+ years of my being a councillor here), we'd already have two million more houses in England than we currently have (taking us to three houses for every five adults in England). And in seven more years, we'd be four million ahead of the rate, and ahead of pretty much everywhere else in Western Europe instead of being one of the stragglers and not far off of two houses for every three adults.
Let's face it, if we were on target for ten million houses in the next five years, you'd simply come up with a number of fifteen million. Or twenty million.
Where are you getting a two million houses from that period?
It was 2338 completions in a seven year period I cited (from the White Horse website), which is 334 homes per annum for the LA. If every LA built at 334 homes per annum, then we'd be looking at barely over 100k houses per annum which is less than we need for population growth let alone closing the shortage.
Based on the data Pulpstar provided of ~1000 homes per annum, if every LA had done that it would be 1.5 million not 2 million in five years. Which again, barely keeps up with population growth and demographic changes, it doesn't close the shortage.
Of course if we look by area instead of by LA, then you've got a lot more undeveloped land that could be built on. I responded to your map post too in case you didn't see it.
The amounts you are proposing don't scratch the surface on what we are missing in this country.
If you want to develop in an area, the very first thing you need to do is ensure the sewerage is capable. In most areas in the South East, it's not capable of major increases in numbers using it. If you don't sort this out, you'll have serious issues going forwards.
The current water companies aren't capable of doing that, for whatever reason. But that's the first thing you need. You can't just rely on them somehow coming along by people "paying for connections." In the first place, connecting to the existing network doesn't increase its capabilities, and it's already overloaded. You need more sewers and more processing plants, and these will also be constrained by water and power availability. You also can't pay the money and expect these to bloom into existence overnight - and waiting around for a few years isn't on the cards. People aren't going to hold it in for a few years.
Next, you have to ensure that your developments come along with schools and surgeries, and have transport links in and out that won't get overloaded. This isn't trivial, especially as induced demand is a thing (even though many of those who cite induced demand are as simplistic as those who deny it - it's a moving feast and some components are useful and others are very much not), and it's way too easy to simply move bottlenecks around.
You need to ensure power connectivity, which has historically not been much of a problem, but going forwards might well be.
Get those sorted out first (as per part 1 of my solutions list), preferably by doing it the way it is in part 5 of that list. You can link in part 4 (the LDO method) to those sites, which makes it much more easy for small developers and self-builders. This would end up increasing the capacity of building in this country and break the semi-monopoly.
The sites can come about following NDPs (part 3), which gives local people some buy-in, and by providing playing fields, surgeries, schools, sports facilities, etc in advance, you switch people from NIMBY to YIMBY. The part 2 (enforcement powers) reinforces that and ensures you get what is needed.
But what do I know? I'm just a classic NIMBY, apparently...
Wherever has the most green land can support more new homes.
The idea of scaling by population is insane, so you want to pile new homes on top of existing ones do you?
Building futuristic cities would be a better objective than allowing suburban sprawl all over the countryside.
If people want that, then great, and they will choose that. But if people want a house and garden of their own then why should we force people high into slums with no open spaces and no private gardens of their own?
Sprawling into the countryside is far superior, it means everyone can have a house of their own, with a garden of their own.
Remarkable how many people propose this who live in a house with a garden themselves. Really mean they want plebs to be in cities and not spoiling their view.
If you compare the cost of a one-bed tenement in Edinburgh with a detached house in Bathgate, it's clear what people want.
Not really, that's just comparing Edinburgh with Bathgate.
Comparing like for like, its clear that everywhere people prefer detached houses over semis, semis over terraces, and terraces over flats. That's consistent everywhere.
Let people build what they want and let them choose. If they choose flats then great and if they choose homes then great, let them have what they want.
I would like a mansion personally.
Please cater for me too.
Good.
You should be able to build a mansion wherever you want in my eyes, so long as its your land.
If that's what you want, then what's stopping you?
All the other selfish arseholes trying to build their own mansions
No that's not a problem, there's plenty of land out there that's not been developed.
You're not really interested in housing people at all. For you it's all about how much of the countryside you can cover in concrete.
I couldn't care less how much of the countryside gets covered in concrete.
I want everyone to be able to have a house of their own. Not a shitty flat.
Countryside is a secondary concern. Its a place that houses could be built on, that haven't been.
Given that about 80% of farmland is used to raise animals: grazing, barns and agricultural land used to grow crops to feed the animals, you being a carnivore shouldn't be keen to concrete over the countryside.
I've never once advocated we concrete over the entire countryside, just as much of it as people want to live on.
We currently have [from memory] 70% of land used for agriculture and 5% for housing.
If we changed that to 65% and 10% respectively we could double the amount of land for housing, while reducing the land for agriculture by less than 10%. More realistically if my policies were adapted I expect we might go to something like 68% and 7% which would be enough.
Oh and we can import meat easier than we can import land/houses.
Britain really shouldn't be importing basic meats.
Why not?
Britain really shouldn't be short of housing.
You don't care where your meat comes from?
No, I couldn't care less.
You don't care whether people have a roof over their heads?
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
Thanks for this, I went back and found your earlier post.
Lawyers for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have filed papers in federal court in New York seeking to block the enforcement of a state court decision that disqualified Kennedy from the state’s ballot. In other words: He appears to be fighting to stay on the New York ballot, even as his campaign has filed paperwork to be removed from the ballot in Arizona.
Since you are discussing housing, an observation from American experience: When there is a disaster in the US that destroys hundreds, or even thousands, of homes, the Federal Emergency Management Agency usually moves in, quickly, with trailers. Which shows to me just how quickly you can provide large quantities of housing -- if you are willing to accept manufactured homes.
And it turns out that for a signficant portion of the people that move in to them, those trailers are better than where they were living. Here's a video walk through of one, if you need an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiMtrZkCZSw
There are two things inhibiting house building in England (there are others but I think other PBers - @Richard_Tyndall ? - are better placed to explain)
i) Land can be purchased but it is very difficult to get permission to build on it
ii) Most banks will not lend money to build if the house is of non-traditional construction: stone/brick walls, tiled roof
There are exceptions -eg timber frame with brick slips over is becoming more popular for builders, tho not self-build - but mostly those are the problems.
Discussions about non-traditional construction, although I do genuinely enjoy them (shipping container homes! SIPS! Converted nuclear bunkers! Cut-and-cover!), are unfortunately not relevant in England.
If you want to develop in an area, the very first thing you need to do is ensure the sewerage is capable. In most areas in the South East, it's not capable of major increases in numbers using it. If you don't sort this out, you'll have serious issues going forwards.
The current water companies aren't capable of doing that, for whatever reason. But that's the first thing you need. You can't just rely on them somehow coming along by people "paying for connections." In the first place, connecting to the existing network doesn't increase its capabilities, and it's already overloaded. You need more sewers and more processing plants, and these will also be constrained by water and power availability. You also can't pay the money and expect these to bloom into existence overnight - and waiting around for a few years isn't on the cards. People aren't going to hold it in for a few years.
Next, you have to ensure that your developments come along with schools and surgeries, and have transport links in and out that won't get overloaded. This isn't trivial, especially as induced demand is a thing (even though many of those who cite induced demand are as simplistic as those who deny it - it's a moving feast and some components are useful and others are very much not), and it's way too easy to simply move bottlenecks around.
You need to ensure power connectivity, which has historically not been much of a problem, but going forwards might well be.
Get those sorted out first (as per part 1 of my solutions list), preferably by doing it the way it is in part 5 of that list. You can link in part 4 (the LDO method) to those sites, which makes it much more easy for small developers and self-builders. This would end up increasing the capacity of building in this country and break the semi-monopoly.
The sites can come about following NDPs (part 3), which gives local people some buy-in, and by providing playing fields, surgeries, schools, sports facilities, etc in advance, you switch people from NIMBY to YIMBY. The part 2 (enforcement powers) reinforces that and ensures you get what is needed.
But what do I know? I'm just a classic NIMBY, apparently...
Indeed you are.
There absolutely is capacity in the sewerage and the sewerage companies do accept new connections already, whether you want them to or not. The water companies should pull their fingers out and invest more if they need to, but they're not going to do so if they don't need to so you can't put the cart before the horse and wait for the water firms to invest first, because then they never will.
Next the politicians won't pay for schools and hospitals to be built in advance of houses being there and voters voting for them. I live in a fast growing area of ex-farmland that is now being built upon in suburban sprawl, precisely as I advocate. The number one issue all the political candidates have been focusing on to win our votes at elections? Schools. The number of secondary schools in my area currently? Zero.
There are schools in other areas that send buses down to where we live, so our kids could get a bus to school when they're older. Until then I drive them to school. Infinitely better to actually have a house with no school local, so you need to travel to the school, than to have a local school but no roof over your head. And when there's a shortage of schools and a surplus of voters, politicians will have no choice but to react or face the consequences at the ballot box.
And so on and so forth. Waiting for infrastructure to be built first is an excuse to wait for the never-never as politicians are never going to vote to spend money on infrastructure for voters who aren't there yet. They will vote to spend money to address problems their voters have, but that relies upon the houses and thus the voters getting there first.
Correction on terminology: I should have said manufactured homes all the way through, rather than "trailers". (Though both trailers and RVs are types of manufacured homes, and good choices for some people in the US.)
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
I did engage with it.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
You've expressed horror about having considerably more housing in a given area than you want. You call it "piling them on top", "shitty flats", "concrete jungles", etc. Perhaps you're the real NIMBY.
Except for the fact I've said every time if people want to build or live in shitty flats, that would be their choice and I'm pro-choice and would respect their right to make that choice if that's what they want.
What I oppose is forcing people to live in urban slums piled on top of each other when they want a house of thei own, not to live in a slum, because those who live in houses are saying no more houses near me.
But the words "shitty" and "slum" are your words, not anyone else's. And they really don't have to follow.
Perfectly reasonable words to use - I'm allowed to have an opinion aren't I?
And most of the people banging on about how they want others living in high rises don't live in one themselves. I'm being consistent in saying I want people to be able to choose a house over a flat, I've lived in both myself and I disliked the flat and much prefer the house and am glad my kids have a garden of their own to play in - and I would not deny the same choices I've made to anyone else.
If people want to choose a flat, that's their choice. But the evidence is the overwhelming majority of people in this country (including those who advocate it for others but not themselves) do not want that for themselves.
I think flats outside the nice bits of the nice cities (OK London & Edinburgh) have a (somewhat deserved) bad rep in this country because they tend to be pokey and tiny over a shop or the worst examples of brutalism. If a society had sufficient tech and advancement then everyone could live in something like this https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/148844795?currencyCode=GBP#/?channel=OVERSEAS * as with 5 stories with 240 m^2 for each flat (Very spacious indeed !) you only need 48 m^2 per dwelling which is about 5 metres by 4 metres per person if you have a 2.4 person family in each one.
* OK so not everyone will be able to look out over the Musee d'Orsay every day.
Now it wouldn't be right for everyone - where would the missus' poly tunnels go ?! but the fact it's worth 10 million quid shows someone must be interested.
Wherever has the most green land can support more new homes.
The idea of scaling by population is insane, so you want to pile new homes on top of existing ones do you?
Building futuristic cities would be a better objective than allowing suburban sprawl all over the countryside.
If people want that, then great, and they will choose that. But if people want a house and garden of their own then why should we force people high into slums with no open spaces and no private gardens of their own?
Sprawling into the countryside is far superior, it means everyone can have a house of their own, with a garden of their own.
Remarkable how many people propose this who live in a house with a garden themselves. Really mean they want plebs to be in cities and not spoiling their view.
If you compare the cost of a one-bed tenement in Edinburgh with a detached house in Bathgate, it's clear what people want.
Not really, that's just comparing Edinburgh with Bathgate.
Comparing like for like, its clear that everywhere people prefer detached houses over semis, semis over terraces, and terraces over flats. That's consistent everywhere.
Let people build what they want and let them choose. If they choose flats then great and if they choose homes then great, let them have what they want.
I would like a mansion personally.
Please cater for me too.
Good.
You should be able to build a mansion wherever you want in my eyes, so long as its your land.
If that's what you want, then what's stopping you?
All the other selfish arseholes trying to build their own mansions
No that's not a problem, there's plenty of land out there that's not been developed.
You're not really interested in housing people at all. For you it's all about how much of the countryside you can cover in concrete.
I couldn't care less how much of the countryside gets covered in concrete.
I want everyone to be able to have a house of their own. Not a shitty flat.
Countryside is a secondary concern. Its a place that houses could be built on, that haven't been.
Given that about 80% of farmland is used to raise animals: grazing, barns and agricultural land used to grow crops to feed the animals, you being a carnivore shouldn't be keen to concrete over the countryside.
I've never once advocated we concrete over the entire countryside, just as much of it as people want to live on.
We currently have [from memory] 70% of land used for agriculture and 5% for housing.
If we changed that to 65% and 10% respectively we could double the amount of land for housing, while reducing the land for agriculture by less than 10%. More realistically if my policies were adapted I expect we might go to something like 68% and 7% which would be enough.
Oh and we can import meat easier than we can import land/houses.
Britain really shouldn't be importing basic meats.
Why not?
Britain really shouldn't be short of housing.
You don't care where your meat comes from?
No, I couldn't care less.
You don't care whether people have a roof over their heads?
Truss was 'unambigiously pro growth' but it led to disaster as she pushed through massive tax cuts while keeping spending high but her heavy demand and growth increasing policies just led to high inflation and interest rates as debt rose and there was no accompanying supply side productivity increases.
This is probably a cry for attention, but I'll bite. Why are you spreading easily disprovable falsehoods about a Tory PM? As you well know, Truss's budget didn’t have a chance to be inflationary, as it was never implemented. The one part of it that was implemented was the cancellation of the planned NI increase - do I take it you're in favour of paying more National Insurance?
The one thing I've always had you down as is a Tory loyalist, but it seems you can't even manage that any more. It seems Sunak has enshittified the Tory activist base along with the nation.
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
I did engage with it.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
If I took you seriously, I'd quit what I'm doing.
Fortunately, I don't.
You have no idea about the issues, you have no idea about planning and the planning framework and what is and isn't needed (hell, you had no idea that my LDO proposal is very close to giving the powers you say you want to see, nor that the LDO in my ward means that Milton Park don't need planning permission for any science/tech development within the LDO constraints now), you have no idea about infrastructure and how to get it, or the issues with sewerage, schools, and surgeries and the constraints around each, no idea about how many houses are actually needed (you've not supported your "10 million" number even once), no idea about the rates of construction in various Local Authorities (you even cited Pulpstar's work but obviously hadn't read it, as you were surprised when I got the figures from it), no idea about the constraints and issues on developers, and simply resort to namecalling when people don't accept your airy assertions and made-up numbers.
As I said earlier, for someone who purports to dislike NIMBYs, what you advocate would make far more of them.
And when you made far more of them, under a democracy, we'd see much less building. Which is ironic, really.
Meanwhile, if other LAs had increased their housing stock at our rates over that seven year period you cite (which includes the five+ years of my being a councillor here), we'd already have two million more houses in England than we currently have (taking us to three houses for every five adults in England). And in seven more years, we'd be four million ahead of the rate, and ahead of pretty much everywhere else in Western Europe instead of being one of the stragglers and not far off of two houses for every three adults.
Let's face it, if we were on target for ten million houses in the next five years, you'd simply come up with a number of fifteen million. Or twenty million.
Where are you getting a two million houses from that period?
It was 2338 completions in a seven year period I cited (from the White Horse website), which is 334 homes per annum for the LA. If every LA built at 334 homes per annum, then we'd be looking at barely over 100k houses per annum which is less than we need for population growth let alone closing the shortage.
Based on the data Pulpstar provided of ~1000 homes per annum, if every LA had done that it would be 1.5 million not 2 million in five years. Which again, barely keeps up with population growth and demographic changes, it doesn't close the shortage.
Of course if we look by area instead of by LA, then you've got a lot more undeveloped land that could be built on. I responded to your map post too in case you didn't see it.
The amounts you are proposing don't scratch the surface on what we are missing in this country.
Building rates. Which are important, because increasing infrastructure depends on what is already there. Even in London, you can build a lot more houses; you can in Oxford, for example. You can even build upwards, and you WILL find a market for these.
For some reason, you keep looking at the housing completions from several years ago rather than the most recent seven years. It might pain you to congratulate us on tripling completions, but that might be a nice thing to do. Encouraging what you would like to see is always a good idea, in my experience.
We increased from 53,590 houses in the Vale prior to the most recent seven years (a timescale you chose initially) by a further 7,330 houses. That's an increase of 13.7%. Meanwhile the population of England increased by 3% in the same period.
In 2016, there were 23.7 million houses in England. An increase of 13.7% would put that to just shy of 27 million. A 3.3 million increase. (Increasing it by the population growth in that time would have seen an increase of only 0.74 million houses, taking it to 24.4 million).
We actually ended up with a bit over 25 million (from memory), so that'd be nearly 2 million more if everyone else had followed us. Keeping up that rate would make things much better (and quite probably be achievable as well)
Wherever has the most green land can support more new homes.
The idea of scaling by population is insane, so you want to pile new homes on top of existing ones do you?
Building futuristic cities would be a better objective than allowing suburban sprawl all over the countryside.
If people want that, then great, and they will choose that. But if people want a house and garden of their own then why should we force people high into slums with no open spaces and no private gardens of their own?
Sprawling into the countryside is far superior, it means everyone can have a house of their own, with a garden of their own.
Remarkable how many people propose this who live in a house with a garden themselves. Really mean they want plebs to be in cities and not spoiling their view.
If you compare the cost of a one-bed tenement in Edinburgh with a detached house in Bathgate, it's clear what people want.
Not really, that's just comparing Edinburgh with Bathgate.
Comparing like for like, its clear that everywhere people prefer detached houses over semis, semis over terraces, and terraces over flats. That's consistent everywhere.
Let people build what they want and let them choose. If they choose flats then great and if they choose homes then great, let them have what they want.
I would like a mansion personally.
Please cater for me too.
Good.
You should be able to build a mansion wherever you want in my eyes, so long as its your land.
If that's what you want, then what's stopping you?
All the other selfish arseholes trying to build their own mansions
No that's not a problem, there's plenty of land out there that's not been developed.
You're not really interested in housing people at all. For you it's all about how much of the countryside you can cover in concrete.
I couldn't care less how much of the countryside gets covered in concrete.
I want everyone to be able to have a house of their own. Not a shitty flat.
Countryside is a secondary concern. Its a place that houses could be built on, that haven't been.
Given that about 80% of farmland is used to raise animals: grazing, barns and agricultural land used to grow crops to feed the animals, you being a carnivore shouldn't be keen to concrete over the countryside.
I've never once advocated we concrete over the entire countryside, just as much of it as people want to live on.
We currently have [from memory] 70% of land used for agriculture and 5% for housing.
If we changed that to 65% and 10% respectively we could double the amount of land for housing, while reducing the land for agriculture by less than 10%. More realistically if my policies were adapted I expect we might go to something like 68% and 7% which would be enough.
Oh and we can import meat easier than we can import land/houses.
Britain really shouldn't be importing basic meats.
Why not?
Britain really shouldn't be short of housing.
You don't care where your meat comes from?
No, I couldn't care less.
You don't care whether people have a roof over their heads?
We can't care about both?
Not if you're making it a force choice argument, no.
If the choice is a roof over your head or imported meat, or homelessness and locally produced meat, then I say we should prefer the former.
Though again, what I'm advocating is a tiny proportional reduction in farmland anyway. Changing from 70% farmland and 5% housing to eg 67% farmland and 8% housing would be a massive 60% increase in land available for housing and a meagre 4% decrease in land available for farming.
If you want to develop in an area, the very first thing you need to do is ensure the sewerage is capable. In most areas in the South East, it's not capable of major increases in numbers using it. If you don't sort this out, you'll have serious issues going forwards.
The current water companies aren't capable of doing that, for whatever reason. But that's the first thing you need. You can't just rely on them somehow coming along by people "paying for connections." In the first place, connecting to the existing network doesn't increase its capabilities, and it's already overloaded. You need more sewers and more processing plants, and these will also be constrained by water and power availability. You also can't pay the money and expect these to bloom into existence overnight - and waiting around for a few years isn't on the cards. People aren't going to hold it in for a few years.
Next, you have to ensure that your developments come along with schools and surgeries, and have transport links in and out that won't get overloaded. This isn't trivial, especially as induced demand is a thing (even though many of those who cite induced demand are as simplistic as those who deny it - it's a moving feast and some components are useful and others are very much not), and it's way too easy to simply move bottlenecks around.
You need to ensure power connectivity, which has historically not been much of a problem, but going forwards might well be.
Get those sorted out first (as per part 1 of my solutions list), preferably by doing it the way it is in part 5 of that list. You can link in part 4 (the LDO method) to those sites, which makes it much more easy for small developers and self-builders. This would end up increasing the capacity of building in this country and break the semi-monopoly.
The sites can come about following NDPs (part 3), which gives local people some buy-in, and by providing playing fields, surgeries, schools, sports facilities, etc in advance, you switch people from NIMBY to YIMBY. The part 2 (enforcement powers) reinforces that and ensures you get what is needed.
But what do I know? I'm just a classic NIMBY, apparently...
And like apparently practically everything else, improving the infrastructure takes way too long. There is a plan to build a new reservoir near here -- https://fensreservoir.co.uk/proposals/process/ -- which has been designated "a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project". The timescale at the bottom of that page has a consultation process starting in 2022, which has just finished its second round of public consultation, will not make a formal planning application until 2026/27, no decision by the secretary of state until 2027/28. If all goes to plan construction might *start* in 2029 (fully five years from now), and it won't be actively supplying water to anybody until 2036!
I think this is way too slow -- the time taken in consultation is as long as the time to construct the reservoir! And this is for something deemed "nationally significant"...
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
I did engage with it.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
You've expressed horror about having considerably more housing in a given area than you want. You call it "piling them on top", "shitty flats", "concrete jungles", etc. Perhaps you're the real NIMBY.
Except for the fact I've said every time if people want to build or live in shitty flats, that would be their choice and I'm pro-choice and would respect their right to make that choice if that's what they want.
What I oppose is forcing people to live in urban slums piled on top of each other when they want a house of thei own, not to live in a slum, because those who live in houses are saying no more houses near me.
But the words "shitty" and "slum" are your words, not anyone else's. And they really don't have to follow.
Perfectly reasonable words to use - I'm allowed to have an opinion aren't I?
And most of the people banging on about how they want others living in high rises don't live in one themselves. I'm being consistent in saying I want people to be able to choose a house over a flat, I've lived in both myself and I disliked the flat and much prefer the house and am glad my kids have a garden of their own to play in - and I would not deny the same choices I've made to anyone else.
If people want to choose a flat, that's their choice. But the evidence is the overwhelming majority of people in this country (including those who advocate it for others but not themselves) do not want that for themselves.
I think flats outside the nice bits of the nice cities (OK London & Edinburgh) have a (somewhat deserved) bad rep in this country because they tend to be pokey and tiny over a shop or the worst examples of brutalism. If a society had sufficient tech and advancement then everyone could live in something like this https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/148844795?currencyCode=GBP#/?channel=OVERSEAS * as with 5 stories with 240 m^2 for each flat (Very spacious indeed !) you only need 48 m^2 per dwelling which is about 5 metres by 4 metres per person if you have a 2.4 person family in each one.
* OK so not everyone will be able to look out over the Musee d'Orsay every day.
Now it wouldn't be right for everyone - where would the missus' poly tunnels go ?! but the fact it's worth 10 million quid shows someone must be interested.
Easy. It's France.
The missus's polytunnels are at the country retreat, together with the hunky young gardener who tends to them and isn't at all the missus's toyboy, good heavens no.
If you want to develop in an area, the very first thing you need to do is ensure the sewerage is capable. In most areas in the South East, it's not capable of major increases in numbers using it. If you don't sort this out, you'll have serious issues going forwards.
The current water companies aren't capable of doing that, for whatever reason. But that's the first thing you need. You can't just rely on them somehow coming along by people "paying for connections." In the first place, connecting to the existing network doesn't increase its capabilities, and it's already overloaded. You need more sewers and more processing plants, and these will also be constrained by water and power availability. You also can't pay the money and expect these to bloom into existence overnight - and waiting around for a few years isn't on the cards. People aren't going to hold it in for a few years.
Next, you have to ensure that your developments come along with schools and surgeries, and have transport links in and out that won't get overloaded. This isn't trivial, especially as induced demand is a thing (even though many of those who cite induced demand are as simplistic as those who deny it - it's a moving feast and some components are useful and others are very much not), and it's way too easy to simply move bottlenecks around.
You need to ensure power connectivity, which has historically not been much of a problem, but going forwards might well be.
Get those sorted out first (as per part 1 of my solutions list), preferably by doing it the way it is in part 5 of that list. You can link in part 4 (the LDO method) to those sites, which makes it much more easy for small developers and self-builders. This would end up increasing the capacity of building in this country and break the semi-monopoly.
The sites can come about following NDPs (part 3), which gives local people some buy-in, and by providing playing fields, surgeries, schools, sports facilities, etc in advance, you switch people from NIMBY to YIMBY. The part 2 (enforcement powers) reinforces that and ensures you get what is needed.
But what do I know? I'm just a classic NIMBY, apparently...
On sewerage, isn't that going to be based on per person usage so building new homes shouldn't affect the overall amount ?
I mean our usage has increased since the little one arrived with the extra washing, bathing, dishwasher all contributing but it's because we've got an extra person. If she moved out (She's a bit young yet) then her water usage would simply transfer elsewhere rather than 'add' to the system I think ?
Gas usage = Home volume Sewerage = Person count Electricity = Person count, but decreasing for each additional person (Cooking efficiencies in the main)
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
I did engage with it.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
You've expressed horror about having considerably more housing in a given area than you want. You call it "piling them on top", "shitty flats", "concrete jungles", etc. Perhaps you're the real NIMBY.
Except for the fact I've said every time if people want to build or live in shitty flats, that would be their choice and I'm pro-choice and would respect their right to make that choice if that's what they want.
What I oppose is forcing people to live in urban slums piled on top of each other when they want a house of thei own, not to live in a slum, because those who live in houses are saying no more houses near me.
But the words "shitty" and "slum" are your words, not anyone else's. And they really don't have to follow.
Perfectly reasonable words to use - I'm allowed to have an opinion aren't I?
And most of the people banging on about how they want others living in high rises don't live in one themselves. I'm being consistent in saying I want people to be able to choose a house over a flat, I've lived in both myself and I disliked the flat and much prefer the house and am glad my kids have a garden of their own to play in - and I would not deny the same choices I've made to anyone else.
If people want to choose a flat, that's their choice. But the evidence is the overwhelming majority of people in this country (including those who advocate it for others but not themselves) do not want that for themselves.
I think flats outside the nice bits of the nice cities (OK London & Edinburgh) have a (somewhat deserved) bad rep in this country because they tend to be pokey and tiny over a shop or the worst examples of brutalism. If a society had sufficient tech and advancement then everyone could live in something like this https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/148844795?currencyCode=GBP#/?channel=OVERSEAS * as with 5 stories with 240 m^2 for each flat (Very spacious indeed !) you only need 48 m^2 per dwelling which is about 5 metres by 4 metres per person if you have a 2.4 person family in each one.
* OK so not everyone will be able to look out over the Musee d'Orsay every day.
Now it wouldn't be right for everyone - where would the missus' poly tunnels go ?! but the fact it's worth 10 million quid shows someone must be interested.
The other problem with flats in this country is that leasehold has significant potential to be a complete disaster for the "owner". I had a leasehold flat once -- never again. I'd be quite happy living in a flat as living space, but I'm not willing to have a significant chunk of my net worth invested in a property where I have no control of my own destiny in maintenance and improvement of it.
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
I did engage with it.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
If I took you seriously, I'd quit what I'm doing.
Fortunately, I don't.
You have no idea about the issues, you have no idea about planning and the planning framework and what is and isn't needed (hell, you had no idea that my LDO proposal is very close to giving the powers you say you want to see, nor that the LDO in my ward means that Milton Park don't need planning permission for any science/tech development within the LDO constraints now), you have no idea about infrastructure and how to get it, or the issues with sewerage, schools, and surgeries and the constraints around each, no idea about how many houses are actually needed (you've not supported your "10 million" number even once), no idea about the rates of construction in various Local Authorities (you even cited Pulpstar's work but obviously hadn't read it, as you were surprised when I got the figures from it), no idea about the constraints and issues on developers, and simply resort to namecalling when people don't accept your airy assertions and made-up numbers.
As I said earlier, for someone who purports to dislike NIMBYs, what you advocate would make far more of them.
And when you made far more of them, under a democracy, we'd see much less building. Which is ironic, really.
Meanwhile, if other LAs had increased their housing stock at our rates over that seven year period you cite (which includes the five+ years of my being a councillor here), we'd already have two million more houses in England than we currently have (taking us to three houses for every five adults in England). And in seven more years, we'd be four million ahead of the rate, and ahead of pretty much everywhere else in Western Europe instead of being one of the stragglers and not far off of two houses for every three adults.
Let's face it, if we were on target for ten million houses in the next five years, you'd simply come up with a number of fifteen million. Or twenty million.
Where are you getting a two million houses from that period?
It was 2338 completions in a seven year period I cited (from the White Horse website), which is 334 homes per annum for the LA. If every LA built at 334 homes per annum, then we'd be looking at barely over 100k houses per annum which is less than we need for population growth let alone closing the shortage.
Based on the data Pulpstar provided of ~1000 homes per annum, if every LA had done that it would be 1.5 million not 2 million in five years. Which again, barely keeps up with population growth and demographic changes, it doesn't close the shortage.
Of course if we look by area instead of by LA, then you've got a lot more undeveloped land that could be built on. I responded to your map post too in case you didn't see it.
The amounts you are proposing don't scratch the surface on what we are missing in this country.
Building rates. Which are important, because increasing infrastructure depends on what is already there. Even in London, you can build a lot more houses; you can in Oxford, for example. You can even build upwards, and you WILL find a market for these.
For some reason, you keep looking at the housing completions from several years ago rather than the most recent seven years. It might pain you to congratulate us on tripling completions, but that might be a nice thing to do. Encouraging what you would like to see is always a good idea, in my experience.
We increased from 53,590 houses in the Vale prior to the most recent seven years (a timescale you chose initially) by a further 7,330 houses. That's an increase of 13.7%. Meanwhile the population of England increased by 3% in the same period.
In 2016, there were 23.7 million houses in England. An increase of 13.7% would put that to just shy of 27 million. A 3.3 million increase. (Increasing it by the population growth in that time would have seen an increase of only 0.74 million houses, taking it to 24.4 million).
We actually ended up with a bit over 25 million (from memory), so that'd be nearly 2 million more if everyone else had followed us. Keeping up that rate would make things much better (and quite probably be achievable as well)
I'm not cherrypicking the data, I just got the data from the Vale website. If you have more upto date data I'm entirely happy to use that, though my preference is for completions over starts as inevitably some starts don't get completed, for various reasons.
7330 houses over a 7 year period is obviously much better than 334 homes per period, so well done. But its not enough to close the shortage given we have a systemic shortage and ongoing population growth and demographic changes, much, much more than that should be possible.
You are making a mistake in looking at it by percentages. A high percentage of a small number is still a small number, while a small percentage of a bigger number can be a bigger number still.
The fact you've got few houses currently doesn't mean you should build few from here, it just means you've got more potential to do more than places that are already more developed.
Given the demands in places like Oxford etc why can't a few new towns be supported in Vale? Outside of AONB which only covers the south half of Vale - the north half of Vale which is not in the AONB still covers an area roughly equivalent to the whole of Birmingham.
Truss was 'unambigiously pro growth' but it led to disaster as she pushed through massive tax cuts while keeping spending high but her heavy demand and growth increasing policies just led to high inflation and interest rates as debt rose and there was no accompanying supply side productivity increases.
This is probably a cry for attention, but I'll bite. Why are you spreading easily disprovable falsehoods about a Tory PM? As you well know, Truss's budget didn’t have a chance to be inflationary, as it was never implemented. The one part of it that was implemented was the cancellation of the planned NI increase - do I take it you're in favour of paying more National Insurance?
The one thing I've always had you down as is a Tory loyalist, but it seems you can't even manage that any more. It seems Sunak has enshittified the Tory activist base along with the nation.
You Tories should try to be nice to one another. God knows there are few enough of you left.
PS Did you hear Anthony Scaramucci saying the fear of a female Commander in Chief didn't resonate in the UK because we had had two female prime ministers? He corrected himself later, to include blink-and-you-missed-her Liz.
If you want to develop in an area, the very first thing you need to do is ensure the sewerage is capable. In most areas in the South East, it's not capable of major increases in numbers using it. If you don't sort this out, you'll have serious issues going forwards.
The current water companies aren't capable of doing that, for whatever reason. But that's the first thing you need. You can't just rely on them somehow coming along by people "paying for connections." In the first place, connecting to the existing network doesn't increase its capabilities, and it's already overloaded. You need more sewers and more processing plants, and these will also be constrained by water and power availability. You also can't pay the money and expect these to bloom into existence overnight - and waiting around for a few years isn't on the cards. People aren't going to hold it in for a few years.
Next, you have to ensure that your developments come along with schools and surgeries, and have transport links in and out that won't get overloaded. This isn't trivial, especially as induced demand is a thing (even though many of those who cite induced demand are as simplistic as those who deny it - it's a moving feast and some components are useful and others are very much not), and it's way too easy to simply move bottlenecks around.
You need to ensure power connectivity, which has historically not been much of a problem, but going forwards might well be.
Get those sorted out first (as per part 1 of my solutions list), preferably by doing it the way it is in part 5 of that list. You can link in part 4 (the LDO method) to those sites, which makes it much more easy for small developers and self-builders. This would end up increasing the capacity of building in this country and break the semi-monopoly.
The sites can come about following NDPs (part 3), which gives local people some buy-in, and by providing playing fields, surgeries, schools, sports facilities, etc in advance, you switch people from NIMBY to YIMBY. The part 2 (enforcement powers) reinforces that and ensures you get what is needed.
But what do I know? I'm just a classic NIMBY, apparently...
Indeed you are.
There absolutely is capacity in the sewerage and the sewerage companies do accept new connections already, whether you want them to or not. The water companies should pull their fingers out and invest more if they need to, but they're not going to do so if they don't need to so you can't put the cart before the horse and wait for the water firms to invest first, because then they never will.
Well, phew. The shit-streams we had on Drayton High Street are illusory, apparently. The stench in the Walnut Meadows development for years until we managed to force a solution just didn't happen, in Barty's world. The houses in the Challows that STILL haven't been linked to the sewerage system years after Thames Water were supposedly required to provide the new processing plant just don't exist. The shower of shit we saw in Shrivenham can be ignored; just pass on by.
Next the politicians won't pay for schools and hospitals to be built in advance of houses being there and voters voting for them. I live in a fast growing area of ex-farmland that is now being built upon in suburban sprawl, precisely as I advocate. The number one issue all the political candidates have been focusing on to win our votes at elections? Schools. The number of secondary schools in my area currently? Zero.
There are schools in other areas that send buses down to where we live, so our kids could get a bus to school when they're older. Until then I drive them to school. Infinitely better to actually have a house with no school local, so you need to travel to the school, than to have a local school but no roof over your head. And when there's a shortage of schools and a surplus of voters, politicians will have no choice but to react or face the consequences at the ballot box.
The area in which you live (Warrington, yes?) is developing at a much slower rate than here. If it is in fact Warrington, your rate of development is about a third of what it is here in "classic NIMBY"-land.
It's also significantly further to secondary schools in more rural areas. The solution is for politicians to ACTUALLY provide the infrastructure. It's something that IS in the gift of central government and CAN be done to unlock all of this.
And so on and so forth. Waiting for infrastructure to be built first is an excuse to wait for the never-never as politicians are never going to vote to spend money on infrastructure for voters who aren't there yet. They will vote to spend money to address problems their voters have, but that relies upon the houses and thus the voters getting there first.
And until they DO spend on the infrastructure in advance, you're not going to see the housing come along. Because in a democracy, especially a FPTP one, the voters aren't going to support wading through shit and having no local schools or surgeries, so anyone who wants to swoop in to win election will simply advocate true NIMBYism.
It's not clear to me what rights & protections Fraser thinks gay/lesbian people/couples should have.
If he hasn't evolved his position on civil partnerships, does he think all gay couples should have their relationships disregarded for IHT purposes, for example? Even most religious/conservative/homophobes find that position pretty callous.
If you want to develop in an area, the very first thing you need to do is ensure the sewerage is capable. In most areas in the South East, it's not capable of major increases in numbers using it. If you don't sort this out, you'll have serious issues going forwards.
The current water companies aren't capable of doing that, for whatever reason. But that's the first thing you need. You can't just rely on them somehow coming along by people "paying for connections." In the first place, connecting to the existing network doesn't increase its capabilities, and it's already overloaded. You need more sewers and more processing plants, and these will also be constrained by water and power availability. You also can't pay the money and expect these to bloom into existence overnight - and waiting around for a few years isn't on the cards. People aren't going to hold it in for a few years.
Next, you have to ensure that your developments come along with schools and surgeries, and have transport links in and out that won't get overloaded. This isn't trivial, especially as induced demand is a thing (even though many of those who cite induced demand are as simplistic as those who deny it - it's a moving feast and some components are useful and others are very much not), and it's way too easy to simply move bottlenecks around.
You need to ensure power connectivity, which has historically not been much of a problem, but going forwards might well be.
Get those sorted out first (as per part 1 of my solutions list), preferably by doing it the way it is in part 5 of that list. You can link in part 4 (the LDO method) to those sites, which makes it much more easy for small developers and self-builders. This would end up increasing the capacity of building in this country and break the semi-monopoly.
The sites can come about following NDPs (part 3), which gives local people some buy-in, and by providing playing fields, surgeries, schools, sports facilities, etc in advance, you switch people from NIMBY to YIMBY. The part 2 (enforcement powers) reinforces that and ensures you get what is needed.
But what do I know? I'm just a classic NIMBY, apparently...
On sewerage, isn't that going to be based on per person usage so building new homes shouldn't affect the overall amount ?
I mean our usage has increased since the little one arrived with the extra washing, bathing, dishwasher all contributing but it's because we've got an extra person. If she moved out (She's a bit young yet) then her water usage would simply transfer elsewhere rather than 'add' to the system I think ?
Gas usage = Home volume Sewerage = Person count Electricity = Person count, but decreasing for each additional person (Cooking efficiencies in the main)
There isn't a national sewage grid, so I imagine it's not that hard to overload sewage capacity in a particular area if you move people into that area.
This happens quite a bit in Ireland, where the standard of sewerage infrastructure is markedly worse than in Britain.
viewcode- There are similar restraints on house building in many parts of the US, which have similar effects to those in England -- which won't surprise you.
There is another lesson in the designs chosen: The second floors were unfinished. It was assumed that families would decide how many bedrooms they needed, as their children came along, and then divide appropriately.
I suspect that this sometimes resulted in conversations like this one: Husband: I think I'm ready to start dividing the bedrooms for our two kids. Wife: Well, dear, there is something I have been meaning to tell you, but I wanted to be sure, first. )
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
I did engage with it.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
You've expressed horror about having considerably more housing in a given area than you want. You call it "piling them on top", "shitty flats", "concrete jungles", etc. Perhaps you're the real NIMBY.
Except for the fact I've said every time if people want to build or live in shitty flats, that would be their choice and I'm pro-choice and would respect their right to make that choice if that's what they want.
What I oppose is forcing people to live in urban slums piled on top of each other when they want a house of thei own, not to live in a slum, because those who live in houses are saying no more houses near me.
But the words "shitty" and "slum" are your words, not anyone else's. And they really don't have to follow.
Perfectly reasonable words to use - I'm allowed to have an opinion aren't I?
And most of the people banging on about how they want others living in high rises don't live in one themselves. I'm being consistent in saying I want people to be able to choose a house over a flat, I've lived in both myself and I disliked the flat and much prefer the house and am glad my kids have a garden of their own to play in - and I would not deny the same choices I've made to anyone else.
If people want to choose a flat, that's their choice. But the evidence is the overwhelming majority of people in this country (including those who advocate it for others but not themselves) do not want that for themselves.
I think flats outside the nice bits of the nice cities (OK London & Edinburgh) have a (somewhat deserved) bad rep in this country because they tend to be pokey and tiny over a shop or the worst examples of brutalism. If a society had sufficient tech and advancement then everyone could live in something like this https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/148844795?currencyCode=GBP#/?channel=OVERSEAS * as with 5 stories with 240 m^2 for each flat (Very spacious indeed !) you only need 48 m^2 per dwelling which is about 5 metres by 4 metres per person if you have a 2.4 person family in each one.
* OK so not everyone will be able to look out over the Musee d'Orsay every day.
Now it wouldn't be right for everyone - where would the missus' poly tunnels go ?! but the fact it's worth 10 million quid shows someone must be interested.
In the bit of Germany where I lived, at least, it was very normal for people to live in a rented (spacious, low-rise) flat in the town centre while they saved to buy a house in suburbs, typically not long after they started having kids. This means that the population density in towns is high enough to support local businesses, and so people living in the towns don't need a car to get around. The UK obsession with everyone having their own house and garden as soon as possible (and that flats are for losers) is IMO responsible for a lot of the difficulties around accommodation in the UK.
If you want to develop in an area, the very first thing you need to do is ensure the sewerage is capable. In most areas in the South East, it's not capable of major increases in numbers using it. If you don't sort this out, you'll have serious issues going forwards.
The current water companies aren't capable of doing that, for whatever reason. But that's the first thing you need. You can't just rely on them somehow coming along by people "paying for connections." In the first place, connecting to the existing network doesn't increase its capabilities, and it's already overloaded. You need more sewers and more processing plants, and these will also be constrained by water and power availability. You also can't pay the money and expect these to bloom into existence overnight - and waiting around for a few years isn't on the cards. People aren't going to hold it in for a few years.
Next, you have to ensure that your developments come along with schools and surgeries, and have transport links in and out that won't get overloaded. This isn't trivial, especially as induced demand is a thing (even though many of those who cite induced demand are as simplistic as those who deny it - it's a moving feast and some components are useful and others are very much not), and it's way too easy to simply move bottlenecks around.
You need to ensure power connectivity, which has historically not been much of a problem, but going forwards might well be.
Get those sorted out first (as per part 1 of my solutions list), preferably by doing it the way it is in part 5 of that list. You can link in part 4 (the LDO method) to those sites, which makes it much more easy for small developers and self-builders. This would end up increasing the capacity of building in this country and break the semi-monopoly.
The sites can come about following NDPs (part 3), which gives local people some buy-in, and by providing playing fields, surgeries, schools, sports facilities, etc in advance, you switch people from NIMBY to YIMBY. The part 2 (enforcement powers) reinforces that and ensures you get what is needed.
But what do I know? I'm just a classic NIMBY, apparently...
On sewerage, isn't that going to be based on per person usage so building new homes shouldn't affect the overall amount ?
I mean our usage has increased since the little one arrived with the extra washing, bathing, dishwasher all contributing but it's because we've got an extra person. If she moved out (She's a bit young yet) then her water usage would simply transfer elsewhere rather than 'add' to the system I think ?
Gas usage = Home volume Sewerage = Person count Electricity = Person count, but decreasing for each additional person (Cooking efficiencies in the main)
What we've experienced here (by building at a faster rate than elsewhere) is inwards migration. Our population has increased by the same rate as housebuilding, so a system that managed with 120,000 in 2011 had to sustain 140,000 a decade later. Assuming we continue at the same rate (and that's what's intended), it'll have to sustain 165,000 in another decade.
It didn't really have much redundancy at 120,000. It's distinctly overloaded at 140,000. It'll collapse before 160,000.
In addition, you get hotspots - by increasing the population of a given village by 35% (like mine), the sewers and processing that worked for that village before doesn't work as well now.
The housing crisis is indeed really complicated. In addition, as we live in a democracy, whatever gets done has to bring enough of the people along with it. The cry of frustration of, "Sod 'em, impose this and be done with it," simply can't work - at least not for more than one or two election cycles at best, and solving the issue won't be done in that timescale.
The simplistic "build more and prices come down" approach runs into the problem that whilst it may be true to an extent nationwide, it's not true locally (and that's cantering past the fact that actually it's "Build more and price rises won't be as great as otherwise but won't necessarily go into reverse"). Induced demand is a thing - build a load of expensive four and five bedroom houses and people will come into the area from more expensive areas outside of it. As long as other aspects of the area are sufficiently attractive. You can build loads of new houses - as we have done in the Vale - continually in the top five LAs in the country for rate (as per Pulpstar), but house prices have continued to climb. Because our population has climbed to match the housing, as we've pulled people into these new houses from elsewhere.
This makes it hard to sell to the local population. We've used the argument that housebuilding means lower house prices than otherwise, and they naturally point to the fact that houses are more unaffordable than ever, leaving us to have to argue "Yes, but they'd be even MORE unaffordable if we hadn't, honest."
Meanwhile schools get more and more oversubscribed, no-one can get into a GP surgery locally, roads jam up, the sewerage system is utterly unfit for purpose and people literally end up wading through shit (in one ward, during the storms over winter, we had the unedifying spectacle of seeing a literal shower of shit), developers continually fail to provide what was promised, Neighbourhood Development Plans get ignored as unenforceable, previously loved green spaces get concreted over... and your children STILL can't get anywhere near affording a house.
Telling people they're being unreasonable and NIMBYs just doesn't cut the mustard at that point.
There are solutions, but because they're not ultra-simple, and can involve compromises and costs, they're difficult to sell and not quick to explain.
There isn't an LA in the country that is building sufficient houses, as per Pulpstar's data.
Building not enough, but being less bad than elsewhere, is simply failing less badly not succeeding.
Nope.
Pulpstar's data showed us increasing our housing stock by more than 10% over the past five years. At that rate, that's five million new houses per decade. If everyone else had done what we'd done over the past five years, we'd be half way to being out of the housing crisis already.
A single LA can't provide all the housing you need for the entire country.
As we don't have North Korea-style borders about the district, it simply means we absorb a tiny fraction of the issues from elsewhere. It's literally impossible for us to build enough houses to satisfy your simplistic cry: we'd have to build the five million or so houses ourselves (on top of the 50,000 with which we started a decade ago).
Meanwhile our residents are suffering all the infrastructure issues I described (and you ignore).
So - how many houses should the Vale of White Horse be building?
How does five million over a decade remotely address a ten million shortage?
You're right it doesn't all have to come from one LA, but no LA is doing remotely enough.
I'd suggest a minimum of 3,500 completions per annum per authority as a starting point - more could of course be better but that should be the bare minimum per annum.
Looking at it, Vale of White Horse had just over 2000 completions in a seven year period, unless I'm misreading the data, so they've not even hit the minimum we need per year over a seven year period.
Dismal failure.
Why ten million? To have the same ratio of houses per population as France, we'd need 3.9 million more houses than we currently have. (we're at 434 per thousand; they're at 590 per thousand).
And yes, you're massively misreading the data. We had over a thousand completions last year alone. 7,330 over the past seven years (from Pulpstar's table). Bear in mind that a decade ago, we had just over 50,000 to start with.
For someone who purports to dislike NIMBYs, you seem to aim to go out of your way to create more of them. I'm literally very active in trying to sort this problem out, we're one of the leading LAs in the country, and you're calling our rate and attempts "dismal failures" - partly because you can't even read a spreadsheet.
God, the keyboard warriors who just complain, spout simplistic crap, and do nothing to actively help. Meanwhile, I've been active in promoting a 4000+ development that crosses into my ward, working hard to get a Graven Hill style development in my ward, pushing policies to streamline development, helped with an LDO for technical building development in my ward, and done my damndest to get enforcement on developers to mitigate the inevitable backlash against further development.
What have you done?
Getting to the same as France is insufficient. It would be an improvement, but France has a housing shortage and expensive housing too. 4 million would make us less bad than we are today, but not good enough.
Plus we have ongoing population growth and demographic changes.
As for the Vale of White Horse data, I got it from the Vale of White Horse website, based on what came up from Google: Vale of White Horse District Council https://www.whitehorsedc.gov.ukPDF Housing Summary
Page 7 put the figure on completions as 2338 in a 7 year period.
Now if you've got a better figure I'd be interested but either way it's not enough. There are 317 authorities so just 1000 per authority would not get us anywhere near the millions needed.
This is what came up on Google. It is to be fair for 2011-2018, but is what came up so went with that data.
7330 completions in 7 years is barely over a thousand completions per annum, which is better than most authorities but is completely insufficient to address the millions of homes shortage we have. That would average at ~332k homes per annum if replicated across the country in every LA. 7338 / 7 * 317 (number of LAs) to get to that figure.
You're aware local authorities are of differing size ?
Birmingham is a single local authority and so are the Isles of Scilly.
Of course they are.
Vale of White Horse according to Google has an area of 578.6 km^2 while Birmingham has an area of 267.8 km^2.
So Vale of White Horse should if we are averaging it by area be doing roughly double the completions of Birmingham.
Either way you slice it, its insufficient.
You think North Yorkshire should be required to produce 31 times more dwellings than Birmingham ?!
It's a view.
Where are you getting 31x from?
I averaged at saying they should be required to produce the same. I averaged at a minimum of 3500 per annum per LA to close the housing shortage, that's the same for Vale as it is for Birmingham.
Even though Vale has much, much, much more space to be building new homes and new towns than Birmingham, so its considerably easier for Vale to do so.
North Yorkshire has much more land available. On your logic that it should be done on land area, of which they have 31 times as much as Birmingham, they should produce 31 times as many dwellings as Birmingham.
Just doing it on "per LA" means that you have a huge variation on land area, existing housing stock, and population size. Meaning that it would be trivially easy for North Yorkshire, and incredibly difficult for the Scilly Isles (which would be building 1.5 houses every year per existing person (man, woman, and child) living there at the moment)
My logic was not that it should be done by area, my logic is that it can be done by area, and absolutely I have no qualms with a lot of development happening in Yorkshire. There is plenty of space for new towns in Yorkshire.
New towns are a good thing and can be built easier where towns don't exist than where they already do.
Have you any good reason why Vale can't fit one or more new towns in its 578 km^2 area?
Three:
Infrastructure. AONB. Safeguarded land.
Infrastructure can be built. Indeed if you're going to build a new town, its pretty much going to be coming with new infrastructure, that's rather the point!
How much area is undeveloped in land that is neither AONB nor safeguarded?
I've set it to AONB, Green Belt, Flood zone, Ancient Woodland, SSI as these tend to squeeze out development.
Safeguarded land isn't readily available, but off the top of my head, about two thirds of my ward by area is safeguarded by Thames Water for their megareservoir proposal, and there's safeguarded land south of Abingdon for a proposed bypass that never seems to be coming.
If you want to see land usage and protection then I would recommend Magic, which is what local authorities and all those involved in land management use to make sure they are not encroaching on protected land. Very useful tool indeed and, as you say, lots of fun.
If you want to develop in an area, the very first thing you need to do is ensure the sewerage is capable. In most areas in the South East, it's not capable of major increases in numbers using it. If you don't sort this out, you'll have serious issues going forwards.
The current water companies aren't capable of doing that, for whatever reason. But that's the first thing you need. You can't just rely on them somehow coming along by people "paying for connections." In the first place, connecting to the existing network doesn't increase its capabilities, and it's already overloaded. You need more sewers and more processing plants, and these will also be constrained by water and power availability. You also can't pay the money and expect these to bloom into existence overnight - and waiting around for a few years isn't on the cards. People aren't going to hold it in for a few years.
Next, you have to ensure that your developments come along with schools and surgeries, and have transport links in and out that won't get overloaded. This isn't trivial, especially as induced demand is a thing (even though many of those who cite induced demand are as simplistic as those who deny it - it's a moving feast and some components are useful and others are very much not), and it's way too easy to simply move bottlenecks around.
You need to ensure power connectivity, which has historically not been much of a problem, but going forwards might well be.
Get those sorted out first (as per part 1 of my solutions list), preferably by doing it the way it is in part 5 of that list. You can link in part 4 (the LDO method) to those sites, which makes it much more easy for small developers and self-builders. This would end up increasing the capacity of building in this country and break the semi-monopoly.
The sites can come about following NDPs (part 3), which gives local people some buy-in, and by providing playing fields, surgeries, schools, sports facilities, etc in advance, you switch people from NIMBY to YIMBY. The part 2 (enforcement powers) reinforces that and ensures you get what is needed.
But what do I know? I'm just a classic NIMBY, apparently...
Indeed you are.
There absolutely is capacity in the sewerage and the sewerage companies do accept new connections already, whether you want them to or not. The water companies should pull their fingers out and invest more if they need to, but they're not going to do so if they don't need to so you can't put the cart before the horse and wait for the water firms to invest first, because then they never will.
Well, phew. The shit-streams we had on Drayton High Street are illusory, apparently. The stench in the Walnut Meadows development for years until we managed to force a solution just didn't happen, in Barty's world. The houses in the Challows that STILL haven't been linked to the sewerage system years after Thames Water were supposedly required to provide the new processing plant just don't exist. The shower of shit we saw in Shrivenham can be ignored; just pass on by.
Thames Water needs to do its job, or they need to be fined by OFWAT into bankruptcy and replaced by someone who will.
But waiting for Thames Water to do its job first before we build houses is waiting for the never-never. Its neve going to happen.
Next the politicians won't pay for schools and hospitals to be built in advance of houses being there and voters voting for them. I live in a fast growing area of ex-farmland that is now being built upon in suburban sprawl, precisely as I advocate. The number one issue all the political candidates have been focusing on to win our votes at elections? Schools. The number of secondary schools in my area currently? Zero.
There are schools in other areas that send buses down to where we live, so our kids could get a bus to school when they're older. Until then I drive them to school. Infinitely better to actually have a house with no school local, so you need to travel to the school, than to have a local school but no roof over your head. And when there's a shortage of schools and a surplus of voters, politicians will have no choice but to react or face the consequences at the ballot box.
The area in which you live (Warrington, yes?) is developing at a much slower rate than here. If it is in fact Warrington, your rate of development is about a third of what it is here in "classic NIMBY"-land.
It's also significantly further to secondary schools in more rural areas. The solution is for politicians to ACTUALLY provide the infrastructure. It's something that IS in the gift of central government and CAN be done to unlock all of this.
There's no need to make this personal since I'm not suggesting that where I live is building anywhere near enough homes. I've said no LA in England is building enough in my eyes. That includes where I live by definition.
House price to earning ratios are far too high, because housing is in too low supply, everywhere. So where I live is moot, we need more housing everywhere.
The only thing about Warrington I'd note is it was precisely what I'd advocate more of - a new town. I hate the idea of referring to it still as that, so used the past tense, we need more new towns regularly not simply new towns seventy years ago.
I'd support much greater construction where I live, the abolition of the green belt where I live, and more sprawl where I live. And more new towns too. I'm consistent, but there's more potential for development in areas that are currently underdeveloped.
And so on and so forth. Waiting for infrastructure to be built first is an excuse to wait for the never-never as politicians are never going to vote to spend money on infrastructure for voters who aren't there yet. They will vote to spend money to address problems their voters have, but that relies upon the houses and thus the voters getting there first.
And until they DO spend on the infrastructure in advance, you're not going to see the housing come along. Because in a democracy, especially a FPTP one, the voters aren't going to support wading through shit and having no local schools or surgeries, so anyone who wants to swoop in to win election will simply advocate true NIMBYism.
Minds can be changed, the Overton Window can move and laws can be changed.
The key to success would be to defang local politicians by having national laws that say anyone can build what they want and local politicians then don't get a say unless someone changes the national law. That's not a debate I expect to win any time soon, but its a debate worth winning and if it changes (as it has elsewhere) then we can fix the problems.
In the recent past it was considered alien to argue that house prices being too high was a real problem, or that ever-rising prices was anything but a good thing. Now at least more people accept that more construction is required and lower real terms prices would be a good thing, even if we can't yet win the argument on how to get there its some progress.
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
I did engage with it.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
If I took you seriously, I'd quit what I'm doing.
Fortunately, I don't.
You have no idea about the issues, you have no idea about planning and the planning framework and what is and isn't needed (hell, you had no idea that my LDO proposal is very close to giving the powers you say you want to see, nor that the LDO in my ward means that Milton Park don't need planning permission for any science/tech development within the LDO constraints now), you have no idea about infrastructure and how to get it, or the issues with sewerage, schools, and surgeries and the constraints around each, no idea about how many houses are actually needed (you've not supported your "10 million" number even once), no idea about the rates of construction in various Local Authorities (you even cited Pulpstar's work but obviously hadn't read it, as you were surprised when I got the figures from it), no idea about the constraints and issues on developers, and simply resort to namecalling when people don't accept your airy assertions and made-up numbers.
As I said earlier, for someone who purports to dislike NIMBYs, what you advocate would make far more of them.
And when you made far more of them, under a democracy, we'd see much less building. Which is ironic, really.
Meanwhile, if other LAs had increased their housing stock at our rates over that seven year period you cite (which includes the five+ years of my being a councillor here), we'd already have two million more houses in England than we currently have (taking us to three houses for every five adults in England). And in seven more years, we'd be four million ahead of the rate, and ahead of pretty much everywhere else in Western Europe instead of being one of the stragglers and not far off of two houses for every three adults.
Let's face it, if we were on target for ten million houses in the next five years, you'd simply come up with a number of fifteen million. Or twenty million.
Where are you getting a two million houses from that period?
It was 2338 completions in a seven year period I cited (from the White Horse website), which is 334 homes per annum for the LA. If every LA built at 334 homes per annum, then we'd be looking at barely over 100k houses per annum which is less than we need for population growth let alone closing the shortage.
Based on the data Pulpstar provided of ~1000 homes per annum, if every LA had done that it would be 1.5 million not 2 million in five years. Which again, barely keeps up with population growth and demographic changes, it doesn't close the shortage.
Of course if we look by area instead of by LA, then you've got a lot more undeveloped land that could be built on. I responded to your map post too in case you didn't see it.
The amounts you are proposing don't scratch the surface on what we are missing in this country.
Building rates. Which are important, because increasing infrastructure depends on what is already there. Even in London, you can build a lot more houses; you can in Oxford, for example. You can even build upwards, and you WILL find a market for these.
For some reason, you keep looking at the housing completions from several years ago rather than the most recent seven years. It might pain you to congratulate us on tripling completions, but that might be a nice thing to do. Encouraging what you would like to see is always a good idea, in my experience.
We increased from 53,590 houses in the Vale prior to the most recent seven years (a timescale you chose initially) by a further 7,330 houses. That's an increase of 13.7%. Meanwhile the population of England increased by 3% in the same period.
In 2016, there were 23.7 million houses in England. An increase of 13.7% would put that to just shy of 27 million. A 3.3 million increase. (Increasing it by the population growth in that time would have seen an increase of only 0.74 million houses, taking it to 24.4 million).
We actually ended up with a bit over 25 million (from memory), so that'd be nearly 2 million more if everyone else had followed us. Keeping up that rate would make things much better (and quite probably be achievable as well)
I'm not cherrypicking the data, I just got the data from the Vale website. If you have more upto date data I'm entirely happy to use that, though my preference is for completions over starts as inevitably some starts don't get completed, for various reasons.
7330 houses over a 7 year period is obviously much better than 334 homes per period, so well done. But its not enough to close the shortage given we have a systemic shortage and ongoing population growth and demographic changes, much, much more than that should be possible.
You are making a mistake in looking at it by percentages. A high percentage of a small number is still a small number, while a small percentage of a bigger number can be a bigger number still.
The fact you've got few houses currently doesn't mean you should build few from here, it just means you've got more potential to do more than places that are already more developed.
Given the demands in places like Oxford etc why can't a few new towns be supported in Vale? Outside of AONB which only covers the south half of Vale - the north half of Vale which is not in the AONB still covers an area roughly equivalent to the whole of Birmingham.
Give us the infrastructure first.
Believe me, people who even describe themselves as NIMBYs can go all Sim City if you give them free rein over describing what infrastructure is needed. Just last month, I got a Parish Council to advocate for a new town within parish boundaries if the land was freed up and infrastructure provided.
This same Parish Council had earlier said (in the same meeting) "we won't be fooled again" when it had been pointed out that they'd supported a big expansion on the promise of infrastructure accompanying it. They went from supporting very significant levels of development a decade earlier to being very resistant - solely because what had been promised did not come about and developers had been allowed to get away with ignoring requirements on them.
You want huge levels of housebuilding? It's possible. But you've got to bring people along with you, and providing the infrastructure and giving them some say in where it all goes will bring them along.
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
I did engage with it.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
If I took you seriously, I'd quit what I'm doing.
Fortunately, I don't.
You have no idea about the issues, you have no idea about planning and the planning framework and what is and isn't needed (hell, you had no idea that my LDO proposal is very close to giving the powers you say you want to see, nor that the LDO in my ward means that Milton Park don't need planning permission for any science/tech development within the LDO constraints now), you have no idea about infrastructure and how to get it, or the issues with sewerage, schools, and surgeries and the constraints around each, no idea about how many houses are actually needed (you've not supported your "10 million" number even once), no idea about the rates of construction in various Local Authorities (you even cited Pulpstar's work but obviously hadn't read it, as you were surprised when I got the figures from it), no idea about the constraints and issues on developers, and simply resort to namecalling when people don't accept your airy assertions and made-up numbers.
As I said earlier, for someone who purports to dislike NIMBYs, what you advocate would make far more of them.
And when you made far more of them, under a democracy, we'd see much less building. Which is ironic, really.
Meanwhile, if other LAs had increased their housing stock at our rates over that seven year period you cite (which includes the five+ years of my being a councillor here), we'd already have two million more houses in England than we currently have (taking us to three houses for every five adults in England). And in seven more years, we'd be four million ahead of the rate, and ahead of pretty much everywhere else in Western Europe instead of being one of the stragglers and not far off of two houses for every three adults.
Let's face it, if we were on target for ten million houses in the next five years, you'd simply come up with a number of fifteen million. Or twenty million.
Where are you getting a two million houses from that period?
It was 2338 completions in a seven year period I cited (from the White Horse website), which is 334 homes per annum for the LA. If every LA built at 334 homes per annum, then we'd be looking at barely over 100k houses per annum which is less than we need for population growth let alone closing the shortage.
Based on the data Pulpstar provided of ~1000 homes per annum, if every LA had done that it would be 1.5 million not 2 million in five years. Which again, barely keeps up with population growth and demographic changes, it doesn't close the shortage.
Of course if we look by area instead of by LA, then you've got a lot more undeveloped land that could be built on. I responded to your map post too in case you didn't see it.
The amounts you are proposing don't scratch the surface on what we are missing in this country.
Building rates. Which are important, because increasing infrastructure depends on what is already there. Even in London, you can build a lot more houses; you can in Oxford, for example. You can even build upwards, and you WILL find a market for these.
For some reason, you keep looking at the housing completions from several years ago rather than the most recent seven years. It might pain you to congratulate us on tripling completions, but that might be a nice thing to do. Encouraging what you would like to see is always a good idea, in my experience.
We increased from 53,590 houses in the Vale prior to the most recent seven years (a timescale you chose initially) by a further 7,330 houses. That's an increase of 13.7%. Meanwhile the population of England increased by 3% in the same period.
In 2016, there were 23.7 million houses in England. An increase of 13.7% would put that to just shy of 27 million. A 3.3 million increase. (Increasing it by the population growth in that time would have seen an increase of only 0.74 million houses, taking it to 24.4 million).
We actually ended up with a bit over 25 million (from memory), so that'd be nearly 2 million more if everyone else had followed us. Keeping up that rate would make things much better (and quite probably be achievable as well)
I'm not cherrypicking the data, I just got the data from the Vale website. If you have more upto date data I'm entirely happy to use that, though my preference is for completions over starts as inevitably some starts don't get completed, for various reasons.
7330 houses over a 7 year period is obviously much better than 334 homes per period, so well done. But its not enough to close the shortage given we have a systemic shortage and ongoing population growth and demographic changes, much, much more than that should be possible.
You are making a mistake in looking at it by percentages. A high percentage of a small number is still a small number, while a small percentage of a bigger number can be a bigger number still.
The fact you've got few houses currently doesn't mean you should build few from here, it just means you've got more potential to do more than places that are already more developed.
Given the demands in places like Oxford etc why can't a few new towns be supported in Vale? Outside of AONB which only covers the south half of Vale - the north half of Vale which is not in the AONB still covers an area roughly equivalent to the whole of Birmingham.
Give us the infrastructure first.
Believe me, people who even describe themselves as NIMBYs can go all Sim City if you give them free rein over describing what infrastructure is needed. Just last month, I got a Parish Council to advocate for a new town within parish boundaries if the land was freed up and infrastructure provided.
This same Parish Council had earlier said (in the same meeting) "we won't be fooled again" when it had been pointed out that they'd supported a big expansion on the promise of infrastructure accompanying it. They went from supporting very significant levels of development a decade earlier to being very resistant - solely because what had been promised did not come about and developers had been allowed to get away with ignoring requirements on them.
You want huge levels of housebuilding? It's possible. But you've got to bring people along with you, and providing the infrastructure and giving them some say in where it all goes will bring them along.
If the Council wants to build infrastructure the Council should spend its money on doing so.
If you want to develop in an area, the very first thing you need to do is ensure the sewerage is capable. In most areas in the South East, it's not capable of major increases in numbers using it. If you don't sort this out, you'll have serious issues going forwards.
The current water companies aren't capable of doing that, for whatever reason. But that's the first thing you need. You can't just rely on them somehow coming along by people "paying for connections." In the first place, connecting to the existing network doesn't increase its capabilities, and it's already overloaded. You need more sewers and more processing plants, and these will also be constrained by water and power availability. You also can't pay the money and expect these to bloom into existence overnight - and waiting around for a few years isn't on the cards. People aren't going to hold it in for a few years.
Next, you have to ensure that your developments come along with schools and surgeries, and have transport links in and out that won't get overloaded. This isn't trivial, especially as induced demand is a thing (even though many of those who cite induced demand are as simplistic as those who deny it - it's a moving feast and some components are useful and others are very much not), and it's way too easy to simply move bottlenecks around.
You need to ensure power connectivity, which has historically not been much of a problem, but going forwards might well be.
Get those sorted out first (as per part 1 of my solutions list), preferably by doing it the way it is in part 5 of that list. You can link in part 4 (the LDO method) to those sites, which makes it much more easy for small developers and self-builders. This would end up increasing the capacity of building in this country and break the semi-monopoly.
The sites can come about following NDPs (part 3), which gives local people some buy-in, and by providing playing fields, surgeries, schools, sports facilities, etc in advance, you switch people from NIMBY to YIMBY. The part 2 (enforcement powers) reinforces that and ensures you get what is needed.
But what do I know? I'm just a classic NIMBY, apparently...
On sewerage, isn't that going to be based on per person usage so building new homes shouldn't affect the overall amount ?
I mean our usage has increased since the little one arrived with the extra washing, bathing, dishwasher all contributing but it's because we've got an extra person. If she moved out (She's a bit young yet) then her water usage would simply transfer elsewhere rather than 'add' to the system I think ?
Gas usage = Home volume Sewerage = Person count Electricity = Person count, but decreasing for each additional person (Cooking efficiencies in the main)
What we've experienced here (by building at a faster rate than elsewhere) is inwards migration. Our population has increased by the same rate as housebuilding, so a system that managed with 120,000 in 2011 had to sustain 140,000 a decade later. Assuming we continue at the same rate (and that's what's intended), it'll have to sustain 165,000 in another decade.
It didn't really have much redundancy at 120,000. It's distinctly overloaded at 140,000. It'll collapse before 160,000.
In addition, you get hotspots - by increasing the population of a given village by 35% (like mine), the sewers and processing that worked for that village before doesn't work as well now.
It probably won't collapse because (a) systems are usually more resilient than they appear; and (b) if the infrastructure becomes relatively worse, then people will be less inclined to move there.
P.S. LDOs more or less do what Barty keeps saying he wants (pretty much auto-planning permission in the zone in question as long as it complies with the land use (eg residential/commercial/scientific) and complies with the basic constraints on the LDO), but not be "defanging local politicians." That just pisses off residents.
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
I did engage with it.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
If I took you seriously, I'd quit what I'm doing.
Fortunately, I don't.
You have no idea about the issues, you have no idea about planning and the planning framework and what is and isn't needed (hell, you had no idea that my LDO proposal is very close to giving the powers you say you want to see, nor that the LDO in my ward means that Milton Park don't need planning permission for any science/tech development within the LDO constraints now), you have no idea about infrastructure and how to get it, or the issues with sewerage, schools, and surgeries and the constraints around each, no idea about how many houses are actually needed (you've not supported your "10 million" number even once), no idea about the rates of construction in various Local Authorities (you even cited Pulpstar's work but obviously hadn't read it, as you were surprised when I got the figures from it), no idea about the constraints and issues on developers, and simply resort to namecalling when people don't accept your airy assertions and made-up numbers.
As I said earlier, for someone who purports to dislike NIMBYs, what you advocate would make far more of them.
And when you made far more of them, under a democracy, we'd see much less building. Which is ironic, really.
Meanwhile, if other LAs had increased their housing stock at our rates over that seven year period you cite (which includes the five+ years of my being a councillor here), we'd already have two million more houses in England than we currently have (taking us to three houses for every five adults in England). And in seven more years, we'd be four million ahead of the rate, and ahead of pretty much everywhere else in Western Europe instead of being one of the stragglers and not far off of two houses for every three adults.
Let's face it, if we were on target for ten million houses in the next five years, you'd simply come up with a number of fifteen million. Or twenty million.
Where are you getting a two million houses from that period?
It was 2338 completions in a seven year period I cited (from the White Horse website), which is 334 homes per annum for the LA. If every LA built at 334 homes per annum, then we'd be looking at barely over 100k houses per annum which is less than we need for population growth let alone closing the shortage.
Based on the data Pulpstar provided of ~1000 homes per annum, if every LA had done that it would be 1.5 million not 2 million in five years. Which again, barely keeps up with population growth and demographic changes, it doesn't close the shortage.
Of course if we look by area instead of by LA, then you've got a lot more undeveloped land that could be built on. I responded to your map post too in case you didn't see it.
The amounts you are proposing don't scratch the surface on what we are missing in this country.
Building rates. Which are important, because increasing infrastructure depends on what is already there. Even in London, you can build a lot more houses; you can in Oxford, for example. You can even build upwards, and you WILL find a market for these.
For some reason, you keep looking at the housing completions from several years ago rather than the most recent seven years. It might pain you to congratulate us on tripling completions, but that might be a nice thing to do. Encouraging what you would like to see is always a good idea, in my experience.
We increased from 53,590 houses in the Vale prior to the most recent seven years (a timescale you chose initially) by a further 7,330 houses. That's an increase of 13.7%. Meanwhile the population of England increased by 3% in the same period.
In 2016, there were 23.7 million houses in England. An increase of 13.7% would put that to just shy of 27 million. A 3.3 million increase. (Increasing it by the population growth in that time would have seen an increase of only 0.74 million houses, taking it to 24.4 million).
We actually ended up with a bit over 25 million (from memory), so that'd be nearly 2 million more if everyone else had followed us. Keeping up that rate would make things much better (and quite probably be achievable as well)
I'm not cherrypicking the data, I just got the data from the Vale website. If you have more upto date data I'm entirely happy to use that, though my preference is for completions over starts as inevitably some starts don't get completed, for various reasons.
7330 houses over a 7 year period is obviously much better than 334 homes per period, so well done. But its not enough to close the shortage given we have a systemic shortage and ongoing population growth and demographic changes, much, much more than that should be possible.
You are making a mistake in looking at it by percentages. A high percentage of a small number is still a small number, while a small percentage of a bigger number can be a bigger number still.
The fact you've got few houses currently doesn't mean you should build few from here, it just means you've got more potential to do more than places that are already more developed.
Given the demands in places like Oxford etc why can't a few new towns be supported in Vale? Outside of AONB which only covers the south half of Vale - the north half of Vale which is not in the AONB still covers an area roughly equivalent to the whole of Birmingham.
Give us the infrastructure first.
Believe me, people who even describe themselves as NIMBYs can go all Sim City if you give them free rein over describing what infrastructure is needed. Just last month, I got a Parish Council to advocate for a new town within parish boundaries if the land was freed up and infrastructure provided.
This same Parish Council had earlier said (in the same meeting) "we won't be fooled again" when it had been pointed out that they'd supported a big expansion on the promise of infrastructure accompanying it. They went from supporting very significant levels of development a decade earlier to being very resistant - solely because what had been promised did not come about and developers had been allowed to get away with ignoring requirements on them.
You want huge levels of housebuilding? It's possible. But you've got to bring people along with you, and providing the infrastructure and giving them some say in where it all goes will bring them along.
If the Council wants to build infrastructure the Council should spend its money on doing so.
You haven't been following the Council funding crises, have you?
The Council doesn't HAVE any money for funding that sort of infrastructure. I very much doubt any Councils do. Certainly not for sewerage or roads. Neither do we have the authority for either.
Of course, if you gave us the authority and powers I suggested in my five point suggestion earlier, we'd get the planning uplift profits and be able to invest those going forwards (there would still be some planning uplift, just not the factor of 100 or whatever ridiculous amount it is at the moment).
@Andy_Cooke When I was trying to find the Yimbyiest councils in England and Wales a few months ago, Vale of White Horse came very high up. That's after taking into account household size, population growth, population density and so.
My own very rudimentary analysis, but backs up what you have been saying. Places like Uttlesford, Telford and Wrekin, Selby are just a bit better in my view.
P.S. LDOs more or less do what Barty keeps saying he wants (pretty much auto-planning permission in the zone in question as long as it complies with the land use (eg residential/commercial/scientific) and complies with the basic constraints on the LDO), but not be "defanging local politicians." That just pisses off residents.
If you wanted to build infrastructure, why didn't you spend the money to build it? Surely its your choice what you spent your money on?
Or are you wanting others to pay for infrastructure on your behalf?
The developers should be building houses, no more, no less. Doing the infrastructure is your job. So if you want to do your job first, then great, but nobody should be denied a home because you haven't done it yet.
If you want to develop in an area, the very first thing you need to do is ensure the sewerage is capable. In most areas in the South East, it's not capable of major increases in numbers using it. If you don't sort this out, you'll have serious issues going forwards.
The current water companies aren't capable of doing that, for whatever reason. But that's the first thing you need. You can't just rely on them somehow coming along by people "paying for connections." In the first place, connecting to the existing network doesn't increase its capabilities, and it's already overloaded. You need more sewers and more processing plants, and these will also be constrained by water and power availability. You also can't pay the money and expect these to bloom into existence overnight - and waiting around for a few years isn't on the cards. People aren't going to hold it in for a few years.
Next, you have to ensure that your developments come along with schools and surgeries, and have transport links in and out that won't get overloaded. This isn't trivial, especially as induced demand is a thing (even though many of those who cite induced demand are as simplistic as those who deny it - it's a moving feast and some components are useful and others are very much not), and it's way too easy to simply move bottlenecks around.
You need to ensure power connectivity, which has historically not been much of a problem, but going forwards might well be.
Get those sorted out first (as per part 1 of my solutions list), preferably by doing it the way it is in part 5 of that list. You can link in part 4 (the LDO method) to those sites, which makes it much more easy for small developers and self-builders. This would end up increasing the capacity of building in this country and break the semi-monopoly.
The sites can come about following NDPs (part 3), which gives local people some buy-in, and by providing playing fields, surgeries, schools, sports facilities, etc in advance, you switch people from NIMBY to YIMBY. The part 2 (enforcement powers) reinforces that and ensures you get what is needed.
But what do I know? I'm just a classic NIMBY, apparently...
On sewerage, isn't that going to be based on per person usage so building new homes shouldn't affect the overall amount ?
I mean our usage has increased since the little one arrived with the extra washing, bathing, dishwasher all contributing but it's because we've got an extra person. If she moved out (She's a bit young yet) then her water usage would simply transfer elsewhere rather than 'add' to the system I think ?
Gas usage = Home volume Sewerage = Person count Electricity = Person count, but decreasing for each additional person (Cooking efficiencies in the main)
What we've experienced here (by building at a faster rate than elsewhere) is inwards migration. Our population has increased by the same rate as housebuilding, so a system that managed with 120,000 in 2011 had to sustain 140,000 a decade later. Assuming we continue at the same rate (and that's what's intended), it'll have to sustain 165,000 in another decade.
It didn't really have much redundancy at 120,000. It's distinctly overloaded at 140,000. It'll collapse before 160,000.
In addition, you get hotspots - by increasing the population of a given village by 35% (like mine), the sewers and processing that worked for that village before doesn't work as well now.
It probably won't collapse because (a) systems are usually more resilient than they appear; and (b) if the infrastructure becomes relatively worse, then people will be less inclined to move there.
In what world do you live in?
A pipe will have the capacity to cope with say 100 litres per minute of either clean water or sewage.
That 100 litres per minute will translate to x0,000 people.
At x0,000 everything will be fine
at x0,000 + 25% things will keep in place.
at x0,000 + 50% things are going to fall apart.
Yes systems may be able to cope but the infrastructure won't unless you upgrade it.
See as a recent example the Scotch Corner to Richmond road being closed for 4 weeks to upgrade the electricity supply for a new Outlet Shopping Centre....
This means the LDs have lost their majority on Three Rivers council after 6 years. The Tories haven't controlled it since 1986. It's alternated between NOC and LD since then.
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
I did engage with it.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
If I took you seriously, I'd quit what I'm doing.
Fortunately, I don't.
You have no idea about the issues, you have no idea about planning and the planning framework and what is and isn't needed (hell, you had no idea that my LDO proposal is very close to giving the powers you say you want to see, nor that the LDO in my ward means that Milton Park don't need planning permission for any science/tech development within the LDO constraints now), you have no idea about infrastructure and how to get it, or the issues with sewerage, schools, and surgeries and the constraints around each, no idea about how many houses are actually needed (you've not supported your "10 million" number even once), no idea about the rates of construction in various Local Authorities (you even cited Pulpstar's work but obviously hadn't read it, as you were surprised when I got the figures from it), no idea about the constraints and issues on developers, and simply resort to namecalling when people don't accept your airy assertions and made-up numbers.
As I said earlier, for someone who purports to dislike NIMBYs, what you advocate would make far more of them.
And when you made far more of them, under a democracy, we'd see much less building. Which is ironic, really.
Meanwhile, if other LAs had increased their housing stock at our rates over that seven year period you cite (which includes the five+ years of my being a councillor here), we'd already have two million more houses in England than we currently have (taking us to three houses for every five adults in England). And in seven more years, we'd be four million ahead of the rate, and ahead of pretty much everywhere else in Western Europe instead of being one of the stragglers and not far off of two houses for every three adults.
Let's face it, if we were on target for ten million houses in the next five years, you'd simply come up with a number of fifteen million. Or twenty million.
Where are you getting a two million houses from that period?
It was 2338 completions in a seven year period I cited (from the White Horse website), which is 334 homes per annum for the LA. If every LA built at 334 homes per annum, then we'd be looking at barely over 100k houses per annum which is less than we need for population growth let alone closing the shortage.
Based on the data Pulpstar provided of ~1000 homes per annum, if every LA had done that it would be 1.5 million not 2 million in five years. Which again, barely keeps up with population growth and demographic changes, it doesn't close the shortage.
Of course if we look by area instead of by LA, then you've got a lot more undeveloped land that could be built on. I responded to your map post too in case you didn't see it.
The amounts you are proposing don't scratch the surface on what we are missing in this country.
Building rates. Which are important, because increasing infrastructure depends on what is already there. Even in London, you can build a lot more houses; you can in Oxford, for example. You can even build upwards, and you WILL find a market for these.
For some reason, you keep looking at the housing completions from several years ago rather than the most recent seven years. It might pain you to congratulate us on tripling completions, but that might be a nice thing to do. Encouraging what you would like to see is always a good idea, in my experience.
We increased from 53,590 houses in the Vale prior to the most recent seven years (a timescale you chose initially) by a further 7,330 houses. That's an increase of 13.7%. Meanwhile the population of England increased by 3% in the same period.
In 2016, there were 23.7 million houses in England. An increase of 13.7% would put that to just shy of 27 million. A 3.3 million increase. (Increasing it by the population growth in that time would have seen an increase of only 0.74 million houses, taking it to 24.4 million).
We actually ended up with a bit over 25 million (from memory), so that'd be nearly 2 million more if everyone else had followed us. Keeping up that rate would make things much better (and quite probably be achievable as well)
I'm not cherrypicking the data, I just got the data from the Vale website. If you have more upto date data I'm entirely happy to use that, though my preference is for completions over starts as inevitably some starts don't get completed, for various reasons.
7330 houses over a 7 year period is obviously much better than 334 homes per period, so well done. But its not enough to close the shortage given we have a systemic shortage and ongoing population growth and demographic changes, much, much more than that should be possible.
You are making a mistake in looking at it by percentages. A high percentage of a small number is still a small number, while a small percentage of a bigger number can be a bigger number still.
The fact you've got few houses currently doesn't mean you should build few from here, it just means you've got more potential to do more than places that are already more developed.
Given the demands in places like Oxford etc why can't a few new towns be supported in Vale? Outside of AONB which only covers the south half of Vale - the north half of Vale which is not in the AONB still covers an area roughly equivalent to the whole of Birmingham.
Give us the infrastructure first.
Believe me, people who even describe themselves as NIMBYs can go all Sim City if you give them free rein over describing what infrastructure is needed. Just last month, I got a Parish Council to advocate for a new town within parish boundaries if the land was freed up and infrastructure provided.
This same Parish Council had earlier said (in the same meeting) "we won't be fooled again" when it had been pointed out that they'd supported a big expansion on the promise of infrastructure accompanying it. They went from supporting very significant levels of development a decade earlier to being very resistant - solely because what had been promised did not come about and developers had been allowed to get away with ignoring requirements on them.
You want huge levels of housebuilding? It's possible. But you've got to bring people along with you, and providing the infrastructure and giving them some say in where it all goes will bring them along.
If the Council wants to build infrastructure the Council should spend its money on doing so.
You haven't been following the Council funding crises, have you?
The Council doesn't HAVE any money for funding that sort of infrastructure. I very much doubt any Councils do. Certainly not for sewerage or roads. Neither do we have the authority for either.
Of course, if you gave us the authority and powers I suggested in my five point suggestion earlier, we'd get the planning uplift profits and be able to invest those going forwards (there would still be some planning uplift, just not the factor of 100 or whatever ridiculous amount it is at the moment).
Right, so now we're getting to the root of the problem.
"Build the infrastructure first - but I have no interest in building the infrastructure".
Which is precisely what I said will happen. An excuse not to build the infrastructure (which isn't needed, as the voters aren't there) and thus an excuse not to build the houses.
If the Council wants to do the investment first, then I have no problems with that, but we can't wait on the never-never for them to do so because people need houses now, not when you finally find the money to make investments.
Since you are discussing housing, an observation from American experience: When there is a disaster in the US that destroys hundreds, or even thousands, of homes, the Federal Emergency Management Agency usually moves in, quickly, with trailers. Which shows to me just how quickly you can provide large quantities of housing -- if you are willing to accept manufactured homes.
And it turns out that for a signficant portion of the people that move in to them, those trailers are better than where they were living. Here's a video walk through of one, if you need an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiMtrZkCZSw
There are two things inhibiting house building in England (there are others but I think other PBers - @Richard_Tyndall ? - are better placed to explain)
i) Land can be purchased but it is very difficult to get permission to build on it
ii) Most banks will not lend money to build if the house is of non-traditional construction: stone/brick walls, tiled roof
There are exceptions -eg timber frame with brick slips over is becoming more popular for builders, tho not self-build - but mostly those are the problems.
Discussions about non-traditional construction, although I do genuinely enjoy them (shipping container homes! SIPS! Converted nuclear bunkers! Cut-and-cover!), are unfortunately not relevant in England.
It is actually not difficult to get permission at all. Developers are sitting on hundreds of thousands of plots with planning permissin and are not developing them. And this is not just churn. The number of undeveloped plots with panning permission has increased every year for the last decade.
One solution to this would be to start charging full council tax on plots 18 months after planning permission has been approved. Make the land cost developers and they will soon find tghe ability to start building on it.
@Andy_Cooke When I was trying to find the Yimbyiest councils in England and Wales a few months ago, Vale of White Horse came very high up. That's after taking into account household size, population growth, population density and so.
My own very rudimentary analysis, but backs up what you have been saying. Places like Uttlesford, Telford and Wrekin, Selby are just a bit better in my view.
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
I did engage with it.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
If I took you seriously, I'd quit what I'm doing.
Fortunately, I don't.
You have no idea about the issues, you have no idea about planning and the planning framework and what is and isn't needed (hell, you had no idea that my LDO proposal is very close to giving the powers you say you want to see, nor that the LDO in my ward means that Milton Park don't need planning permission for any science/tech development within the LDO constraints now), you have no idea about infrastructure and how to get it, or the issues with sewerage, schools, and surgeries and the constraints around each, no idea about how many houses are actually needed (you've not supported your "10 million" number even once), no idea about the rates of construction in various Local Authorities (you even cited Pulpstar's work but obviously hadn't read it, as you were surprised when I got the figures from it), no idea about the constraints and issues on developers, and simply resort to namecalling when people don't accept your airy assertions and made-up numbers.
As I said earlier, for someone who purports to dislike NIMBYs, what you advocate would make far more of them.
And when you made far more of them, under a democracy, we'd see much less building. Which is ironic, really.
Meanwhile, if other LAs had increased their housing stock at our rates over that seven year period you cite (which includes the five+ years of my being a councillor here), we'd already have two million more houses in England than we currently have (taking us to three houses for every five adults in England). And in seven more years, we'd be four million ahead of the rate, and ahead of pretty much everywhere else in Western Europe instead of being one of the stragglers and not far off of two houses for every three adults.
Let's face it, if we were on target for ten million houses in the next five years, you'd simply come up with a number of fifteen million. Or twenty million.
Where are you getting a two million houses from that period?
It was 2338 completions in a seven year period I cited (from the White Horse website), which is 334 homes per annum for the LA. If every LA built at 334 homes per annum, then we'd be looking at barely over 100k houses per annum which is less than we need for population growth let alone closing the shortage.
Based on the data Pulpstar provided of ~1000 homes per annum, if every LA had done that it would be 1.5 million not 2 million in five years. Which again, barely keeps up with population growth and demographic changes, it doesn't close the shortage.
Of course if we look by area instead of by LA, then you've got a lot more undeveloped land that could be built on. I responded to your map post too in case you didn't see it.
The amounts you are proposing don't scratch the surface on what we are missing in this country.
Building rates. Which are important, because increasing infrastructure depends on what is already there. Even in London, you can build a lot more houses; you can in Oxford, for example. You can even build upwards, and you WILL find a market for these.
For some reason, you keep looking at the housing completions from several years ago rather than the most recent seven years. It might pain you to congratulate us on tripling completions, but that might be a nice thing to do. Encouraging what you would like to see is always a good idea, in my experience.
We increased from 53,590 houses in the Vale prior to the most recent seven years (a timescale you chose initially) by a further 7,330 houses. That's an increase of 13.7%. Meanwhile the population of England increased by 3% in the same period.
In 2016, there were 23.7 million houses in England. An increase of 13.7% would put that to just shy of 27 million. A 3.3 million increase. (Increasing it by the population growth in that time would have seen an increase of only 0.74 million houses, taking it to 24.4 million).
We actually ended up with a bit over 25 million (from memory), so that'd be nearly 2 million more if everyone else had followed us. Keeping up that rate would make things much better (and quite probably be achievable as well)
I'm not cherrypicking the data, I just got the data from the Vale website. If you have more upto date data I'm entirely happy to use that, though my preference is for completions over starts as inevitably some starts don't get completed, for various reasons.
7330 houses over a 7 year period is obviously much better than 334 homes per period, so well done. But its not enough to close the shortage given we have a systemic shortage and ongoing population growth and demographic changes, much, much more than that should be possible.
You are making a mistake in looking at it by percentages. A high percentage of a small number is still a small number, while a small percentage of a bigger number can be a bigger number still.
The fact you've got few houses currently doesn't mean you should build few from here, it just means you've got more potential to do more than places that are already more developed.
Given the demands in places like Oxford etc why can't a few new towns be supported in Vale? Outside of AONB which only covers the south half of Vale - the north half of Vale which is not in the AONB still covers an area roughly equivalent to the whole of Birmingham.
Give us the infrastructure first.
Believe me, people who even describe themselves as NIMBYs can go all Sim City if you give them free rein over describing what infrastructure is needed. Just last month, I got a Parish Council to advocate for a new town within parish boundaries if the land was freed up and infrastructure provided.
This same Parish Council had earlier said (in the same meeting) "we won't be fooled again" when it had been pointed out that they'd supported a big expansion on the promise of infrastructure accompanying it. They went from supporting very significant levels of development a decade earlier to being very resistant - solely because what had been promised did not come about and developers had been allowed to get away with ignoring requirements on them.
You want huge levels of housebuilding? It's possible. But you've got to bring people along with you, and providing the infrastructure and giving them some say in where it all goes will bring them along.
If the Council wants to build infrastructure the Council should spend its money on doing so.
Nope - if you want to build a new house you need to pay for the infrastructure for those houses. And the suppliers for that should be allowed to price the work so that it covers both the cost of installing the lines / pipes but also a proportion of the cost for the infrastructure improvements to ensure the sewage to leave the area and get to the sewage works...
Since you are discussing housing, an observation from American experience: When there is a disaster in the US that destroys hundreds, or even thousands, of homes, the Federal Emergency Management Agency usually moves in, quickly, with trailers. Which shows to me just how quickly you can provide large quantities of housing -- if you are willing to accept manufactured homes.
And it turns out that for a signficant portion of the people that move in to them, those trailers are better than where they were living. Here's a video walk through of one, if you need an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiMtrZkCZSw
There are two things inhibiting house building in England (there are others but I think other PBers - @Richard_Tyndall ? - are better placed to explain)
i) Land can be purchased but it is very difficult to get permission to build on it
ii) Most banks will not lend money to build if the house is of non-traditional construction: stone/brick walls, tiled roof
There are exceptions -eg timber frame with brick slips over is becoming more popular for builders, tho not self-build - but mostly those are the problems.
Discussions about non-traditional construction, although I do genuinely enjoy them (shipping container homes! SIPS! Converted nuclear bunkers! Cut-and-cover!), are unfortunately not relevant in England.
It is actually not difficult to get permission at all. Developers are sitting on hundreds of thousands of plots with planning permissin and are not developing them. And this is not just churn. The number of undeveloped plots with panning permission has increased every year for the last decade.
One solution to this would be to start charging full council tax on plots 18 months after planning permission has been approved. Make the land cost developers and they will soon find tghe ability to start building on it.
I would argue that it needs to be multiple times council tax. 0.3% of the expected price of the house won't significantly encourage building. 2 or even 5% of the expected price of the house definitely would encourage rapid building..
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
I did engage with it.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
If I took you seriously, I'd quit what I'm doing.
Fortunately, I don't.
You have no idea about the issues, you have no idea about planning and the planning framework and what is and isn't needed (hell, you had no idea that my LDO proposal is very close to giving the powers you say you want to see, nor that the LDO in my ward means that Milton Park don't need planning permission for any science/tech development within the LDO constraints now), you have no idea about infrastructure and how to get it, or the issues with sewerage, schools, and surgeries and the constraints around each, no idea about how many houses are actually needed (you've not supported your "10 million" number even once), no idea about the rates of construction in various Local Authorities (you even cited Pulpstar's work but obviously hadn't read it, as you were surprised when I got the figures from it), no idea about the constraints and issues on developers, and simply resort to namecalling when people don't accept your airy assertions and made-up numbers.
As I said earlier, for someone who purports to dislike NIMBYs, what you advocate would make far more of them.
And when you made far more of them, under a democracy, we'd see much less building. Which is ironic, really.
Meanwhile, if other LAs had increased their housing stock at our rates over that seven year period you cite (which includes the five+ years of my being a councillor here), we'd already have two million more houses in England than we currently have (taking us to three houses for every five adults in England). And in seven more years, we'd be four million ahead of the rate, and ahead of pretty much everywhere else in Western Europe instead of being one of the stragglers and not far off of two houses for every three adults.
Let's face it, if we were on target for ten million houses in the next five years, you'd simply come up with a number of fifteen million. Or twenty million.
Where are you getting a two million houses from that period?
It was 2338 completions in a seven year period I cited (from the White Horse website), which is 334 homes per annum for the LA. If every LA built at 334 homes per annum, then we'd be looking at barely over 100k houses per annum which is less than we need for population growth let alone closing the shortage.
Based on the data Pulpstar provided of ~1000 homes per annum, if every LA had done that it would be 1.5 million not 2 million in five years. Which again, barely keeps up with population growth and demographic changes, it doesn't close the shortage.
Of course if we look by area instead of by LA, then you've got a lot more undeveloped land that could be built on. I responded to your map post too in case you didn't see it.
The amounts you are proposing don't scratch the surface on what we are missing in this country.
Building rates. Which are important, because increasing infrastructure depends on what is already there. Even in London, you can build a lot more houses; you can in Oxford, for example. You can even build upwards, and you WILL find a market for these.
For some reason, you keep looking at the housing completions from several years ago rather than the most recent seven years. It might pain you to congratulate us on tripling completions, but that might be a nice thing to do. Encouraging what you would like to see is always a good idea, in my experience.
We increased from 53,590 houses in the Vale prior to the most recent seven years (a timescale you chose initially) by a further 7,330 houses. That's an increase of 13.7%. Meanwhile the population of England increased by 3% in the same period.
In 2016, there were 23.7 million houses in England. An increase of 13.7% would put that to just shy of 27 million. A 3.3 million increase. (Increasing it by the population growth in that time would have seen an increase of only 0.74 million houses, taking it to 24.4 million).
We actually ended up with a bit over 25 million (from memory), so that'd be nearly 2 million more if everyone else had followed us. Keeping up that rate would make things much better (and quite probably be achievable as well)
I'm not cherrypicking the data, I just got the data from the Vale website. If you have more upto date data I'm entirely happy to use that, though my preference is for completions over starts as inevitably some starts don't get completed, for various reasons.
7330 houses over a 7 year period is obviously much better than 334 homes per period, so well done. But its not enough to close the shortage given we have a systemic shortage and ongoing population growth and demographic changes, much, much more than that should be possible.
You are making a mistake in looking at it by percentages. A high percentage of a small number is still a small number, while a small percentage of a bigger number can be a bigger number still.
The fact you've got few houses currently doesn't mean you should build few from here, it just means you've got more potential to do more than places that are already more developed.
Given the demands in places like Oxford etc why can't a few new towns be supported in Vale? Outside of AONB which only covers the south half of Vale - the north half of Vale which is not in the AONB still covers an area roughly equivalent to the whole of Birmingham.
Give us the infrastructure first.
Believe me, people who even describe themselves as NIMBYs can go all Sim City if you give them free rein over describing what infrastructure is needed. Just last month, I got a Parish Council to advocate for a new town within parish boundaries if the land was freed up and infrastructure provided.
This same Parish Council had earlier said (in the same meeting) "we won't be fooled again" when it had been pointed out that they'd supported a big expansion on the promise of infrastructure accompanying it. They went from supporting very significant levels of development a decade earlier to being very resistant - solely because what had been promised did not come about and developers had been allowed to get away with ignoring requirements on them.
You want huge levels of housebuilding? It's possible. But you've got to bring people along with you, and providing the infrastructure and giving them some say in where it all goes will bring them along.
If the Council wants to build infrastructure the Council should spend its money on doing so.
Nope - if you want to build a new house you need to pay for the infrastructure for those houses. And the suppliers for that should be allowed to price the work so that it covers both the cost of installing the lines / pipes but also a proportion of the cost for the infrastructure improvements to ensure the sewage to leave the area and get to the sewage works...
As I repeat regularly, we should adopt the Dutch system where local authorities buy the land, put all the infrastructure in and then back charge developers or individual housebuilders as part of the cost of buying them land. It is a system that works. It also stops landbanking by developers.
Since you are discussing housing, an observation from American experience: When there is a disaster in the US that destroys hundreds, or even thousands, of homes, the Federal Emergency Management Agency usually moves in, quickly, with trailers. Which shows to me just how quickly you can provide large quantities of housing -- if you are willing to accept manufactured homes.
And it turns out that for a signficant portion of the people that move in to them, those trailers are better than where they were living. Here's a video walk through of one, if you need an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiMtrZkCZSw
There are two things inhibiting house building in England (there are others but I think other PBers - @Richard_Tyndall ? - are better placed to explain)
i) Land can be purchased but it is very difficult to get permission to build on it
ii) Most banks will not lend money to build if the house is of non-traditional construction: stone/brick walls, tiled roof
There are exceptions -eg timber frame with brick slips over is becoming more popular for builders, tho not self-build - but mostly those are the problems.
Discussions about non-traditional construction, although I do genuinely enjoy them (shipping container homes! SIPS! Converted nuclear bunkers! Cut-and-cover!), are unfortunately not relevant in England.
It is actually not difficult to get permission at all. Developers are sitting on hundreds of thousands of plots with planning permissin and are not developing them. And this is not just churn. The number of undeveloped plots with panning permission has increased every year for the last decade.
One solution to this would be to start charging full council tax on plots 18 months after planning permission has been approved. Make the land cost developers and they will soon find tghe ability to start building on it.
I would argue that it needs to be multiple times council tax. 0.3% of the expected price of the house won't significantly encourage building. 2 or even 5% of the expected price of the house definitely would encourage rapid building..
Yep, I am not hung up on the %, simply whatever works.
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
I did engage with it.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
If I took you seriously, I'd quit what I'm doing.
Fortunately, I don't.
You have no idea about the issues, you have no idea about planning and the planning framework and what is and isn't needed (hell, you had no idea that my LDO proposal is very close to giving the powers you say you want to see, nor that the LDO in my ward means that Milton Park don't need planning permission for any science/tech development within the LDO constraints now), you have no idea about infrastructure and how to get it, or the issues with sewerage, schools, and surgeries and the constraints around each, no idea about how many houses are actually needed (you've not supported your "10 million" number even once), no idea about the rates of construction in various Local Authorities (you even cited Pulpstar's work but obviously hadn't read it, as you were surprised when I got the figures from it), no idea about the constraints and issues on developers, and simply resort to namecalling when people don't accept your airy assertions and made-up numbers.
As I said earlier, for someone who purports to dislike NIMBYs, what you advocate would make far more of them.
And when you made far more of them, under a democracy, we'd see much less building. Which is ironic, really.
Meanwhile, if other LAs had increased their housing stock at our rates over that seven year period you cite (which includes the five+ years of my being a councillor here), we'd already have two million more houses in England than we currently have (taking us to three houses for every five adults in England). And in seven more years, we'd be four million ahead of the rate, and ahead of pretty much everywhere else in Western Europe instead of being one of the stragglers and not far off of two houses for every three adults.
Let's face it, if we were on target for ten million houses in the next five years, you'd simply come up with a number of fifteen million. Or twenty million.
Where are you getting a two million houses from that period?
It was 2338 completions in a seven year period I cited (from the White Horse website), which is 334 homes per annum for the LA. If every LA built at 334 homes per annum, then we'd be looking at barely over 100k houses per annum which is less than we need for population growth let alone closing the shortage.
Based on the data Pulpstar provided of ~1000 homes per annum, if every LA had done that it would be 1.5 million not 2 million in five years. Which again, barely keeps up with population growth and demographic changes, it doesn't close the shortage.
Of course if we look by area instead of by LA, then you've got a lot more undeveloped land that could be built on. I responded to your map post too in case you didn't see it.
The amounts you are proposing don't scratch the surface on what we are missing in this country.
Building rates. Which are important, because increasing infrastructure depends on what is already there. Even in London, you can build a lot more houses; you can in Oxford, for example. You can even build upwards, and you WILL find a market for these.
For some reason, you keep looking at the housing completions from several years ago rather than the most recent seven years. It might pain you to congratulate us on tripling completions, but that might be a nice thing to do. Encouraging what you would like to see is always a good idea, in my experience.
We increased from 53,590 houses in the Vale prior to the most recent seven years (a timescale you chose initially) by a further 7,330 houses. That's an increase of 13.7%. Meanwhile the population of England increased by 3% in the same period.
In 2016, there were 23.7 million houses in England. An increase of 13.7% would put that to just shy of 27 million. A 3.3 million increase. (Increasing it by the population growth in that time would have seen an increase of only 0.74 million houses, taking it to 24.4 million).
We actually ended up with a bit over 25 million (from memory), so that'd be nearly 2 million more if everyone else had followed us. Keeping up that rate would make things much better (and quite probably be achievable as well)
I'm not cherrypicking the data, I just got the data from the Vale website. If you have more upto date data I'm entirely happy to use that, though my preference is for completions over starts as inevitably some starts don't get completed, for various reasons.
7330 houses over a 7 year period is obviously much better than 334 homes per period, so well done. But its not enough to close the shortage given we have a systemic shortage and ongoing population growth and demographic changes, much, much more than that should be possible.
You are making a mistake in looking at it by percentages. A high percentage of a small number is still a small number, while a small percentage of a bigger number can be a bigger number still.
The fact you've got few houses currently doesn't mean you should build few from here, it just means you've got more potential to do more than places that are already more developed.
Given the demands in places like Oxford etc why can't a few new towns be supported in Vale? Outside of AONB which only covers the south half of Vale - the north half of Vale which is not in the AONB still covers an area roughly equivalent to the whole of Birmingham.
Give us the infrastructure first.
Believe me, people who even describe themselves as NIMBYs can go all Sim City if you give them free rein over describing what infrastructure is needed. Just last month, I got a Parish Council to advocate for a new town within parish boundaries if the land was freed up and infrastructure provided.
This same Parish Council had earlier said (in the same meeting) "we won't be fooled again" when it had been pointed out that they'd supported a big expansion on the promise of infrastructure accompanying it. They went from supporting very significant levels of development a decade earlier to being very resistant - solely because what had been promised did not come about and developers had been allowed to get away with ignoring requirements on them.
You want huge levels of housebuilding? It's possible. But you've got to bring people along with you, and providing the infrastructure and giving them some say in where it all goes will bring them along.
If the Council wants to build infrastructure the Council should spend its money on doing so.
You haven't been following the Council funding crises, have you?
The Council doesn't HAVE any money for funding that sort of infrastructure. I very much doubt any Councils do. Certainly not for sewerage or roads. Neither do we have the authority for either.
Of course, if you gave us the authority and powers I suggested in my five point suggestion earlier, we'd get the planning uplift profits and be able to invest those going forwards (there would still be some planning uplift, just not the factor of 100 or whatever ridiculous amount it is at the moment).
Right, so now we're getting to the root of the problem.
"Build the infrastructure first - but I have no interest in building the infrastructure".
Which is precisely what I said will happen. An excuse not to build the infrastructure (which isn't needed, as the voters aren't there) and thus an excuse not to build the houses.
If the Council wants to do the investment first, then I have no problems with that, but we can't wait on the never-never for them to do so because people need houses now, not when you finally find the money to make investments.
Well, not having any money or authority is usually a pretty good reason for not buying something. I have every interest in building the infrastructure. I'd love to be in charge of building it. Which is why I suggested a political route for giving us the authority and wherewithal to do so.
Seriously, is your position really so weak you have to misrepresent me?
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
I did engage with it.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
If I took you seriously, I'd quit what I'm doing.
Fortunately, I don't.
You have no idea about the issues, you have no idea about planning and the planning framework and what is and isn't needed (hell, you had no idea that my LDO proposal is very close to giving the powers you say you want to see, nor that the LDO in my ward means that Milton Park don't need planning permission for any science/tech development within the LDO constraints now), you have no idea about infrastructure and how to get it, or the issues with sewerage, schools, and surgeries and the constraints around each, no idea about how many houses are actually needed (you've not supported your "10 million" number even once), no idea about the rates of construction in various Local Authorities (you even cited Pulpstar's work but obviously hadn't read it, as you were surprised when I got the figures from it), no idea about the constraints and issues on developers, and simply resort to namecalling when people don't accept your airy assertions and made-up numbers.
As I said earlier, for someone who purports to dislike NIMBYs, what you advocate would make far more of them.
And when you made far more of them, under a democracy, we'd see much less building. Which is ironic, really.
Meanwhile, if other LAs had increased their housing stock at our rates over that seven year period you cite (which includes the five+ years of my being a councillor here), we'd already have two million more houses in England than we currently have (taking us to three houses for every five adults in England). And in seven more years, we'd be four million ahead of the rate, and ahead of pretty much everywhere else in Western Europe instead of being one of the stragglers and not far off of two houses for every three adults.
Let's face it, if we were on target for ten million houses in the next five years, you'd simply come up with a number of fifteen million. Or twenty million.
Where are you getting a two million houses from that period?
It was 2338 completions in a seven year period I cited (from the White Horse website), which is 334 homes per annum for the LA. If every LA built at 334 homes per annum, then we'd be looking at barely over 100k houses per annum which is less than we need for population growth let alone closing the shortage.
Based on the data Pulpstar provided of ~1000 homes per annum, if every LA had done that it would be 1.5 million not 2 million in five years. Which again, barely keeps up with population growth and demographic changes, it doesn't close the shortage.
Of course if we look by area instead of by LA, then you've got a lot more undeveloped land that could be built on. I responded to your map post too in case you didn't see it.
The amounts you are proposing don't scratch the surface on what we are missing in this country.
Building rates. Which are important, because increasing infrastructure depends on what is already there. Even in London, you can build a lot more houses; you can in Oxford, for example. You can even build upwards, and you WILL find a market for these.
For some reason, you keep looking at the housing completions from several years ago rather than the most recent seven years. It might pain you to congratulate us on tripling completions, but that might be a nice thing to do. Encouraging what you would like to see is always a good idea, in my experience.
We increased from 53,590 houses in the Vale prior to the most recent seven years (a timescale you chose initially) by a further 7,330 houses. That's an increase of 13.7%. Meanwhile the population of England increased by 3% in the same period.
In 2016, there were 23.7 million houses in England. An increase of 13.7% would put that to just shy of 27 million. A 3.3 million increase. (Increasing it by the population growth in that time would have seen an increase of only 0.74 million houses, taking it to 24.4 million).
We actually ended up with a bit over 25 million (from memory), so that'd be nearly 2 million more if everyone else had followed us. Keeping up that rate would make things much better (and quite probably be achievable as well)
I'm not cherrypicking the data, I just got the data from the Vale website. If you have more upto date data I'm entirely happy to use that, though my preference is for completions over starts as inevitably some starts don't get completed, for various reasons.
7330 houses over a 7 year period is obviously much better than 334 homes per period, so well done. But its not enough to close the shortage given we have a systemic shortage and ongoing population growth and demographic changes, much, much more than that should be possible.
You are making a mistake in looking at it by percentages. A high percentage of a small number is still a small number, while a small percentage of a bigger number can be a bigger number still.
The fact you've got few houses currently doesn't mean you should build few from here, it just means you've got more potential to do more than places that are already more developed.
Given the demands in places like Oxford etc why can't a few new towns be supported in Vale? Outside of AONB which only covers the south half of Vale - the north half of Vale which is not in the AONB still covers an area roughly equivalent to the whole of Birmingham.
Give us the infrastructure first.
Believe me, people who even describe themselves as NIMBYs can go all Sim City if you give them free rein over describing what infrastructure is needed. Just last month, I got a Parish Council to advocate for a new town within parish boundaries if the land was freed up and infrastructure provided.
This same Parish Council had earlier said (in the same meeting) "we won't be fooled again" when it had been pointed out that they'd supported a big expansion on the promise of infrastructure accompanying it. They went from supporting very significant levels of development a decade earlier to being very resistant - solely because what had been promised did not come about and developers had been allowed to get away with ignoring requirements on them.
You want huge levels of housebuilding? It's possible. But you've got to bring people along with you, and providing the infrastructure and giving them some say in where it all goes will bring them along.
If the Council wants to build infrastructure the Council should spend its money on doing so.
Nope - if you want to build a new house you need to pay for the infrastructure for those houses. And the suppliers for that should be allowed to price the work so that it covers both the cost of installing the lines / pipes but also a proportion of the cost for the infrastructure improvements to ensure the sewage to leave the area and get to the sewage works...
As I repeat regularly, we should adopt the Dutch system where local authorities buy the land, put all the infrastructure in and then back charge developers or individual housebuilders as part of the cost of buying them land. It is a system that works. It also stops landbanking by developers.
That's literally part of what I've been advocating. Barty sees that idea as, apparently, having no interest in providing the infrastructure, for some reason.
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
I did engage with it.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
If I took you seriously, I'd quit what I'm doing.
Fortunately, I don't.
You have no idea about the issues, you have no idea about planning and the planning framework and what is and isn't needed (hell, you had no idea that my LDO proposal is very close to giving the powers you say you want to see, nor that the LDO in my ward means that Milton Park don't need planning permission for any science/tech development within the LDO constraints now), you have no idea about infrastructure and how to get it, or the issues with sewerage, schools, and surgeries and the constraints around each, no idea about how many houses are actually needed (you've not supported your "10 million" number even once), no idea about the rates of construction in various Local Authorities (you even cited Pulpstar's work but obviously hadn't read it, as you were surprised when I got the figures from it), no idea about the constraints and issues on developers, and simply resort to namecalling when people don't accept your airy assertions and made-up numbers.
As I said earlier, for someone who purports to dislike NIMBYs, what you advocate would make far more of them.
And when you made far more of them, under a democracy, we'd see much less building. Which is ironic, really.
Meanwhile, if other LAs had increased their housing stock at our rates over that seven year period you cite (which includes the five+ years of my being a councillor here), we'd already have two million more houses in England than we currently have (taking us to three houses for every five adults in England). And in seven more years, we'd be four million ahead of the rate, and ahead of pretty much everywhere else in Western Europe instead of being one of the stragglers and not far off of two houses for every three adults.
Let's face it, if we were on target for ten million houses in the next five years, you'd simply come up with a number of fifteen million. Or twenty million.
Where are you getting a two million houses from that period?
It was 2338 completions in a seven year period I cited (from the White Horse website), which is 334 homes per annum for the LA. If every LA built at 334 homes per annum, then we'd be looking at barely over 100k houses per annum which is less than we need for population growth let alone closing the shortage.
Based on the data Pulpstar provided of ~1000 homes per annum, if every LA had done that it would be 1.5 million not 2 million in five years. Which again, barely keeps up with population growth and demographic changes, it doesn't close the shortage.
Of course if we look by area instead of by LA, then you've got a lot more undeveloped land that could be built on. I responded to your map post too in case you didn't see it.
The amounts you are proposing don't scratch the surface on what we are missing in this country.
Building rates. Which are important, because increasing infrastructure depends on what is already there. Even in London, you can build a lot more houses; you can in Oxford, for example. You can even build upwards, and you WILL find a market for these.
For some reason, you keep looking at the housing completions from several years ago rather than the most recent seven years. It might pain you to congratulate us on tripling completions, but that might be a nice thing to do. Encouraging what you would like to see is always a good idea, in my experience.
We increased from 53,590 houses in the Vale prior to the most recent seven years (a timescale you chose initially) by a further 7,330 houses. That's an increase of 13.7%. Meanwhile the population of England increased by 3% in the same period.
In 2016, there were 23.7 million houses in England. An increase of 13.7% would put that to just shy of 27 million. A 3.3 million increase. (Increasing it by the population growth in that time would have seen an increase of only 0.74 million houses, taking it to 24.4 million).
We actually ended up with a bit over 25 million (from memory), so that'd be nearly 2 million more if everyone else had followed us. Keeping up that rate would make things much better (and quite probably be achievable as well)
I'm not cherrypicking the data, I just got the data from the Vale website. If you have more upto date data I'm entirely happy to use that, though my preference is for completions over starts as inevitably some starts don't get completed, for various reasons.
7330 houses over a 7 year period is obviously much better than 334 homes per period, so well done. But its not enough to close the shortage given we have a systemic shortage and ongoing population growth and demographic changes, much, much more than that should be possible.
You are making a mistake in looking at it by percentages. A high percentage of a small number is still a small number, while a small percentage of a bigger number can be a bigger number still.
The fact you've got few houses currently doesn't mean you should build few from here, it just means you've got more potential to do more than places that are already more developed.
Given the demands in places like Oxford etc why can't a few new towns be supported in Vale? Outside of AONB which only covers the south half of Vale - the north half of Vale which is not in the AONB still covers an area roughly equivalent to the whole of Birmingham.
Give us the infrastructure first.
Believe me, people who even describe themselves as NIMBYs can go all Sim City if you give them free rein over describing what infrastructure is needed. Just last month, I got a Parish Council to advocate for a new town within parish boundaries if the land was freed up and infrastructure provided.
This same Parish Council had earlier said (in the same meeting) "we won't be fooled again" when it had been pointed out that they'd supported a big expansion on the promise of infrastructure accompanying it. They went from supporting very significant levels of development a decade earlier to being very resistant - solely because what had been promised did not come about and developers had been allowed to get away with ignoring requirements on them.
You want huge levels of housebuilding? It's possible. But you've got to bring people along with you, and providing the infrastructure and giving them some say in where it all goes will bring them along.
If the Council wants to build infrastructure the Council should spend its money on doing so.
Nope - if you want to build a new house you need to pay for the infrastructure for those houses. And the suppliers for that should be allowed to price the work so that it covers both the cost of installing the lines / pipes but also a proportion of the cost for the infrastructure improvements to ensure the sewage to leave the area and get to the sewage works...
As I repeat regularly, we should adopt the Dutch system where local authorities buy the land, put all the infrastructure in and then back charge developers or individual housebuilders as part of the cost of buying them land. It is a system that works. It also stops landbanking by developers.
This does need some funding to get started, a bit more than the money Labour have promised for the 1.5 new planning officers per local authority.
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
I did engage with it.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
If I took you seriously, I'd quit what I'm doing.
Fortunately, I don't.
You have no idea about the issues, you have no idea about planning and the planning framework and what is and isn't needed (hell, you had no idea that my LDO proposal is very close to giving the powers you say you want to see, nor that the LDO in my ward means that Milton Park don't need planning permission for any science/tech development within the LDO constraints now), you have no idea about infrastructure and how to get it, or the issues with sewerage, schools, and surgeries and the constraints around each, no idea about how many houses are actually needed (you've not supported your "10 million" number even once), no idea about the rates of construction in various Local Authorities (you even cited Pulpstar's work but obviously hadn't read it, as you were surprised when I got the figures from it), no idea about the constraints and issues on developers, and simply resort to namecalling when people don't accept your airy assertions and made-up numbers.
As I said earlier, for someone who purports to dislike NIMBYs, what you advocate would make far more of them.
And when you made far more of them, under a democracy, we'd see much less building. Which is ironic, really.
Meanwhile, if other LAs had increased their housing stock at our rates over that seven year period you cite (which includes the five+ years of my being a councillor here), we'd already have two million more houses in England than we currently have (taking us to three houses for every five adults in England). And in seven more years, we'd be four million ahead of the rate, and ahead of pretty much everywhere else in Western Europe instead of being one of the stragglers and not far off of two houses for every three adults.
Let's face it, if we were on target for ten million houses in the next five years, you'd simply come up with a number of fifteen million. Or twenty million.
Where are you getting a two million houses from that period?
It was 2338 completions in a seven year period I cited (from the White Horse website), which is 334 homes per annum for the LA. If every LA built at 334 homes per annum, then we'd be looking at barely over 100k houses per annum which is less than we need for population growth let alone closing the shortage.
Based on the data Pulpstar provided of ~1000 homes per annum, if every LA had done that it would be 1.5 million not 2 million in five years. Which again, barely keeps up with population growth and demographic changes, it doesn't close the shortage.
Of course if we look by area instead of by LA, then you've got a lot more undeveloped land that could be built on. I responded to your map post too in case you didn't see it.
The amounts you are proposing don't scratch the surface on what we are missing in this country.
Building rates. Which are important, because increasing infrastructure depends on what is already there. Even in London, you can build a lot more houses; you can in Oxford, for example. You can even build upwards, and you WILL find a market for these.
For some reason, you keep looking at the housing completions from several years ago rather than the most recent seven years. It might pain you to congratulate us on tripling completions, but that might be a nice thing to do. Encouraging what you would like to see is always a good idea, in my experience.
We increased from 53,590 houses in the Vale prior to the most recent seven years (a timescale you chose initially) by a further 7,330 houses. That's an increase of 13.7%. Meanwhile the population of England increased by 3% in the same period.
In 2016, there were 23.7 million houses in England. An increase of 13.7% would put that to just shy of 27 million. A 3.3 million increase. (Increasing it by the population growth in that time would have seen an increase of only 0.74 million houses, taking it to 24.4 million).
We actually ended up with a bit over 25 million (from memory), so that'd be nearly 2 million more if everyone else had followed us. Keeping up that rate would make things much better (and quite probably be achievable as well)
I'm not cherrypicking the data, I just got the data from the Vale website. If you have more upto date data I'm entirely happy to use that, though my preference is for completions over starts as inevitably some starts don't get completed, for various reasons.
7330 houses over a 7 year period is obviously much better than 334 homes per period, so well done. But its not enough to close the shortage given we have a systemic shortage and ongoing population growth and demographic changes, much, much more than that should be possible.
You are making a mistake in looking at it by percentages. A high percentage of a small number is still a small number, while a small percentage of a bigger number can be a bigger number still.
The fact you've got few houses currently doesn't mean you should build few from here, it just means you've got more potential to do more than places that are already more developed.
Given the demands in places like Oxford etc why can't a few new towns be supported in Vale? Outside of AONB which only covers the south half of Vale - the north half of Vale which is not in the AONB still covers an area roughly equivalent to the whole of Birmingham.
Give us the infrastructure first.
Believe me, people who even describe themselves as NIMBYs can go all Sim City if you give them free rein over describing what infrastructure is needed. Just last month, I got a Parish Council to advocate for a new town within parish boundaries if the land was freed up and infrastructure provided.
This same Parish Council had earlier said (in the same meeting) "we won't be fooled again" when it had been pointed out that they'd supported a big expansion on the promise of infrastructure accompanying it. They went from supporting very significant levels of development a decade earlier to being very resistant - solely because what had been promised did not come about and developers had been allowed to get away with ignoring requirements on them.
You want huge levels of housebuilding? It's possible. But you've got to bring people along with you, and providing the infrastructure and giving them some say in where it all goes will bring them along.
If the Council wants to build infrastructure the Council should spend its money on doing so.
Nope - if you want to build a new house you need to pay for the infrastructure for those houses. And the suppliers for that should be allowed to price the work so that it covers both the cost of installing the lines / pipes but also a proportion of the cost for the infrastructure improvements to ensure the sewage to leave the area and get to the sewage works...
As I repeat regularly, we should adopt the Dutch system where local authorities buy the land, put all the infrastructure in and then back charge developers or individual housebuilders as part of the cost of buying them land. It is a system that works. It also stops landbanking by developers.
That's literally part of what I've been advocating. Barty sees that idea as, apparently, having no interest in providing the infrastructure, for some reason.
OK, so what stops the UK moving in that direction? (I'm reminded a bit of some of the masterplanned developments, Poundbury without quite such an anal style guide.)
Is it just the financial and mental hollowing-out of local government? They don't have the money upfront and nobody can imagine them exercising the power?
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
I did engage with it.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
If I took you seriously, I'd quit what I'm doing.
Fortunately, I don't.
You have no idea about the issues, you have no idea about planning and the planning framework and what is and isn't needed (hell, you had no idea that my LDO proposal is very close to giving the powers you say you want to see, nor that the LDO in my ward means that Milton Park don't need planning permission for any science/tech development within the LDO constraints now), you have no idea about infrastructure and how to get it, or the issues with sewerage, schools, and surgeries and the constraints around each, no idea about how many houses are actually needed (you've not supported your "10 million" number even once), no idea about the rates of construction in various Local Authorities (you even cited Pulpstar's work but obviously hadn't read it, as you were surprised when I got the figures from it), no idea about the constraints and issues on developers, and simply resort to namecalling when people don't accept your airy assertions and made-up numbers.
As I said earlier, for someone who purports to dislike NIMBYs, what you advocate would make far more of them.
And when you made far more of them, under a democracy, we'd see much less building. Which is ironic, really.
Meanwhile, if other LAs had increased their housing stock at our rates over that seven year period you cite (which includes the five+ years of my being a councillor here), we'd already have two million more houses in England than we currently have (taking us to three houses for every five adults in England). And in seven more years, we'd be four million ahead of the rate, and ahead of pretty much everywhere else in Western Europe instead of being one of the stragglers and not far off of two houses for every three adults.
Let's face it, if we were on target for ten million houses in the next five years, you'd simply come up with a number of fifteen million. Or twenty million.
Where are you getting a two million houses from that period?
It was 2338 completions in a seven year period I cited (from the White Horse website), which is 334 homes per annum for the LA. If every LA built at 334 homes per annum, then we'd be looking at barely over 100k houses per annum which is less than we need for population growth let alone closing the shortage.
Based on the data Pulpstar provided of ~1000 homes per annum, if every LA had done that it would be 1.5 million not 2 million in five years. Which again, barely keeps up with population growth and demographic changes, it doesn't close the shortage.
Of course if we look by area instead of by LA, then you've got a lot more undeveloped land that could be built on. I responded to your map post too in case you didn't see it.
The amounts you are proposing don't scratch the surface on what we are missing in this country.
Building rates. Which are important, because increasing infrastructure depends on what is already there. Even in London, you can build a lot more houses; you can in Oxford, for example. You can even build upwards, and you WILL find a market for these.
For some reason, you keep looking at the housing completions from several years ago rather than the most recent seven years. It might pain you to congratulate us on tripling completions, but that might be a nice thing to do. Encouraging what you would like to see is always a good idea, in my experience.
We increased from 53,590 houses in the Vale prior to the most recent seven years (a timescale you chose initially) by a further 7,330 houses. That's an increase of 13.7%. Meanwhile the population of England increased by 3% in the same period.
In 2016, there were 23.7 million houses in England. An increase of 13.7% would put that to just shy of 27 million. A 3.3 million increase. (Increasing it by the population growth in that time would have seen an increase of only 0.74 million houses, taking it to 24.4 million).
We actually ended up with a bit over 25 million (from memory), so that'd be nearly 2 million more if everyone else had followed us. Keeping up that rate would make things much better (and quite probably be achievable as well)
I'm not cherrypicking the data, I just got the data from the Vale website. If you have more upto date data I'm entirely happy to use that, though my preference is for completions over starts as inevitably some starts don't get completed, for various reasons.
7330 houses over a 7 year period is obviously much better than 334 homes per period, so well done. But its not enough to close the shortage given we have a systemic shortage and ongoing population growth and demographic changes, much, much more than that should be possible.
You are making a mistake in looking at it by percentages. A high percentage of a small number is still a small number, while a small percentage of a bigger number can be a bigger number still.
The fact you've got few houses currently doesn't mean you should build few from here, it just means you've got more potential to do more than places that are already more developed.
Given the demands in places like Oxford etc why can't a few new towns be supported in Vale? Outside of AONB which only covers the south half of Vale - the north half of Vale which is not in the AONB still covers an area roughly equivalent to the whole of Birmingham.
Give us the infrastructure first.
Believe me, people who even describe themselves as NIMBYs can go all Sim City if you give them free rein over describing what infrastructure is needed. Just last month, I got a Parish Council to advocate for a new town within parish boundaries if the land was freed up and infrastructure provided.
This same Parish Council had earlier said (in the same meeting) "we won't be fooled again" when it had been pointed out that they'd supported a big expansion on the promise of infrastructure accompanying it. They went from supporting very significant levels of development a decade earlier to being very resistant - solely because what had been promised did not come about and developers had been allowed to get away with ignoring requirements on them.
You want huge levels of housebuilding? It's possible. But you've got to bring people along with you, and providing the infrastructure and giving them some say in where it all goes will bring them along.
If the Council wants to build infrastructure the Council should spend its money on doing so.
Nope - if you want to build a new house you need to pay for the infrastructure for those houses. And the suppliers for that should be allowed to price the work so that it covers both the cost of installing the lines / pipes but also a proportion of the cost for the infrastructure improvements to ensure the sewage to leave the area and get to the sewage works...
As I repeat regularly, we should adopt the Dutch system where local authorities buy the land, put all the infrastructure in and then back charge developers or individual housebuilders as part of the cost of buying them land. It is a system that works. It also stops landbanking by developers.
Yep - any residential land should be subject to compulsory purchase (at undevelopable land price + suitable premium).
Then the council can decide how best to develop it, whether to sell it in blocks without infrastructure or individual plots (after infrastructure was created).
The logic of the above is that I'm not sure getting councils to manage the building of the infrastructure was the best idea. Adding a house builder or 3 to things should result in stupid mistakes being avoided.
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
I did engage with it.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
If I took you seriously, I'd quit what I'm doing.
Fortunately, I don't.
You have no idea about the issues, you have no idea about planning and the planning framework and what is and isn't needed (hell, you had no idea that my LDO proposal is very close to giving the powers you say you want to see, nor that the LDO in my ward means that Milton Park don't need planning permission for any science/tech development within the LDO constraints now), you have no idea about infrastructure and how to get it, or the issues with sewerage, schools, and surgeries and the constraints around each, no idea about how many houses are actually needed (you've not supported your "10 million" number even once), no idea about the rates of construction in various Local Authorities (you even cited Pulpstar's work but obviously hadn't read it, as you were surprised when I got the figures from it), no idea about the constraints and issues on developers, and simply resort to namecalling when people don't accept your airy assertions and made-up numbers.
As I said earlier, for someone who purports to dislike NIMBYs, what you advocate would make far more of them.
And when you made far more of them, under a democracy, we'd see much less building. Which is ironic, really.
Meanwhile, if other LAs had increased their housing stock at our rates over that seven year period you cite (which includes the five+ years of my being a councillor here), we'd already have two million more houses in England than we currently have (taking us to three houses for every five adults in England). And in seven more years, we'd be four million ahead of the rate, and ahead of pretty much everywhere else in Western Europe instead of being one of the stragglers and not far off of two houses for every three adults.
Let's face it, if we were on target for ten million houses in the next five years, you'd simply come up with a number of fifteen million. Or twenty million.
Where are you getting a two million houses from that period?
It was 2338 completions in a seven year period I cited (from the White Horse website), which is 334 homes per annum for the LA. If every LA built at 334 homes per annum, then we'd be looking at barely over 100k houses per annum which is less than we need for population growth let alone closing the shortage.
Based on the data Pulpstar provided of ~1000 homes per annum, if every LA had done that it would be 1.5 million not 2 million in five years. Which again, barely keeps up with population growth and demographic changes, it doesn't close the shortage.
Of course if we look by area instead of by LA, then you've got a lot more undeveloped land that could be built on. I responded to your map post too in case you didn't see it.
The amounts you are proposing don't scratch the surface on what we are missing in this country.
Building rates. Which are important, because increasing infrastructure depends on what is already there. Even in London, you can build a lot more houses; you can in Oxford, for example. You can even build upwards, and you WILL find a market for these.
For some reason, you keep looking at the housing completions from several years ago rather than the most recent seven years. It might pain you to congratulate us on tripling completions, but that might be a nice thing to do. Encouraging what you would like to see is always a good idea, in my experience.
We increased from 53,590 houses in the Vale prior to the most recent seven years (a timescale you chose initially) by a further 7,330 houses. That's an increase of 13.7%. Meanwhile the population of England increased by 3% in the same period.
In 2016, there were 23.7 million houses in England. An increase of 13.7% would put that to just shy of 27 million. A 3.3 million increase. (Increasing it by the population growth in that time would have seen an increase of only 0.74 million houses, taking it to 24.4 million).
We actually ended up with a bit over 25 million (from memory), so that'd be nearly 2 million more if everyone else had followed us. Keeping up that rate would make things much better (and quite probably be achievable as well)
I'm not cherrypicking the data, I just got the data from the Vale website. If you have more upto date data I'm entirely happy to use that, though my preference is for completions over starts as inevitably some starts don't get completed, for various reasons.
7330 houses over a 7 year period is obviously much better than 334 homes per period, so well done. But its not enough to close the shortage given we have a systemic shortage and ongoing population growth and demographic changes, much, much more than that should be possible.
You are making a mistake in looking at it by percentages. A high percentage of a small number is still a small number, while a small percentage of a bigger number can be a bigger number still.
The fact you've got few houses currently doesn't mean you should build few from here, it just means you've got more potential to do more than places that are already more developed.
Given the demands in places like Oxford etc why can't a few new towns be supported in Vale? Outside of AONB which only covers the south half of Vale - the north half of Vale which is not in the AONB still covers an area roughly equivalent to the whole of Birmingham.
Give us the infrastructure first.
Believe me, people who even describe themselves as NIMBYs can go all Sim City if you give them free rein over describing what infrastructure is needed. Just last month, I got a Parish Council to advocate for a new town within parish boundaries if the land was freed up and infrastructure provided.
This same Parish Council had earlier said (in the same meeting) "we won't be fooled again" when it had been pointed out that they'd supported a big expansion on the promise of infrastructure accompanying it. They went from supporting very significant levels of development a decade earlier to being very resistant - solely because what had been promised did not come about and developers had been allowed to get away with ignoring requirements on them.
You want huge levels of housebuilding? It's possible. But you've got to bring people along with you, and providing the infrastructure and giving them some say in where it all goes will bring them along.
If the Council wants to build infrastructure the Council should spend its money on doing so.
Nope - if you want to build a new house you need to pay for the infrastructure for those houses. And the suppliers for that should be allowed to price the work so that it covers both the cost of installing the lines / pipes but also a proportion of the cost for the infrastructure improvements to ensure the sewage to leave the area and get to the sewage works...
As I repeat regularly, we should adopt the Dutch system where local authorities buy the land, put all the infrastructure in and then back charge developers or individual housebuilders as part of the cost of buying them land. It is a system that works. It also stops landbanking by developers.
That's literally part of what I've been advocating. Barty sees that idea as, apparently, having no interest in providing the infrastructure, for some reason.
OK, so what stops the UK moving in that direction? (I'm reminded a bit of some of the masterplanned developments, Poundbury without quite such an anal style guide.)
Is it just the financial and mental hollowing-out of local government? They don't have the money upfront and nobody can imagine them exercising the power?
I suspect it needs primary legislation but it would solve a lot of problems (both in housing and councils) once all the attempts by landbankers to block it were rejected by the courts.
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
I did engage with it.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
If I took you seriously, I'd quit what I'm doing.
Fortunately, I don't.
You have no idea about the issues, you have no idea about planning and the planning framework and what is and isn't needed (hell, you had no idea that my LDO proposal is very close to giving the powers you say you want to see, nor that the LDO in my ward means that Milton Park don't need planning permission for any science/tech development within the LDO constraints now), you have no idea about infrastructure and how to get it, or the issues with sewerage, schools, and surgeries and the constraints around each, no idea about how many houses are actually needed (you've not supported your "10 million" number even once), no idea about the rates of construction in various Local Authorities (you even cited Pulpstar's work but obviously hadn't read it, as you were surprised when I got the figures from it), no idea about the constraints and issues on developers, and simply resort to namecalling when people don't accept your airy assertions and made-up numbers.
As I said earlier, for someone who purports to dislike NIMBYs, what you advocate would make far more of them.
And when you made far more of them, under a democracy, we'd see much less building. Which is ironic, really.
Meanwhile, if other LAs had increased their housing stock at our rates over that seven year period you cite (which includes the five+ years of my being a councillor here), we'd already have two million more houses in England than we currently have (taking us to three houses for every five adults in England). And in seven more years, we'd be four million ahead of the rate, and ahead of pretty much everywhere else in Western Europe instead of being one of the stragglers and not far off of two houses for every three adults.
Let's face it, if we were on target for ten million houses in the next five years, you'd simply come up with a number of fifteen million. Or twenty million.
Where are you getting a two million houses from that period?
It was 2338 completions in a seven year period I cited (from the White Horse website), which is 334 homes per annum for the LA. If every LA built at 334 homes per annum, then we'd be looking at barely over 100k houses per annum which is less than we need for population growth let alone closing the shortage.
Based on the data Pulpstar provided of ~1000 homes per annum, if every LA had done that it would be 1.5 million not 2 million in five years. Which again, barely keeps up with population growth and demographic changes, it doesn't close the shortage.
Of course if we look by area instead of by LA, then you've got a lot more undeveloped land that could be built on. I responded to your map post too in case you didn't see it.
The amounts you are proposing don't scratch the surface on what we are missing in this country.
Building rates. Which are important, because increasing infrastructure depends on what is already there. Even in London, you can build a lot more houses; you can in Oxford, for example. You can even build upwards, and you WILL find a market for these.
For some reason, you keep looking at the housing completions from several years ago rather than the most recent seven years. It might pain you to congratulate us on tripling completions, but that might be a nice thing to do. Encouraging what you would like to see is always a good idea, in my experience.
We increased from 53,590 houses in the Vale prior to the most recent seven years (a timescale you chose initially) by a further 7,330 houses. That's an increase of 13.7%. Meanwhile the population of England increased by 3% in the same period.
In 2016, there were 23.7 million houses in England. An increase of 13.7% would put that to just shy of 27 million. A 3.3 million increase. (Increasing it by the population growth in that time would have seen an increase of only 0.74 million houses, taking it to 24.4 million).
We actually ended up with a bit over 25 million (from memory), so that'd be nearly 2 million more if everyone else had followed us. Keeping up that rate would make things much better (and quite probably be achievable as well)
I'm not cherrypicking the data, I just got the data from the Vale website. If you have more upto date data I'm entirely happy to use that, though my preference is for completions over starts as inevitably some starts don't get completed, for various reasons.
7330 houses over a 7 year period is obviously much better than 334 homes per period, so well done. But its not enough to close the shortage given we have a systemic shortage and ongoing population growth and demographic changes, much, much more than that should be possible.
You are making a mistake in looking at it by percentages. A high percentage of a small number is still a small number, while a small percentage of a bigger number can be a bigger number still.
The fact you've got few houses currently doesn't mean you should build few from here, it just means you've got more potential to do more than places that are already more developed.
Given the demands in places like Oxford etc why can't a few new towns be supported in Vale? Outside of AONB which only covers the south half of Vale - the north half of Vale which is not in the AONB still covers an area roughly equivalent to the whole of Birmingham.
Give us the infrastructure first.
Believe me, people who even describe themselves as NIMBYs can go all Sim City if you give them free rein over describing what infrastructure is needed. Just last month, I got a Parish Council to advocate for a new town within parish boundaries if the land was freed up and infrastructure provided.
This same Parish Council had earlier said (in the same meeting) "we won't be fooled again" when it had been pointed out that they'd supported a big expansion on the promise of infrastructure accompanying it. They went from supporting very significant levels of development a decade earlier to being very resistant - solely because what had been promised did not come about and developers had been allowed to get away with ignoring requirements on them.
You want huge levels of housebuilding? It's possible. But you've got to bring people along with you, and providing the infrastructure and giving them some say in where it all goes will bring them along.
If the Council wants to build infrastructure the Council should spend its money on doing so.
Nope - if you want to build a new house you need to pay for the infrastructure for those houses. And the suppliers for that should be allowed to price the work so that it covers both the cost of installing the lines / pipes but also a proportion of the cost for the infrastructure improvements to ensure the sewage to leave the area and get to the sewage works...
As I repeat regularly, we should adopt the Dutch system where local authorities buy the land, put all the infrastructure in and then back charge developers or individual housebuilders as part of the cost of buying them land. It is a system that works. It also stops landbanking by developers.
This does need some funding to get started, a bit more than the money Labour have promised for the 1.5 new planning officers per local authority.
When it comes to planning officers I suspect one solution would be to find a way councils can afford to pay them the market rate.
I joked yesterday that I'm currently doing 4 weeks work that equates to 6 months of my wife's salary. it's actually 4 months but you can see the scale of the issue.. Twin A only earns £4,000 less as an (albeit well paid) apprentice...
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
I did engage with it.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
If I took you seriously, I'd quit what I'm doing.
Fortunately, I don't.
You have no idea about the issues, you have no idea about planning and the planning framework and what is and isn't needed (hell, you had no idea that my LDO proposal is very close to giving the powers you say you want to see, nor that the LDO in my ward means that Milton Park don't need planning permission for any science/tech development within the LDO constraints now), you have no idea about infrastructure and how to get it, or the issues with sewerage, schools, and surgeries and the constraints around each, no idea about how many houses are actually needed (you've not supported your "10 million" number even once), no idea about the rates of construction in various Local Authorities (you even cited Pulpstar's work but obviously hadn't read it, as you were surprised when I got the figures from it), no idea about the constraints and issues on developers, and simply resort to namecalling when people don't accept your airy assertions and made-up numbers.
As I said earlier, for someone who purports to dislike NIMBYs, what you advocate would make far more of them.
And when you made far more of them, under a democracy, we'd see much less building. Which is ironic, really.
Meanwhile, if other LAs had increased their housing stock at our rates over that seven year period you cite (which includes the five+ years of my being a councillor here), we'd already have two million more houses in England than we currently have (taking us to three houses for every five adults in England). And in seven more years, we'd be four million ahead of the rate, and ahead of pretty much everywhere else in Western Europe instead of being one of the stragglers and not far off of two houses for every three adults.
Let's face it, if we were on target for ten million houses in the next five years, you'd simply come up with a number of fifteen million. Or twenty million.
Where are you getting a two million houses from that period?
It was 2338 completions in a seven year period I cited (from the White Horse website), which is 334 homes per annum for the LA. If every LA built at 334 homes per annum, then we'd be looking at barely over 100k houses per annum which is less than we need for population growth let alone closing the shortage.
Based on the data Pulpstar provided of ~1000 homes per annum, if every LA had done that it would be 1.5 million not 2 million in five years. Which again, barely keeps up with population growth and demographic changes, it doesn't close the shortage.
Of course if we look by area instead of by LA, then you've got a lot more undeveloped land that could be built on. I responded to your map post too in case you didn't see it.
The amounts you are proposing don't scratch the surface on what we are missing in this country.
Building rates. Which are important, because increasing infrastructure depends on what is already there. Even in London, you can build a lot more houses; you can in Oxford, for example. You can even build upwards, and you WILL find a market for these.
For some reason, you keep looking at the housing completions from several years ago rather than the most recent seven years. It might pain you to congratulate us on tripling completions, but that might be a nice thing to do. Encouraging what you would like to see is always a good idea, in my experience.
We increased from 53,590 houses in the Vale prior to the most recent seven years (a timescale you chose initially) by a further 7,330 houses. That's an increase of 13.7%. Meanwhile the population of England increased by 3% in the same period.
In 2016, there were 23.7 million houses in England. An increase of 13.7% would put that to just shy of 27 million. A 3.3 million increase. (Increasing it by the population growth in that time would have seen an increase of only 0.74 million houses, taking it to 24.4 million).
We actually ended up with a bit over 25 million (from memory), so that'd be nearly 2 million more if everyone else had followed us. Keeping up that rate would make things much better (and quite probably be achievable as well)
I'm not cherrypicking the data, I just got the data from the Vale website. If you have more upto date data I'm entirely happy to use that, though my preference is for completions over starts as inevitably some starts don't get completed, for various reasons.
7330 houses over a 7 year period is obviously much better than 334 homes per period, so well done. But its not enough to close the shortage given we have a systemic shortage and ongoing population growth and demographic changes, much, much more than that should be possible.
You are making a mistake in looking at it by percentages. A high percentage of a small number is still a small number, while a small percentage of a bigger number can be a bigger number still.
The fact you've got few houses currently doesn't mean you should build few from here, it just means you've got more potential to do more than places that are already more developed.
Given the demands in places like Oxford etc why can't a few new towns be supported in Vale? Outside of AONB which only covers the south half of Vale - the north half of Vale which is not in the AONB still covers an area roughly equivalent to the whole of Birmingham.
Give us the infrastructure first.
Believe me, people who even describe themselves as NIMBYs can go all Sim City if you give them free rein over describing what infrastructure is needed. Just last month, I got a Parish Council to advocate for a new town within parish boundaries if the land was freed up and infrastructure provided.
This same Parish Council had earlier said (in the same meeting) "we won't be fooled again" when it had been pointed out that they'd supported a big expansion on the promise of infrastructure accompanying it. They went from supporting very significant levels of development a decade earlier to being very resistant - solely because what had been promised did not come about and developers had been allowed to get away with ignoring requirements on them.
You want huge levels of housebuilding? It's possible. But you've got to bring people along with you, and providing the infrastructure and giving them some say in where it all goes will bring them along.
If the Council wants to build infrastructure the Council should spend its money on doing so.
Nope - if you want to build a new house you need to pay for the infrastructure for those houses. And the suppliers for that should be allowed to price the work so that it covers both the cost of installing the lines / pipes but also a proportion of the cost for the infrastructure improvements to ensure the sewage to leave the area and get to the sewage works...
As I repeat regularly, we should adopt the Dutch system where local authorities buy the land, put all the infrastructure in and then back charge developers or individual housebuilders as part of the cost of buying them land. It is a system that works. It also stops landbanking by developers.
Isn't that the essence of Labour's new towns plan ?
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
I did engage with it.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
If I took you seriously, I'd quit what I'm doing.
Fortunately, I don't.
You have no idea about the issues, you have no idea about planning and the planning framework and what is and isn't needed (hell, you had no idea that my LDO proposal is very close to giving the powers you say you want to see, nor that the LDO in my ward means that Milton Park don't need planning permission for any science/tech development within the LDO constraints now), you have no idea about infrastructure and how to get it, or the issues with sewerage, schools, and surgeries and the constraints around each, no idea about how many houses are actually needed (you've not supported your "10 million" number even once), no idea about the rates of construction in various Local Authorities (you even cited Pulpstar's work but obviously hadn't read it, as you were surprised when I got the figures from it), no idea about the constraints and issues on developers, and simply resort to namecalling when people don't accept your airy assertions and made-up numbers.
As I said earlier, for someone who purports to dislike NIMBYs, what you advocate would make far more of them.
And when you made far more of them, under a democracy, we'd see much less building. Which is ironic, really.
Meanwhile, if other LAs had increased their housing stock at our rates over that seven year period you cite (which includes the five+ years of my being a councillor here), we'd already have two million more houses in England than we currently have (taking us to three houses for every five adults in England). And in seven more years, we'd be four million ahead of the rate, and ahead of pretty much everywhere else in Western Europe instead of being one of the stragglers and not far off of two houses for every three adults.
Let's face it, if we were on target for ten million houses in the next five years, you'd simply come up with a number of fifteen million. Or twenty million.
Where are you getting a two million houses from that period?
It was 2338 completions in a seven year period I cited (from the White Horse website), which is 334 homes per annum for the LA. If every LA built at 334 homes per annum, then we'd be looking at barely over 100k houses per annum which is less than we need for population growth let alone closing the shortage.
Based on the data Pulpstar provided of ~1000 homes per annum, if every LA had done that it would be 1.5 million not 2 million in five years. Which again, barely keeps up with population growth and demographic changes, it doesn't close the shortage.
Of course if we look by area instead of by LA, then you've got a lot more undeveloped land that could be built on. I responded to your map post too in case you didn't see it.
The amounts you are proposing don't scratch the surface on what we are missing in this country.
Building rates. Which are important, because increasing infrastructure depends on what is already there. Even in London, you can build a lot more houses; you can in Oxford, for example. You can even build upwards, and you WILL find a market for these.
For some reason, you keep looking at the housing completions from several years ago rather than the most recent seven years. It might pain you to congratulate us on tripling completions, but that might be a nice thing to do. Encouraging what you would like to see is always a good idea, in my experience.
We increased from 53,590 houses in the Vale prior to the most recent seven years (a timescale you chose initially) by a further 7,330 houses. That's an increase of 13.7%. Meanwhile the population of England increased by 3% in the same period.
In 2016, there were 23.7 million houses in England. An increase of 13.7% would put that to just shy of 27 million. A 3.3 million increase. (Increasing it by the population growth in that time would have seen an increase of only 0.74 million houses, taking it to 24.4 million).
We actually ended up with a bit over 25 million (from memory), so that'd be nearly 2 million more if everyone else had followed us. Keeping up that rate would make things much better (and quite probably be achievable as well)
I'm not cherrypicking the data, I just got the data from the Vale website. If you have more upto date data I'm entirely happy to use that, though my preference is for completions over starts as inevitably some starts don't get completed, for various reasons.
7330 houses over a 7 year period is obviously much better than 334 homes per period, so well done. But its not enough to close the shortage given we have a systemic shortage and ongoing population growth and demographic changes, much, much more than that should be possible.
You are making a mistake in looking at it by percentages. A high percentage of a small number is still a small number, while a small percentage of a bigger number can be a bigger number still.
The fact you've got few houses currently doesn't mean you should build few from here, it just means you've got more potential to do more than places that are already more developed.
Given the demands in places like Oxford etc why can't a few new towns be supported in Vale? Outside of AONB which only covers the south half of Vale - the north half of Vale which is not in the AONB still covers an area roughly equivalent to the whole of Birmingham.
Give us the infrastructure first.
Believe me, people who even describe themselves as NIMBYs can go all Sim City if you give them free rein over describing what infrastructure is needed. Just last month, I got a Parish Council to advocate for a new town within parish boundaries if the land was freed up and infrastructure provided.
This same Parish Council had earlier said (in the same meeting) "we won't be fooled again" when it had been pointed out that they'd supported a big expansion on the promise of infrastructure accompanying it. They went from supporting very significant levels of development a decade earlier to being very resistant - solely because what had been promised did not come about and developers had been allowed to get away with ignoring requirements on them.
You want huge levels of housebuilding? It's possible. But you've got to bring people along with you, and providing the infrastructure and giving them some say in where it all goes will bring them along.
If the Council wants to build infrastructure the Council should spend its money on doing so.
Nope - if you want to build a new house you need to pay for the infrastructure for those houses. And the suppliers for that should be allowed to price the work so that it covers both the cost of installing the lines / pipes but also a proportion of the cost for the infrastructure improvements to ensure the sewage to leave the area and get to the sewage works...
As I repeat regularly, we should adopt the Dutch system where local authorities buy the land, put all the infrastructure in and then back charge developers or individual housebuilders as part of the cost of buying them land. It is a system that works. It also stops landbanking by developers.
Isn't that the essence of Labour's new towns plan ?
I think so - and I hope so. But from what I have seen they seem to be planning on desiganting areas for development but gthen leaving it up to the developers to actually do the building. Which is not that much different from what we have now. Additionally the developers will do their normal trick of building 4 and 5 bed places rather than lots of cheaper starter homes.
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
I did engage with it.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
If I took you seriously, I'd quit what I'm doing.
Fortunately, I don't.
You have no idea about the issues, you have no idea about planning and the planning framework and what is and isn't needed (hell, you had no idea that my LDO proposal is very close to giving the powers you say you want to see, nor that the LDO in my ward means that Milton Park don't need planning permission for any science/tech development within the LDO constraints now), you have no idea about infrastructure and how to get it, or the issues with sewerage, schools, and surgeries and the constraints around each, no idea about how many houses are actually needed (you've not supported your "10 million" number even once), no idea about the rates of construction in various Local Authorities (you even cited Pulpstar's work but obviously hadn't read it, as you were surprised when I got the figures from it), no idea about the constraints and issues on developers, and simply resort to namecalling when people don't accept your airy assertions and made-up numbers.
As I said earlier, for someone who purports to dislike NIMBYs, what you advocate would make far more of them.
And when you made far more of them, under a democracy, we'd see much less building. Which is ironic, really.
Meanwhile, if other LAs had increased their housing stock at our rates over that seven year period you cite (which includes the five+ years of my being a councillor here), we'd already have two million more houses in England than we currently have (taking us to three houses for every five adults in England). And in seven more years, we'd be four million ahead of the rate, and ahead of pretty much everywhere else in Western Europe instead of being one of the stragglers and not far off of two houses for every three adults.
Let's face it, if we were on target for ten million houses in the next five years, you'd simply come up with a number of fifteen million. Or twenty million.
Where are you getting a two million houses from that period?
It was 2338 completions in a seven year period I cited (from the White Horse website), which is 334 homes per annum for the LA. If every LA built at 334 homes per annum, then we'd be looking at barely over 100k houses per annum which is less than we need for population growth let alone closing the shortage.
Based on the data Pulpstar provided of ~1000 homes per annum, if every LA had done that it would be 1.5 million not 2 million in five years. Which again, barely keeps up with population growth and demographic changes, it doesn't close the shortage.
Of course if we look by area instead of by LA, then you've got a lot more undeveloped land that could be built on. I responded to your map post too in case you didn't see it.
The amounts you are proposing don't scratch the surface on what we are missing in this country.
Building rates. Which are important, because increasing infrastructure depends on what is already there. Even in London, you can build a lot more houses; you can in Oxford, for example. You can even build upwards, and you WILL find a market for these.
For some reason, you keep looking at the housing completions from several years ago rather than the most recent seven years. It might pain you to congratulate us on tripling completions, but that might be a nice thing to do. Encouraging what you would like to see is always a good idea, in my experience.
We increased from 53,590 houses in the Vale prior to the most recent seven years (a timescale you chose initially) by a further 7,330 houses. That's an increase of 13.7%. Meanwhile the population of England increased by 3% in the same period.
In 2016, there were 23.7 million houses in England. An increase of 13.7% would put that to just shy of 27 million. A 3.3 million increase. (Increasing it by the population growth in that time would have seen an increase of only 0.74 million houses, taking it to 24.4 million).
We actually ended up with a bit over 25 million (from memory), so that'd be nearly 2 million more if everyone else had followed us. Keeping up that rate would make things much better (and quite probably be achievable as well)
I'm not cherrypicking the data, I just got the data from the Vale website. If you have more upto date data I'm entirely happy to use that, though my preference is for completions over starts as inevitably some starts don't get completed, for various reasons.
7330 houses over a 7 year period is obviously much better than 334 homes per period, so well done. But its not enough to close the shortage given we have a systemic shortage and ongoing population growth and demographic changes, much, much more than that should be possible.
You are making a mistake in looking at it by percentages. A high percentage of a small number is still a small number, while a small percentage of a bigger number can be a bigger number still.
The fact you've got few houses currently doesn't mean you should build few from here, it just means you've got more potential to do more than places that are already more developed.
Given the demands in places like Oxford etc why can't a few new towns be supported in Vale? Outside of AONB which only covers the south half of Vale - the north half of Vale which is not in the AONB still covers an area roughly equivalent to the whole of Birmingham.
Give us the infrastructure first.
Believe me, people who even describe themselves as NIMBYs can go all Sim City if you give them free rein over describing what infrastructure is needed. Just last month, I got a Parish Council to advocate for a new town within parish boundaries if the land was freed up and infrastructure provided.
This same Parish Council had earlier said (in the same meeting) "we won't be fooled again" when it had been pointed out that they'd supported a big expansion on the promise of infrastructure accompanying it. They went from supporting very significant levels of development a decade earlier to being very resistant - solely because what had been promised did not come about and developers had been allowed to get away with ignoring requirements on them.
You want huge levels of housebuilding? It's possible. But you've got to bring people along with you, and providing the infrastructure and giving them some say in where it all goes will bring them along.
Yes councils need to start investing in their infrastructure.
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
I did engage with it.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
If I took you seriously, I'd quit what I'm doing.
Fortunately, I don't.
You have no idea about the issues, you have no idea about planning and the planning framework and what is and isn't needed (hell, you had no idea that my LDO proposal is very close to giving the powers you say you want to see, nor that the LDO in my ward means that Milton Park don't need planning permission for any science/tech development within the LDO constraints now), you have no idea about infrastructure and how to get it, or the issues with sewerage, schools, and surgeries and the constraints around each, no idea about how many houses are actually needed (you've not supported your "10 million" number even once), no idea about the rates of construction in various Local Authorities (you even cited Pulpstar's work but obviously hadn't read it, as you were surprised when I got the figures from it), no idea about the constraints and issues on developers, and simply resort to namecalling when people don't accept your airy assertions and made-up numbers.
As I said earlier, for someone who purports to dislike NIMBYs, what you advocate would make far more of them.
And when you made far more of them, under a democracy, we'd see much less building. Which is ironic, really.
Meanwhile, if other LAs had increased their housing stock at our rates over that seven year period you cite (which includes the five+ years of my being a councillor here), we'd already have two million more houses in England than we currently have (taking us to three houses for every five adults in England). And in seven more years, we'd be four million ahead of the rate, and ahead of pretty much everywhere else in Western Europe instead of being one of the stragglers and not far off of two houses for every three adults.
Let's face it, if we were on target for ten million houses in the next five years, you'd simply come up with a number of fifteen million. Or twenty million.
Where are you getting a two million houses from that period?
It was 2338 completions in a seven year period I cited (from the White Horse website), which is 334 homes per annum for the LA. If every LA built at 334 homes per annum, then we'd be looking at barely over 100k houses per annum which is less than we need for population growth let alone closing the shortage.
Based on the data Pulpstar provided of ~1000 homes per annum, if every LA had done that it would be 1.5 million not 2 million in five years. Which again, barely keeps up with population growth and demographic changes, it doesn't close the shortage.
Of course if we look by area instead of by LA, then you've got a lot more undeveloped land that could be built on. I responded to your map post too in case you didn't see it.
The amounts you are proposing don't scratch the surface on what we are missing in this country.
Building rates. Which are important, because increasing infrastructure depends on what is already there. Even in London, you can build a lot more houses; you can in Oxford, for example. You can even build upwards, and you WILL find a market for these.
For some reason, you keep looking at the housing completions from several years ago rather than the most recent seven years. It might pain you to congratulate us on tripling completions, but that might be a nice thing to do. Encouraging what you would like to see is always a good idea, in my experience.
We increased from 53,590 houses in the Vale prior to the most recent seven years (a timescale you chose initially) by a further 7,330 houses. That's an increase of 13.7%. Meanwhile the population of England increased by 3% in the same period.
In 2016, there were 23.7 million houses in England. An increase of 13.7% would put that to just shy of 27 million. A 3.3 million increase. (Increasing it by the population growth in that time would have seen an increase of only 0.74 million houses, taking it to 24.4 million).
We actually ended up with a bit over 25 million (from memory), so that'd be nearly 2 million more if everyone else had followed us. Keeping up that rate would make things much better (and quite probably be achievable as well)
I'm not cherrypicking the data, I just got the data from the Vale website. If you have more upto date data I'm entirely happy to use that, though my preference is for completions over starts as inevitably some starts don't get completed, for various reasons.
7330 houses over a 7 year period is obviously much better than 334 homes per period, so well done. But its not enough to close the shortage given we have a systemic shortage and ongoing population growth and demographic changes, much, much more than that should be possible.
You are making a mistake in looking at it by percentages. A high percentage of a small number is still a small number, while a small percentage of a bigger number can be a bigger number still.
The fact you've got few houses currently doesn't mean you should build few from here, it just means you've got more potential to do more than places that are already more developed.
Given the demands in places like Oxford etc why can't a few new towns be supported in Vale? Outside of AONB which only covers the south half of Vale - the north half of Vale which is not in the AONB still covers an area roughly equivalent to the whole of Birmingham.
Give us the infrastructure first.
Believe me, people who even describe themselves as NIMBYs can go all Sim City if you give them free rein over describing what infrastructure is needed. Just last month, I got a Parish Council to advocate for a new town within parish boundaries if the land was freed up and infrastructure provided.
This same Parish Council had earlier said (in the same meeting) "we won't be fooled again" when it had been pointed out that they'd supported a big expansion on the promise of infrastructure accompanying it. They went from supporting very significant levels of development a decade earlier to being very resistant - solely because what had been promised did not come about and developers had been allowed to get away with ignoring requirements on them.
You want huge levels of housebuilding? It's possible. But you've got to bring people along with you, and providing the infrastructure and giving them some say in where it all goes will bring them along.
Yes councils need to start investing in their infrastructure.
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
I did engage with it.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
If I took you seriously, I'd quit what I'm doing.
Fortunately, I don't.
You have no idea about the issues, you have no idea about planning and the planning framework and what is and isn't needed (hell, you had no idea that my LDO proposal is very close to giving the powers you say you want to see, nor that the LDO in my ward means that Milton Park don't need planning permission for any science/tech development within the LDO constraints now), you have no idea about infrastructure and how to get it, or the issues with sewerage, schools, and surgeries and the constraints around each, no idea about how many houses are actually needed (you've not supported your "10 million" number even once), no idea about the rates of construction in various Local Authorities (you even cited Pulpstar's work but obviously hadn't read it, as you were surprised when I got the figures from it), no idea about the constraints and issues on developers, and simply resort to namecalling when people don't accept your airy assertions and made-up numbers.
As I said earlier, for someone who purports to dislike NIMBYs, what you advocate would make far more of them.
And when you made far more of them, under a democracy, we'd see much less building. Which is ironic, really.
Meanwhile, if other LAs had increased their housing stock at our rates over that seven year period you cite (which includes the five+ years of my being a councillor here), we'd already have two million more houses in England than we currently have (taking us to three houses for every five adults in England). And in seven more years, we'd be four million ahead of the rate, and ahead of pretty much everywhere else in Western Europe instead of being one of the stragglers and not far off of two houses for every three adults.
Let's face it, if we were on target for ten million houses in the next five years, you'd simply come up with a number of fifteen million. Or twenty million.
Where are you getting a two million houses from that period?
It was 2338 completions in a seven year period I cited (from the White Horse website), which is 334 homes per annum for the LA. If every LA built at 334 homes per annum, then we'd be looking at barely over 100k houses per annum which is less than we need for population growth let alone closing the shortage.
Based on the data Pulpstar provided of ~1000 homes per annum, if every LA had done that it would be 1.5 million not 2 million in five years. Which again, barely keeps up with population growth and demographic changes, it doesn't close the shortage.
Of course if we look by area instead of by LA, then you've got a lot more undeveloped land that could be built on. I responded to your map post too in case you didn't see it.
The amounts you are proposing don't scratch the surface on what we are missing in this country.
Building rates. Which are important, because increasing infrastructure depends on what is already there. Even in London, you can build a lot more houses; you can in Oxford, for example. You can even build upwards, and you WILL find a market for these.
For some reason, you keep looking at the housing completions from several years ago rather than the most recent seven years. It might pain you to congratulate us on tripling completions, but that might be a nice thing to do. Encouraging what you would like to see is always a good idea, in my experience.
We increased from 53,590 houses in the Vale prior to the most recent seven years (a timescale you chose initially) by a further 7,330 houses. That's an increase of 13.7%. Meanwhile the population of England increased by 3% in the same period.
In 2016, there were 23.7 million houses in England. An increase of 13.7% would put that to just shy of 27 million. A 3.3 million increase. (Increasing it by the population growth in that time would have seen an increase of only 0.74 million houses, taking it to 24.4 million).
We actually ended up with a bit over 25 million (from memory), so that'd be nearly 2 million more if everyone else had followed us. Keeping up that rate would make things much better (and quite probably be achievable as well)
I'm not cherrypicking the data, I just got the data from the Vale website. If you have more upto date data I'm entirely happy to use that, though my preference is for completions over starts as inevitably some starts don't get completed, for various reasons.
7330 houses over a 7 year period is obviously much better than 334 homes per period, so well done. But its not enough to close the shortage given we have a systemic shortage and ongoing population growth and demographic changes, much, much more than that should be possible.
You are making a mistake in looking at it by percentages. A high percentage of a small number is still a small number, while a small percentage of a bigger number can be a bigger number still.
The fact you've got few houses currently doesn't mean you should build few from here, it just means you've got more potential to do more than places that are already more developed.
Given the demands in places like Oxford etc why can't a few new towns be supported in Vale? Outside of AONB which only covers the south half of Vale - the north half of Vale which is not in the AONB still covers an area roughly equivalent to the whole of Birmingham.
Give us the infrastructure first.
Believe me, people who even describe themselves as NIMBYs can go all Sim City if you give them free rein over describing what infrastructure is needed. Just last month, I got a Parish Council to advocate for a new town within parish boundaries if the land was freed up and infrastructure provided.
This same Parish Council had earlier said (in the same meeting) "we won't be fooled again" when it had been pointed out that they'd supported a big expansion on the promise of infrastructure accompanying it. They went from supporting very significant levels of development a decade earlier to being very resistant - solely because what had been promised did not come about and developers had been allowed to get away with ignoring requirements on them.
You want huge levels of housebuilding? It's possible. But you've got to bring people along with you, and providing the infrastructure and giving them some say in where it all goes will bring them along.
If the Council wants to build infrastructure the Council should spend its money on doing so.
Nope - if you want to build a new house you need to pay for the infrastructure for those houses. And the suppliers for that should be allowed to price the work so that it covers both the cost of installing the lines / pipes but also a proportion of the cost for the infrastructure improvements to ensure the sewage to leave the area and get to the sewage works...
As I repeat regularly, we should adopt the Dutch system where local authorities buy the land, put all the infrastructure in and then back charge developers or individual housebuilders as part of the cost of buying them land. It is a system that works. It also stops landbanking by developers.
Yep - any residential land should be subject to compulsory purchase (at undevelopable land price + suitable premium).
Then the council can decide how best to develop it, whether to sell it in blocks without infrastructure or individual plots (after infrastructure was created).
The logic of the above is that I'm not sure getting councils to manage the building of the infrastructure was the best idea. Adding a house builder or 3 to things should result in stupid mistakes being avoided.
There is no reason why it should be a problem. The infrastructure is not actually built by developers even now - they get specialist firms in to do it who build it to guidelines and rules set out by national and local authorities. All this would do is remove the builders from the process and ensure the infrastructure was in place first.
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
I did engage with it.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
If I took you seriously, I'd quit what I'm doing.
Fortunately, I don't.
You have no idea about the issues, you have no idea about planning and the planning framework and what is and isn't needed (hell, you had no idea that my LDO proposal is very close to giving the powers you say you want to see, nor that the LDO in my ward means that Milton Park don't need planning permission for any science/tech development within the LDO constraints now), you have no idea about infrastructure and how to get it, or the issues with sewerage, schools, and surgeries and the constraints around each, no idea about how many houses are actually needed (you've not supported your "10 million" number even once), no idea about the rates of construction in various Local Authorities (you even cited Pulpstar's work but obviously hadn't read it, as you were surprised when I got the figures from it), no idea about the constraints and issues on developers, and simply resort to namecalling when people don't accept your airy assertions and made-up numbers.
As I said earlier, for someone who purports to dislike NIMBYs, what you advocate would make far more of them.
And when you made far more of them, under a democracy, we'd see much less building. Which is ironic, really.
Meanwhile, if other LAs had increased their housing stock at our rates over that seven year period you cite (which includes the five+ years of my being a councillor here), we'd already have two million more houses in England than we currently have (taking us to three houses for every five adults in England). And in seven more years, we'd be four million ahead of the rate, and ahead of pretty much everywhere else in Western Europe instead of being one of the stragglers and not far off of two houses for every three adults.
Let's face it, if we were on target for ten million houses in the next five years, you'd simply come up with a number of fifteen million. Or twenty million.
Where are you getting a two million houses from that period?
It was 2338 completions in a seven year period I cited (from the White Horse website), which is 334 homes per annum for the LA. If every LA built at 334 homes per annum, then we'd be looking at barely over 100k houses per annum which is less than we need for population growth let alone closing the shortage.
Based on the data Pulpstar provided of ~1000 homes per annum, if every LA had done that it would be 1.5 million not 2 million in five years. Which again, barely keeps up with population growth and demographic changes, it doesn't close the shortage.
Of course if we look by area instead of by LA, then you've got a lot more undeveloped land that could be built on. I responded to your map post too in case you didn't see it.
The amounts you are proposing don't scratch the surface on what we are missing in this country.
Building rates. Which are important, because increasing infrastructure depends on what is already there. Even in London, you can build a lot more houses; you can in Oxford, for example. You can even build upwards, and you WILL find a market for these.
For some reason, you keep looking at the housing completions from several years ago rather than the most recent seven years. It might pain you to congratulate us on tripling completions, but that might be a nice thing to do. Encouraging what you would like to see is always a good idea, in my experience.
We increased from 53,590 houses in the Vale prior to the most recent seven years (a timescale you chose initially) by a further 7,330 houses. That's an increase of 13.7%. Meanwhile the population of England increased by 3% in the same period.
In 2016, there were 23.7 million houses in England. An increase of 13.7% would put that to just shy of 27 million. A 3.3 million increase. (Increasing it by the population growth in that time would have seen an increase of only 0.74 million houses, taking it to 24.4 million).
We actually ended up with a bit over 25 million (from memory), so that'd be nearly 2 million more if everyone else had followed us. Keeping up that rate would make things much better (and quite probably be achievable as well)
I'm not cherrypicking the data, I just got the data from the Vale website. If you have more upto date data I'm entirely happy to use that, though my preference is for completions over starts as inevitably some starts don't get completed, for various reasons.
7330 houses over a 7 year period is obviously much better than 334 homes per period, so well done. But its not enough to close the shortage given we have a systemic shortage and ongoing population growth and demographic changes, much, much more than that should be possible.
You are making a mistake in looking at it by percentages. A high percentage of a small number is still a small number, while a small percentage of a bigger number can be a bigger number still.
The fact you've got few houses currently doesn't mean you should build few from here, it just means you've got more potential to do more than places that are already more developed.
Given the demands in places like Oxford etc why can't a few new towns be supported in Vale? Outside of AONB which only covers the south half of Vale - the north half of Vale which is not in the AONB still covers an area roughly equivalent to the whole of Birmingham.
Give us the infrastructure first.
Believe me, people who even describe themselves as NIMBYs can go all Sim City if you give them free rein over describing what infrastructure is needed. Just last month, I got a Parish Council to advocate for a new town within parish boundaries if the land was freed up and infrastructure provided.
This same Parish Council had earlier said (in the same meeting) "we won't be fooled again" when it had been pointed out that they'd supported a big expansion on the promise of infrastructure accompanying it. They went from supporting very significant levels of development a decade earlier to being very resistant - solely because what had been promised did not come about and developers had been allowed to get away with ignoring requirements on them.
You want huge levels of housebuilding? It's possible. But you've got to bring people along with you, and providing the infrastructure and giving them some say in where it all goes will bring them along.
If the Council wants to build infrastructure the Council should spend its money on doing so.
Nope - if you want to build a new house you need to pay for the infrastructure for those houses. And the suppliers for that should be allowed to price the work so that it covers both the cost of installing the lines / pipes but also a proportion of the cost for the infrastructure improvements to ensure the sewage to leave the area and get to the sewage works...
As I repeat regularly, we should adopt the Dutch system where local authorities buy the land, put all the infrastructure in and then back charge developers or individual housebuilders as part of the cost of buying them land. It is a system that works. It also stops landbanking by developers.
This does need some funding to get started, a bit more than the money Labour have promised for the 1.5 new planning officers per local authority.
Indeed but if central government were to provide the initial investment capital then after that it becomes a self sustaining system.
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
I did engage with it.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
If I took you seriously, I'd quit what I'm doing.
Fortunately, I don't.
You have no idea about the issues, you have no idea about planning and the planning framework and what is and isn't needed (hell, you had no idea that my LDO proposal is very close to giving the powers you say you want to see, nor that the LDO in my ward means that Milton Park don't need planning permission for any science/tech development within the LDO constraints now), you have no idea about infrastructure and how to get it, or the issues with sewerage, schools, and surgeries and the constraints around each, no idea about how many houses are actually needed (you've not supported your "10 million" number even once), no idea about the rates of construction in various Local Authorities (you even cited Pulpstar's work but obviously hadn't read it, as you were surprised when I got the figures from it), no idea about the constraints and issues on developers, and simply resort to namecalling when people don't accept your airy assertions and made-up numbers.
As I said earlier, for someone who purports to dislike NIMBYs, what you advocate would make far more of them.
And when you made far more of them, under a democracy, we'd see much less building. Which is ironic, really.
Meanwhile, if other LAs had increased their housing stock at our rates over that seven year period you cite (which includes the five+ years of my being a councillor here), we'd already have two million more houses in England than we currently have (taking us to three houses for every five adults in England). And in seven more years, we'd be four million ahead of the rate, and ahead of pretty much everywhere else in Western Europe instead of being one of the stragglers and not far off of two houses for every three adults.
Let's face it, if we were on target for ten million houses in the next five years, you'd simply come up with a number of fifteen million. Or twenty million.
Where are you getting a two million houses from that period?
It was 2338 completions in a seven year period I cited (from the White Horse website), which is 334 homes per annum for the LA. If every LA built at 334 homes per annum, then we'd be looking at barely over 100k houses per annum which is less than we need for population growth let alone closing the shortage.
Based on the data Pulpstar provided of ~1000 homes per annum, if every LA had done that it would be 1.5 million not 2 million in five years. Which again, barely keeps up with population growth and demographic changes, it doesn't close the shortage.
Of course if we look by area instead of by LA, then you've got a lot more undeveloped land that could be built on. I responded to your map post too in case you didn't see it.
The amounts you are proposing don't scratch the surface on what we are missing in this country.
Building rates. Which are important, because increasing infrastructure depends on what is already there. Even in London, you can build a lot more houses; you can in Oxford, for example. You can even build upwards, and you WILL find a market for these.
For some reason, you keep looking at the housing completions from several years ago rather than the most recent seven years. It might pain you to congratulate us on tripling completions, but that might be a nice thing to do. Encouraging what you would like to see is always a good idea, in my experience.
We increased from 53,590 houses in the Vale prior to the most recent seven years (a timescale you chose initially) by a further 7,330 houses. That's an increase of 13.7%. Meanwhile the population of England increased by 3% in the same period.
In 2016, there were 23.7 million houses in England. An increase of 13.7% would put that to just shy of 27 million. A 3.3 million increase. (Increasing it by the population growth in that time would have seen an increase of only 0.74 million houses, taking it to 24.4 million).
We actually ended up with a bit over 25 million (from memory), so that'd be nearly 2 million more if everyone else had followed us. Keeping up that rate would make things much better (and quite probably be achievable as well)
I'm not cherrypicking the data, I just got the data from the Vale website. If you have more upto date data I'm entirely happy to use that, though my preference is for completions over starts as inevitably some starts don't get completed, for various reasons.
7330 houses over a 7 year period is obviously much better than 334 homes per period, so well done. But its not enough to close the shortage given we have a systemic shortage and ongoing population growth and demographic changes, much, much more than that should be possible.
You are making a mistake in looking at it by percentages. A high percentage of a small number is still a small number, while a small percentage of a bigger number can be a bigger number still.
The fact you've got few houses currently doesn't mean you should build few from here, it just means you've got more potential to do more than places that are already more developed.
Given the demands in places like Oxford etc why can't a few new towns be supported in Vale? Outside of AONB which only covers the south half of Vale - the north half of Vale which is not in the AONB still covers an area roughly equivalent to the whole of Birmingham.
Give us the infrastructure first.
Believe me, people who even describe themselves as NIMBYs can go all Sim City if you give them free rein over describing what infrastructure is needed. Just last month, I got a Parish Council to advocate for a new town within parish boundaries if the land was freed up and infrastructure provided.
This same Parish Council had earlier said (in the same meeting) "we won't be fooled again" when it had been pointed out that they'd supported a big expansion on the promise of infrastructure accompanying it. They went from supporting very significant levels of development a decade earlier to being very resistant - solely because what had been promised did not come about and developers had been allowed to get away with ignoring requirements on them.
You want huge levels of housebuilding? It's possible. But you've got to bring people along with you, and providing the infrastructure and giving them some say in where it all goes will bring them along.
If the Council wants to build infrastructure the Council should spend its money on doing so.
Nope - if you want to build a new house you need to pay for the infrastructure for those houses. And the suppliers for that should be allowed to price the work so that it covers both the cost of installing the lines / pipes but also a proportion of the cost for the infrastructure improvements to ensure the sewage to leave the area and get to the sewage works...
As I repeat regularly, we should adopt the Dutch system where local authorities buy the land, put all the infrastructure in and then back charge developers or individual housebuilders as part of the cost of buying them land. It is a system that works. It also stops landbanking by developers.
Isn't that the essence of Labour's new towns plan ?
The details have not been released on that yet.
The biggest problem will be the systemic reaction - that there is a human right to a decade of enquiries into the enquiries about enquiries about possibly planning a new town.
It's not that we need to throw planning in the bin. What we need is to understand that we have a choice.
You can either have a 15 foot plank footbridges that costs 250K and no foot bridges. Or you can have 15 foot plank footbridge that cost 2.5K, and lots of foot bridges.
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
I did engage with it.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
If I took you seriously, I'd quit what I'm doing.
Fortunately, I don't.
You have no idea about the issues, you have no idea about planning and the planning framework and what is and isn't needed (hell, you had no idea that my LDO proposal is very close to giving the powers you say you want to see, nor that the LDO in my ward means that Milton Park don't need planning permission for any science/tech development within the LDO constraints now), you have no idea about infrastructure and how to get it, or the issues with sewerage, schools, and surgeries and the constraints around each, no idea about how many houses are actually needed (you've not supported your "10 million" number even once), no idea about the rates of construction in various Local Authorities (you even cited Pulpstar's work but obviously hadn't read it, as you were surprised when I got the figures from it), no idea about the constraints and issues on developers, and simply resort to namecalling when people don't accept your airy assertions and made-up numbers.
As I said earlier, for someone who purports to dislike NIMBYs, what you advocate would make far more of them.
And when you made far more of them, under a democracy, we'd see much less building. Which is ironic, really.
Meanwhile, if other LAs had increased their housing stock at our rates over that seven year period you cite (which includes the five+ years of my being a councillor here), we'd already have two million more houses in England than we currently have (taking us to three houses for every five adults in England). And in seven more years, we'd be four million ahead of the rate, and ahead of pretty much everywhere else in Western Europe instead of being one of the stragglers and not far off of two houses for every three adults.
Let's face it, if we were on target for ten million houses in the next five years, you'd simply come up with a number of fifteen million. Or twenty million.
Where are you getting a two million houses from that period?
It was 2338 completions in a seven year period I cited (from the White Horse website), which is 334 homes per annum for the LA. If every LA built at 334 homes per annum, then we'd be looking at barely over 100k houses per annum which is less than we need for population growth let alone closing the shortage.
Based on the data Pulpstar provided of ~1000 homes per annum, if every LA had done that it would be 1.5 million not 2 million in five years. Which again, barely keeps up with population growth and demographic changes, it doesn't close the shortage.
Of course if we look by area instead of by LA, then you've got a lot more undeveloped land that could be built on. I responded to your map post too in case you didn't see it.
The amounts you are proposing don't scratch the surface on what we are missing in this country.
Building rates. Which are important, because increasing infrastructure depends on what is already there. Even in London, you can build a lot more houses; you can in Oxford, for example. You can even build upwards, and you WILL find a market for these.
For some reason, you keep looking at the housing completions from several years ago rather than the most recent seven years. It might pain you to congratulate us on tripling completions, but that might be a nice thing to do. Encouraging what you would like to see is always a good idea, in my experience.
We increased from 53,590 houses in the Vale prior to the most recent seven years (a timescale you chose initially) by a further 7,330 houses. That's an increase of 13.7%. Meanwhile the population of England increased by 3% in the same period.
In 2016, there were 23.7 million houses in England. An increase of 13.7% would put that to just shy of 27 million. A 3.3 million increase. (Increasing it by the population growth in that time would have seen an increase of only 0.74 million houses, taking it to 24.4 million).
We actually ended up with a bit over 25 million (from memory), so that'd be nearly 2 million more if everyone else had followed us. Keeping up that rate would make things much better (and quite probably be achievable as well)
I'm not cherrypicking the data, I just got the data from the Vale website. If you have more upto date data I'm entirely happy to use that, though my preference is for completions over starts as inevitably some starts don't get completed, for various reasons.
7330 houses over a 7 year period is obviously much better than 334 homes per period, so well done. But its not enough to close the shortage given we have a systemic shortage and ongoing population growth and demographic changes, much, much more than that should be possible.
You are making a mistake in looking at it by percentages. A high percentage of a small number is still a small number, while a small percentage of a bigger number can be a bigger number still.
The fact you've got few houses currently doesn't mean you should build few from here, it just means you've got more potential to do more than places that are already more developed.
Given the demands in places like Oxford etc why can't a few new towns be supported in Vale? Outside of AONB which only covers the south half of Vale - the north half of Vale which is not in the AONB still covers an area roughly equivalent to the whole of Birmingham.
Give us the infrastructure first.
Believe me, people who even describe themselves as NIMBYs can go all Sim City if you give them free rein over describing what infrastructure is needed. Just last month, I got a Parish Council to advocate for a new town within parish boundaries if the land was freed up and infrastructure provided.
This same Parish Council had earlier said (in the same meeting) "we won't be fooled again" when it had been pointed out that they'd supported a big expansion on the promise of infrastructure accompanying it. They went from supporting very significant levels of development a decade earlier to being very resistant - solely because what had been promised did not come about and developers had been allowed to get away with ignoring requirements on them.
You want huge levels of housebuilding? It's possible. But you've got to bring people along with you, and providing the infrastructure and giving them some say in where it all goes will bring them along.
If the Council wants to build infrastructure the Council should spend its money on doing so.
Nope - if you want to build a new house you need to pay for the infrastructure for those houses. And the suppliers for that should be allowed to price the work so that it covers both the cost of installing the lines / pipes but also a proportion of the cost for the infrastructure improvements to ensure the sewage to leave the area and get to the sewage works...
As I repeat regularly, we should adopt the Dutch system where local authorities buy the land, put all the infrastructure in and then back charge developers or individual housebuilders as part of the cost of buying them land. It is a system that works. It also stops landbanking by developers.
That's literally part of what I've been advocating. Barty sees that idea as, apparently, having no interest in providing the infrastructure, for some reason.
OK, so what stops the UK moving in that direction? (I'm reminded a bit of some of the masterplanned developments, Poundbury without quite such an anal style guide.)
Is it just the financial and mental hollowing-out of local government? They don't have the money upfront and nobody can imagine them exercising the power?
We moved away from such 'centralised' planning in the 80s. Once of the great tragedies of the Council House sell offs was it was a superb opportunity to invest in new development but the hatred and distrust of local Government by Thatcher and particularly Major saw the opportunity wasted.
"While few continue to feel that the sentences handed down have been too harsh, the public become significantly more likely to think those involved are getting off lightly.
In the case of one individual who received a one year sentence for charging at a police officer, six in ten Britons (60%) feel this was too light a punishment and warranted a longer sentence, while only 5% of the public feel the courts were too harsh."
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
I did engage with it.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
If I took you seriously, I'd quit what I'm doing.
Fortunately, I don't.
You have no idea about the issues, you have no idea about planning and the planning framework and what is and isn't needed (hell, you had no idea that my LDO proposal is very close to giving the powers you say you want to see, nor that the LDO in my ward means that Milton Park don't need planning permission for any science/tech development within the LDO constraints now), you have no idea about infrastructure and how to get it, or the issues with sewerage, schools, and surgeries and the constraints around each, no idea about how many houses are actually needed (you've not supported your "10 million" number even once), no idea about the rates of construction in various Local Authorities (you even cited Pulpstar's work but obviously hadn't read it, as you were surprised when I got the figures from it), no idea about the constraints and issues on developers, and simply resort to namecalling when people don't accept your airy assertions and made-up numbers.
As I said earlier, for someone who purports to dislike NIMBYs, what you advocate would make far more of them.
And when you made far more of them, under a democracy, we'd see much less building. Which is ironic, really.
Meanwhile, if other LAs had increased their housing stock at our rates over that seven year period you cite (which includes the five+ years of my being a councillor here), we'd already have two million more houses in England than we currently have (taking us to three houses for every five adults in England). And in seven more years, we'd be four million ahead of the rate, and ahead of pretty much everywhere else in Western Europe instead of being one of the stragglers and not far off of two houses for every three adults.
Let's face it, if we were on target for ten million houses in the next five years, you'd simply come up with a number of fifteen million. Or twenty million.
Where are you getting a two million houses from that period?
It was 2338 completions in a seven year period I cited (from the White Horse website), which is 334 homes per annum for the LA. If every LA built at 334 homes per annum, then we'd be looking at barely over 100k houses per annum which is less than we need for population growth let alone closing the shortage.
Based on the data Pulpstar provided of ~1000 homes per annum, if every LA had done that it would be 1.5 million not 2 million in five years. Which again, barely keeps up with population growth and demographic changes, it doesn't close the shortage.
Of course if we look by area instead of by LA, then you've got a lot more undeveloped land that could be built on. I responded to your map post too in case you didn't see it.
The amounts you are proposing don't scratch the surface on what we are missing in this country.
Building rates. Which are important, because increasing infrastructure depends on what is already there. Even in London, you can build a lot more houses; you can in Oxford, for example. You can even build upwards, and you WILL find a market for these.
For some reason, you keep looking at the housing completions from several years ago rather than the most recent seven years. It might pain you to congratulate us on tripling completions, but that might be a nice thing to do. Encouraging what you would like to see is always a good idea, in my experience.
We increased from 53,590 houses in the Vale prior to the most recent seven years (a timescale you chose initially) by a further 7,330 houses. That's an increase of 13.7%. Meanwhile the population of England increased by 3% in the same period.
In 2016, there were 23.7 million houses in England. An increase of 13.7% would put that to just shy of 27 million. A 3.3 million increase. (Increasing it by the population growth in that time would have seen an increase of only 0.74 million houses, taking it to 24.4 million).
We actually ended up with a bit over 25 million (from memory), so that'd be nearly 2 million more if everyone else had followed us. Keeping up that rate would make things much better (and quite probably be achievable as well)
I'm not cherrypicking the data, I just got the data from the Vale website. If you have more upto date data I'm entirely happy to use that, though my preference is for completions over starts as inevitably some starts don't get completed, for various reasons.
7330 houses over a 7 year period is obviously much better than 334 homes per period, so well done. But its not enough to close the shortage given we have a systemic shortage and ongoing population growth and demographic changes, much, much more than that should be possible.
You are making a mistake in looking at it by percentages. A high percentage of a small number is still a small number, while a small percentage of a bigger number can be a bigger number still.
The fact you've got few houses currently doesn't mean you should build few from here, it just means you've got more potential to do more than places that are already more developed.
Given the demands in places like Oxford etc why can't a few new towns be supported in Vale? Outside of AONB which only covers the south half of Vale - the north half of Vale which is not in the AONB still covers an area roughly equivalent to the whole of Birmingham.
Give us the infrastructure first.
Believe me, people who even describe themselves as NIMBYs can go all Sim City if you give them free rein over describing what infrastructure is needed. Just last month, I got a Parish Council to advocate for a new town within parish boundaries if the land was freed up and infrastructure provided.
This same Parish Council had earlier said (in the same meeting) "we won't be fooled again" when it had been pointed out that they'd supported a big expansion on the promise of infrastructure accompanying it. They went from supporting very significant levels of development a decade earlier to being very resistant - solely because what had been promised did not come about and developers had been allowed to get away with ignoring requirements on them.
You want huge levels of housebuilding? It's possible. But you've got to bring people along with you, and providing the infrastructure and giving them some say in where it all goes will bring them along.
If the Council wants to build infrastructure the Council should spend its money on doing so.
Nope - if you want to build a new house you need to pay for the infrastructure for those houses. And the suppliers for that should be allowed to price the work so that it covers both the cost of installing the lines / pipes but also a proportion of the cost for the infrastructure improvements to ensure the sewage to leave the area and get to the sewage works...
As I repeat regularly, we should adopt the Dutch system where local authorities buy the land, put all the infrastructure in and then back charge developers or individual housebuilders as part of the cost of buying them land. It is a system that works. It also stops landbanking by developers.
That's literally part of what I've been advocating. Barty sees that idea as, apparently, having no interest in providing the infrastructure, for some reason.
OK, so what stops the UK moving in that direction? (I'm reminded a bit of some of the masterplanned developments, Poundbury without quite such an anal style guide.)
Is it just the financial and mental hollowing-out of local government? They don't have the money upfront and nobody can imagine them exercising the power?
Significant primary legislation is needed. We're sort of trying to prove the concept with the proposed Milton Fields development, but with no funding and having to jump through an incredible number of legislative hoops.
We'd need the authority to do it (legislation isn't there for it at the moment) and the initial startup funding to prime the pump.
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
I did engage with it.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
If I took you seriously, I'd quit what I'm doing.
Fortunately, I don't.
You have no idea about the issues, you have no idea about planning and the planning framework and what is and isn't needed (hell, you had no idea that my LDO proposal is very close to giving the powers you say you want to see, nor that the LDO in my ward means that Milton Park don't need planning permission for any science/tech development within the LDO constraints now), you have no idea about infrastructure and how to get it, or the issues with sewerage, schools, and surgeries and the constraints around each, no idea about how many houses are actually needed (you've not supported your "10 million" number even once), no idea about the rates of construction in various Local Authorities (you even cited Pulpstar's work but obviously hadn't read it, as you were surprised when I got the figures from it), no idea about the constraints and issues on developers, and simply resort to namecalling when people don't accept your airy assertions and made-up numbers.
As I said earlier, for someone who purports to dislike NIMBYs, what you advocate would make far more of them.
And when you made far more of them, under a democracy, we'd see much less building. Which is ironic, really.
Meanwhile, if other LAs had increased their housing stock at our rates over that seven year period you cite (which includes the five+ years of my being a councillor here), we'd already have two million more houses in England than we currently have (taking us to three houses for every five adults in England). And in seven more years, we'd be four million ahead of the rate, and ahead of pretty much everywhere else in Western Europe instead of being one of the stragglers and not far off of two houses for every three adults.
Let's face it, if we were on target for ten million houses in the next five years, you'd simply come up with a number of fifteen million. Or twenty million.
Where are you getting a two million houses from that period?
It was 2338 completions in a seven year period I cited (from the White Horse website), which is 334 homes per annum for the LA. If every LA built at 334 homes per annum, then we'd be looking at barely over 100k houses per annum which is less than we need for population growth let alone closing the shortage.
Based on the data Pulpstar provided of ~1000 homes per annum, if every LA had done that it would be 1.5 million not 2 million in five years. Which again, barely keeps up with population growth and demographic changes, it doesn't close the shortage.
Of course if we look by area instead of by LA, then you've got a lot more undeveloped land that could be built on. I responded to your map post too in case you didn't see it.
The amounts you are proposing don't scratch the surface on what we are missing in this country.
Building rates. Which are important, because increasing infrastructure depends on what is already there. Even in London, you can build a lot more houses; you can in Oxford, for example. You can even build upwards, and you WILL find a market for these.
For some reason, you keep looking at the housing completions from several years ago rather than the most recent seven years. It might pain you to congratulate us on tripling completions, but that might be a nice thing to do. Encouraging what you would like to see is always a good idea, in my experience.
We increased from 53,590 houses in the Vale prior to the most recent seven years (a timescale you chose initially) by a further 7,330 houses. That's an increase of 13.7%. Meanwhile the population of England increased by 3% in the same period.
In 2016, there were 23.7 million houses in England. An increase of 13.7% would put that to just shy of 27 million. A 3.3 million increase. (Increasing it by the population growth in that time would have seen an increase of only 0.74 million houses, taking it to 24.4 million).
We actually ended up with a bit over 25 million (from memory), so that'd be nearly 2 million more if everyone else had followed us. Keeping up that rate would make things much better (and quite probably be achievable as well)
I'm not cherrypicking the data, I just got the data from the Vale website. If you have more upto date data I'm entirely happy to use that, though my preference is for completions over starts as inevitably some starts don't get completed, for various reasons.
7330 houses over a 7 year period is obviously much better than 334 homes per period, so well done. But its not enough to close the shortage given we have a systemic shortage and ongoing population growth and demographic changes, much, much more than that should be possible.
You are making a mistake in looking at it by percentages. A high percentage of a small number is still a small number, while a small percentage of a bigger number can be a bigger number still.
The fact you've got few houses currently doesn't mean you should build few from here, it just means you've got more potential to do more than places that are already more developed.
Given the demands in places like Oxford etc why can't a few new towns be supported in Vale? Outside of AONB which only covers the south half of Vale - the north half of Vale which is not in the AONB still covers an area roughly equivalent to the whole of Birmingham.
Give us the infrastructure first.
Believe me, people who even describe themselves as NIMBYs can go all Sim City if you give them free rein over describing what infrastructure is needed. Just last month, I got a Parish Council to advocate for a new town within parish boundaries if the land was freed up and infrastructure provided.
This same Parish Council had earlier said (in the same meeting) "we won't be fooled again" when it had been pointed out that they'd supported a big expansion on the promise of infrastructure accompanying it. They went from supporting very significant levels of development a decade earlier to being very resistant - solely because what had been promised did not come about and developers had been allowed to get away with ignoring requirements on them.
You want huge levels of housebuilding? It's possible. But you've got to bring people along with you, and providing the infrastructure and giving them some say in where it all goes will bring them along.
Yes councils need to start investing in their infrastructure.
"While few continue to feel that the sentences handed down have been too harsh, the public become significantly more likely to think those involved are getting off lightly.
In the case of one individual who received a one year sentence for charging at a police officer, six in ten Britons (60%) feel this was too light a punishment and warranted a longer sentence, while only 5% of the public feel the courts were too harsh."
That is surprising, I have little sympathy for most of the rioters but the sentences were harsh. Harsh for a good and practical community reason, but some were harsh on the individuals involved. I would hope some of the non regular offenders can be let out quietly serving just a third or so of their sentence.
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
I did engage with it.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
If I took you seriously, I'd quit what I'm doing.
Fortunately, I don't.
You have no idea about the issues, you have no idea about planning and the planning framework and what is and isn't needed (hell, you had no idea that my LDO proposal is very close to giving the powers you say you want to see, nor that the LDO in my ward means that Milton Park don't need planning permission for any science/tech development within the LDO constraints now), you have no idea about infrastructure and how to get it, or the issues with sewerage, schools, and surgeries and the constraints around each, no idea about how many houses are actually needed (you've not supported your "10 million" number even once), no idea about the rates of construction in various Local Authorities (you even cited Pulpstar's work but obviously hadn't read it, as you were surprised when I got the figures from it), no idea about the constraints and issues on developers, and simply resort to namecalling when people don't accept your airy assertions and made-up numbers.
As I said earlier, for someone who purports to dislike NIMBYs, what you advocate would make far more of them.
And when you made far more of them, under a democracy, we'd see much less building. Which is ironic, really.
Meanwhile, if other LAs had increased their housing stock at our rates over that seven year period you cite (which includes the five+ years of my being a councillor here), we'd already have two million more houses in England than we currently have (taking us to three houses for every five adults in England). And in seven more years, we'd be four million ahead of the rate, and ahead of pretty much everywhere else in Western Europe instead of being one of the stragglers and not far off of two houses for every three adults.
Let's face it, if we were on target for ten million houses in the next five years, you'd simply come up with a number of fifteen million. Or twenty million.
Where are you getting a two million houses from that period?
It was 2338 completions in a seven year period I cited (from the White Horse website), which is 334 homes per annum for the LA. If every LA built at 334 homes per annum, then we'd be looking at barely over 100k houses per annum which is less than we need for population growth let alone closing the shortage.
Based on the data Pulpstar provided of ~1000 homes per annum, if every LA had done that it would be 1.5 million not 2 million in five years. Which again, barely keeps up with population growth and demographic changes, it doesn't close the shortage.
Of course if we look by area instead of by LA, then you've got a lot more undeveloped land that could be built on. I responded to your map post too in case you didn't see it.
The amounts you are proposing don't scratch the surface on what we are missing in this country.
Building rates. Which are important, because increasing infrastructure depends on what is already there. Even in London, you can build a lot more houses; you can in Oxford, for example. You can even build upwards, and you WILL find a market for these.
For some reason, you keep looking at the housing completions from several years ago rather than the most recent seven years. It might pain you to congratulate us on tripling completions, but that might be a nice thing to do. Encouraging what you would like to see is always a good idea, in my experience.
We increased from 53,590 houses in the Vale prior to the most recent seven years (a timescale you chose initially) by a further 7,330 houses. That's an increase of 13.7%. Meanwhile the population of England increased by 3% in the same period.
In 2016, there were 23.7 million houses in England. An increase of 13.7% would put that to just shy of 27 million. A 3.3 million increase. (Increasing it by the population growth in that time would have seen an increase of only 0.74 million houses, taking it to 24.4 million).
We actually ended up with a bit over 25 million (from memory), so that'd be nearly 2 million more if everyone else had followed us. Keeping up that rate would make things much better (and quite probably be achievable as well)
I'm not cherrypicking the data, I just got the data from the Vale website. If you have more upto date data I'm entirely happy to use that, though my preference is for completions over starts as inevitably some starts don't get completed, for various reasons.
7330 houses over a 7 year period is obviously much better than 334 homes per period, so well done. But its not enough to close the shortage given we have a systemic shortage and ongoing population growth and demographic changes, much, much more than that should be possible.
You are making a mistake in looking at it by percentages. A high percentage of a small number is still a small number, while a small percentage of a bigger number can be a bigger number still.
The fact you've got few houses currently doesn't mean you should build few from here, it just means you've got more potential to do more than places that are already more developed.
Given the demands in places like Oxford etc why can't a few new towns be supported in Vale? Outside of AONB which only covers the south half of Vale - the north half of Vale which is not in the AONB still covers an area roughly equivalent to the whole of Birmingham.
Give us the infrastructure first.
Believe me, people who even describe themselves as NIMBYs can go all Sim City if you give them free rein over describing what infrastructure is needed. Just last month, I got a Parish Council to advocate for a new town within parish boundaries if the land was freed up and infrastructure provided.
This same Parish Council had earlier said (in the same meeting) "we won't be fooled again" when it had been pointed out that they'd supported a big expansion on the promise of infrastructure accompanying it. They went from supporting very significant levels of development a decade earlier to being very resistant - solely because what had been promised did not come about and developers had been allowed to get away with ignoring requirements on them.
You want huge levels of housebuilding? It's possible. But you've got to bring people along with you, and providing the infrastructure and giving them some say in where it all goes will bring them along.
If the Council wants to build infrastructure the Council should spend its money on doing so.
You haven't been following the Council funding crises, have you?
The Council doesn't HAVE any money for funding that sort of infrastructure. I very much doubt any Councils do. Certainly not for sewerage or roads. Neither do we have the authority for either.
Of course, if you gave us the authority and powers I suggested in my five point suggestion earlier, we'd get the planning uplift profits and be able to invest those going forwards (there would still be some planning uplift, just not the factor of 100 or whatever ridiculous amount it is at the moment).
Right, so now we're getting to the root of the problem.
"Build the infrastructure first - but I have no interest in building the infrastructure".
Which is precisely what I said will happen. An excuse not to build the infrastructure (which isn't needed, as the voters aren't there) and thus an excuse not to build the houses.
If the Council wants to do the investment first, then I have no problems with that, but we can't wait on the never-never for them to do so because people need houses now, not when you finally find the money to make investments.
Well, not having any money or authority is usually a pretty good reason for not buying something. I have every interest in building the infrastructure. I'd love to be in charge of building it. Which is why I suggested a political route for giving us the authority and wherewithal to do so.
Seriously, is your position really so weak you have to misrepresent me?
How am I misrepresenting anything?
You are giving an excuse/justification for not investing in infrastructure, while saying ideally you'd like to.
You're also saying that houses shouldn't be built before the infrastructure, which is a problem as you won't pay for the infrastructure.
Which is precisely what I said would happen. Councils won't pay for infrastructure for voters that don't exist before the voters move in and demand it.
Demanding the infrastructure goes in first is no solution when you have no intention or ability to pay for the infrastructure first.
Seriously - as someone who really wants to see this solved, the tendency by some to go into total denial over the problems that need to be faced and solved is really quite frustrating.
The infrastructure is an issue. Simply handwaving it as "it'll get sorted somehow" or insisting that councils fund it with no funding or authority is stupidity on stilts.
We've actually managed to free up £197,000 for helping upgrade one sewage works. £360,000 for additonal berths in a mobile home park. £17,000 on upgrading parks facilities. £1.3 million on improving disabled facilities. But it's really difficult to squeeze more and more out of less and less money.
Hell, when we took over in 2019, the Vale were projected to be bankrupt by now, but we've somehow ended up in a stable and improving position.
Increased housing and population, especially when the density per place is changing, requires infrastructure provision. Failure to provide it at all causes massive pushback. Waiting to provide it years after it's needed causes chronic and unending stresses and problems and causes pushback. It needs to be solved. Denialism doesn't help.
Give us the authority to provide it, provide the initial funds to prime the pump, and allow us that route to become self-funding. And it can be solved.
Or lapse into denialism and insistence that it gets solved somehow, and just whine about it from the sidelines, because without solving it, it won't get done. And it'll just continue to get worse.
I see PB is still in the middle of this circuitous discussion on housing.
It must now surely have replaced cash (or the lack thereof) as the perennial debate on here…
I'm quite disappointed that no-one bothered engaging with my five solution elements (least of all Barty). Given that I am, after all, on a planning committee and have been very active in development, Local Plan creation, and engaging with the issues actually coming up with development and infrastructure, I might be expected to have had some thoughts of use on it.
I did engage with it.
I said I support the idea of building out infrastructure in advance of building houses as one element of boosting construction, but that it should not be a barrier to allowing people to build whatever they want elsewhere because the problem is that NIMBY politicians won't build enough infrastructure.
You have been active but you've been actively wanting nothing like the amount of construction I support and you reacted with utter horror at the suggestion there should be considerably more houses in your area than you wanted. Which is classic NIMBYism.
If I took you seriously, I'd quit what I'm doing.
Fortunately, I don't.
You have no idea about the issues, you have no idea about planning and the planning framework and what is and isn't needed (hell, you had no idea that my LDO proposal is very close to giving the powers you say you want to see, nor that the LDO in my ward means that Milton Park don't need planning permission for any science/tech development within the LDO constraints now), you have no idea about infrastructure and how to get it, or the issues with sewerage, schools, and surgeries and the constraints around each, no idea about how many houses are actually needed (you've not supported your "10 million" number even once), no idea about the rates of construction in various Local Authorities (you even cited Pulpstar's work but obviously hadn't read it, as you were surprised when I got the figures from it), no idea about the constraints and issues on developers, and simply resort to namecalling when people don't accept your airy assertions and made-up numbers.
As I said earlier, for someone who purports to dislike NIMBYs, what you advocate would make far more of them.
And when you made far more of them, under a democracy, we'd see much less building. Which is ironic, really.
Meanwhile, if other LAs had increased their housing stock at our rates over that seven year period you cite (which includes the five+ years of my being a councillor here), we'd already have two million more houses in England than we currently have (taking us to three houses for every five adults in England). And in seven more years, we'd be four million ahead of the rate, and ahead of pretty much everywhere else in Western Europe instead of being one of the stragglers and not far off of two houses for every three adults.
Let's face it, if we were on target for ten million houses in the next five years, you'd simply come up with a number of fifteen million. Or twenty million.
Where are you getting a two million houses from that period?
It was 2338 completions in a seven year period I cited (from the White Horse website), which is 334 homes per annum for the LA. If every LA built at 334 homes per annum, then we'd be looking at barely over 100k houses per annum which is less than we need for population growth let alone closing the shortage.
Based on the data Pulpstar provided of ~1000 homes per annum, if every LA had done that it would be 1.5 million not 2 million in five years. Which again, barely keeps up with population growth and demographic changes, it doesn't close the shortage.
Of course if we look by area instead of by LA, then you've got a lot more undeveloped land that could be built on. I responded to your map post too in case you didn't see it.
The amounts you are proposing don't scratch the surface on what we are missing in this country.
Building rates. Which are important, because increasing infrastructure depends on what is already there. Even in London, you can build a lot more houses; you can in Oxford, for example. You can even build upwards, and you WILL find a market for these.
For some reason, you keep looking at the housing completions from several years ago rather than the most recent seven years. It might pain you to congratulate us on tripling completions, but that might be a nice thing to do. Encouraging what you would like to see is always a good idea, in my experience.
We increased from 53,590 houses in the Vale prior to the most recent seven years (a timescale you chose initially) by a further 7,330 houses. That's an increase of 13.7%. Meanwhile the population of England increased by 3% in the same period.
In 2016, there were 23.7 million houses in England. An increase of 13.7% would put that to just shy of 27 million. A 3.3 million increase. (Increasing it by the population growth in that time would have seen an increase of only 0.74 million houses, taking it to 24.4 million).
We actually ended up with a bit over 25 million (from memory), so that'd be nearly 2 million more if everyone else had followed us. Keeping up that rate would make things much better (and quite probably be achievable as well)
I'm not cherrypicking the data, I just got the data from the Vale website. If you have more upto date data I'm entirely happy to use that, though my preference is for completions over starts as inevitably some starts don't get completed, for various reasons.
7330 houses over a 7 year period is obviously much better than 334 homes per period, so well done. But its not enough to close the shortage given we have a systemic shortage and ongoing population growth and demographic changes, much, much more than that should be possible.
You are making a mistake in looking at it by percentages. A high percentage of a small number is still a small number, while a small percentage of a bigger number can be a bigger number still.
The fact you've got few houses currently doesn't mean you should build few from here, it just means you've got more potential to do more than places that are already more developed.
Given the demands in places like Oxford etc why can't a few new towns be supported in Vale? Outside of AONB which only covers the south half of Vale - the north half of Vale which is not in the AONB still covers an area roughly equivalent to the whole of Birmingham.
Give us the infrastructure first.
Believe me, people who even describe themselves as NIMBYs can go all Sim City if you give them free rein over describing what infrastructure is needed. Just last month, I got a Parish Council to advocate for a new town within parish boundaries if the land was freed up and infrastructure provided.
This same Parish Council had earlier said (in the same meeting) "we won't be fooled again" when it had been pointed out that they'd supported a big expansion on the promise of infrastructure accompanying it. They went from supporting very significant levels of development a decade earlier to being very resistant - solely because what had been promised did not come about and developers had been allowed to get away with ignoring requirements on them.
You want huge levels of housebuilding? It's possible. But you've got to bring people along with you, and providing the infrastructure and giving them some say in where it all goes will bring them along.
If the Council wants to build infrastructure the Council should spend its money on doing so.
Nope - if you want to build a new house you need to pay for the infrastructure for those houses. And the suppliers for that should be allowed to price the work so that it covers both the cost of installing the lines / pipes but also a proportion of the cost for the infrastructure improvements to ensure the sewage to leave the area and get to the sewage works...
As I repeat regularly, we should adopt the Dutch system where local authorities buy the land, put all the infrastructure in and then back charge developers or individual housebuilders as part of the cost of buying them land. It is a system that works. It also stops landbanking by developers.
That's literally part of what I've been advocating. Barty sees that idea as, apparently, having no interest in providing the infrastructure, for some reason.
OK, so what stops the UK moving in that direction? (I'm reminded a bit of some of the masterplanned developments, Poundbury without quite such an anal style guide.)
Is it just the financial and mental hollowing-out of local government? They don't have the money upfront and nobody can imagine them exercising the power?
We moved away from such 'centralised' planning in the 80s. Once of the great tragedies of the Council House sell offs was it was a superb opportunity to invest in new development but the hatred and distrust of local Government by Thatcher and particularly Major saw the opportunity wasted.
Seriously - as someone who really wants to see this solved, the tendency by some to go into total denial over the problems that need to be faced and solved is really quite frustrating.
The infrastructure is an issue. Simply handwaving it as "it'll get sorted somehow" or insisting that councils fund it with no funding or authority is stupidity on stilts.
We've actually managed to free up £197,000 for helping upgrade one sewage works. £360,000 for additonal berths in a mobile home park. £17,000 on upgrading parks facilities. £1.3 million on improving disabled facilities. But it's really difficult to squeeze more and more out of less and less money.
Hell, when we took over in 2019, the Vale were projected to be bankrupt by now, but we've somehow ended up in a stable and improving position.
Increased housing and population, especially when the density per place is changing, requires infrastructure provision. Failure to provide it at all causes massive pushback. Waiting to provide it years after it's needed causes chronic and unending stresses and problems and causes pushback. It needs to be solved. Denialism doesn't help.
Give us the authority to provide it, provide the initial funds to prime the pump, and allow us that route to become self-funding. And it can be solved.
Or lapse into denialism and insistence that it gets solved somehow, and just whine about it from the sidelines, because without solving it, it won't get done. And it'll just continue to get worse.
I'd welcome a thread header on housing, perhaps a two part on the current problems before an assessment on how Labour is going about it... if you've time!
It might be more pleasant than this back and forth...
Polling and finger in air, it "feels" more like should be around 4 imo. I'm on.
6.6 does feel like value, but Florida *feels* like a good value loser. The abortion issue should and will drag Trump down, but he's ahead enough for it not to make him lose. So probably best not to ride it down to the wire.
Comments
We currently have [from memory] 70% of land used for agriculture and 5% for housing.
If we changed that to 65% and 10% respectively we could double the amount of land for housing, while reducing the land for agriculture by less than 10%. More realistically if my policies were adapted I expect we might go to something like 68% and 7% which would be enough.
Oh and we can import meat easier than we can import land/houses.
(if nobody gets that joke I will cry)
Hillary had a policy paper for any issue you could mention; ditto Warren in the 2020 primaries. Did them no good at all.
And they're running against someone whose lengthy manifesto - which he claims never to have seen - has already been officially disavowed.
She's part of an administration which has a shedload of policy - infrastructure; deindustrialization; a border bill, rejected by the GOP in Congress, which will be reintroduced; support for Ukraine, etc.
You're making it seem she's some kind of tabula rasa. That's clearly not the case. And there's two full months of campaigning to go.
The planning process is so slow and cumbersome that developers often run out of money or enthusiasm on a site, and accept conditions or s106 payments that make the development unviable. Then they either wait to see if the market improves to make the development viable, or sell it.to someone else who puts in a new application that is more viable, and more likely to succeed than it would have been at the outset since many of the objections have been addressed or defeated.
And most of the people banging on about how they want others living in high rises don't live in one themselves. I'm being consistent in saying I want people to be able to choose a house over a flat, I've lived in both myself and I disliked the flat and much prefer the house and am glad my kids have a garden of their own to play in - and I would not deny the same choices I've made to anyone else.
If people want to choose a flat, that's their choice. But the evidence is the overwhelming majority of people in this country (including those who advocate it for others but not themselves) do not want that for themselves.
Fortunately, I don't.
You have no idea about the issues, you have no idea about planning and the planning framework and what is and isn't needed (hell, you had no idea that my LDO proposal is very close to giving the powers you say you want to see, nor that the LDO in my ward means that Milton Park don't need planning permission for any science/tech development within the LDO constraints now), you have no idea about infrastructure and how to get it, or the issues with sewerage, schools, and surgeries and the constraints around each, no idea about how many houses are actually needed (you've not supported your "10 million" number even once), no idea about the rates of construction in various Local Authorities (you even cited Pulpstar's work but obviously hadn't read it, as you were surprised when I got the figures from it), no idea about the constraints and issues on developers, and simply resort to namecalling when people don't accept your airy assertions and made-up numbers.
As I said earlier, for someone who purports to dislike NIMBYs, what you advocate would make far more of them.
And when you made far more of them, under a democracy, we'd see much less building. Which is ironic, really.
Meanwhile, if other LAs had increased their housing stock at our rates over that seven year period you cite (which includes the five+ years of my being a councillor here), we'd already have two million more houses in England than we currently have (taking us to three houses for every five adults in England). And in seven more years, we'd be four million ahead of the rate, and ahead of pretty much everywhere else in Western Europe instead of being one of the stragglers and not far off of two houses for every three adults.
Let's face it, if we were on target for ten million houses in the next five years, you'd simply come up with a number of fifteen million. Or twenty million.
"If I buy imported pig meat it is 18p. So, something is wrong with the food system in this country."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp35vzewv1wo
Britain really shouldn't be short of housing.
CON: 40.5% (+20.5)
LDEM: 34.2% (-24.4)
GRN: 15.9% (+8.4)
LAB: 9.4% (-4.5)
Valid votes cast: 1,463
Conservative GAIN from Liberal Democrat.
https://x.com/BritainElects/status/1826951323708698996
Insofar as technology helps with the limit on the amount of land it does so by enabling the more efficient use of land - taller buildings, vertical agriculture, mass transit, etc.
It makes sense to use land efficiently so that there is land left over for wild species, and as a leisure amenity for countryside walks, and a very large number of other uses.
If you simply have everyone build a house on their half an acre share of England then you have no room for stadiums, no room for motorways, no room for wildlife, no room for anything else, no room even for large-scale agriculture. Two houses in every acre and nothing else.
But Barty will brook no limit.
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices-in-London.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZojIi5GdTgU
And it turns out that for a signficant portion of the people that move in to them, those trailers are better than where they were living. Here's a video walk through of one, if you need an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiMtrZkCZSw
https://youtu.be/iKb3J9mctlo
Though I assume they wouldn't use Yellow Pages these days.
It was 2338 completions in a seven year period I cited (from the White Horse website), which is 334 homes per annum for the LA. If every LA built at 334 homes per annum, then we'd be looking at barely over 100k houses per annum which is less than we need for population growth let alone closing the shortage.
Based on the data Pulpstar provided of ~1000 homes per annum, if every LA had done that it would be 1.5 million not 2 million in five years. Which again, barely keeps up with population growth and demographic changes, it doesn't close the shortage.
Of course if we look by area instead of by LA, then you've got a lot more undeveloped land that could be built on. I responded to your map post too in case you didn't see it.
The amounts you are proposing don't scratch the surface on what we are missing in this country.
The current water companies aren't capable of doing that, for whatever reason. But that's the first thing you need. You can't just rely on them somehow coming along by people "paying for connections." In the first place, connecting to the existing network doesn't increase its capabilities, and it's already overloaded. You need more sewers and more processing plants, and these will also be constrained by water and power availability. You also can't pay the money and expect these to bloom into existence overnight - and waiting around for a few years isn't on the cards. People aren't going to hold it in for a few years.
Next, you have to ensure that your developments come along with schools and surgeries, and have transport links in and out that won't get overloaded. This isn't trivial, especially as induced demand is a thing (even though many of those who cite induced demand are as simplistic as those who deny it - it's a moving feast and some components are useful and others are very much not), and it's way too easy to simply move bottlenecks around.
You need to ensure power connectivity, which has historically not been much of a problem, but going forwards might well be.
Get those sorted out first (as per part 1 of my solutions list), preferably by doing it the way it is in part 5 of that list. You can link in part 4 (the LDO method) to those sites, which makes it much more easy for small developers and self-builders. This would end up increasing the capacity of building in this country and break the semi-monopoly.
The sites can come about following NDPs (part 3), which gives local people some buy-in, and by providing playing fields, surgeries, schools, sports facilities, etc in advance, you switch people from NIMBY to YIMBY. The part 2 (enforcement powers) reinforces that and ensures you get what is needed.
But what do I know? I'm just a classic NIMBY, apparently...
You don't care whether people have a roof over their heads?
The result oop north where Reform grabbed lots of votes was less pretty for the Blues.
Have to swing right.....
NY Times
- i) Land can be purchased but it is very difficult to get permission to build on it
- ii) Most banks will not lend money to build if the house is of non-traditional construction: stone/brick walls, tiled roof
There are exceptions -eg timber frame with brick slips over is becoming more popular for builders, tho not self-build - but mostly those are the problems.Discussions about non-traditional construction, although I do genuinely enjoy them (shipping container homes! SIPS! Converted nuclear bunkers! Cut-and-cover!), are unfortunately not relevant in England.
There absolutely is capacity in the sewerage and the sewerage companies do accept new connections already, whether you want them to or not. The water companies should pull their fingers out and invest more if they need to, but they're not going to do so if they don't need to so you can't put the cart before the horse and wait for the water firms to invest first, because then they never will.
Next the politicians won't pay for schools and hospitals to be built in advance of houses being there and voters voting for them. I live in a fast growing area of ex-farmland that is now being built upon in suburban sprawl, precisely as I advocate. The number one issue all the political candidates have been focusing on to win our votes at elections? Schools. The number of secondary schools in my area currently? Zero.
There are schools in other areas that send buses down to where we live, so our kids could get a bus to school when they're older. Until then I drive them to school. Infinitely better to actually have a house with no school local, so you need to travel to the school, than to have a local school but no roof over your head. And when there's a shortage of schools and a surplus of voters, politicians will have no choice but to react or face the consequences at the ballot box.
And so on and so forth. Waiting for infrastructure to be built first is an excuse to wait for the never-never as politicians are never going to vote to spend money on infrastructure for voters who aren't there yet. They will vote to spend money to address problems their voters have, but that relies upon the houses and thus the voters getting there first.
* OK so not everyone will be able to look out over the Musee d'Orsay every day.
Now it wouldn't be right for everyone - where would the missus' poly tunnels go ?! but the fact it's worth 10 million quid shows someone must be interested.
The one thing I've always had you down as is a Tory loyalist, but it seems you can't even manage that any more. It seems Sunak has enshittified the Tory activist base along with the nation.
Which are important, because increasing infrastructure depends on what is already there. Even in London, you can build a lot more houses; you can in Oxford, for example. You can even build upwards, and you WILL find a market for these.
For some reason, you keep looking at the housing completions from several years ago rather than the most recent seven years. It might pain you to congratulate us on tripling completions, but that might be a nice thing to do. Encouraging what you would like to see is always a good idea, in my experience.
We increased from 53,590 houses in the Vale prior to the most recent seven years (a timescale you chose initially) by a further 7,330 houses. That's an increase of 13.7%. Meanwhile the population of England increased by 3% in the same period.
In 2016, there were 23.7 million houses in England. An increase of 13.7% would put that to just shy of 27 million. A 3.3 million increase. (Increasing it by the population growth in that time would have seen an increase of only 0.74 million houses, taking it to 24.4 million).
We actually ended up with a bit over 25 million (from memory), so that'd be nearly 2 million more if everyone else had followed us. Keeping up that rate would make things much better (and quite probably be achievable as well)
If the choice is a roof over your head or imported meat, or homelessness and locally produced meat, then I say we should prefer the former.
Though again, what I'm advocating is a tiny proportional reduction in farmland anyway. Changing from 70% farmland and 5% housing to eg 67% farmland and 8% housing would be a massive 60% increase in land available for housing and a meagre 4% decrease in land available for farming.
I think this is way too slow -- the time taken in consultation is as long as the time to construct the reservoir! And this is for something deemed "nationally significant"...
The missus's polytunnels are at the country retreat, together with the hunky young gardener who tends to them and isn't at all the missus's toyboy, good heavens no.
I mean our usage has increased since the little one arrived with the extra washing, bathing, dishwasher all contributing but it's because we've got an extra person. If she moved out (She's a bit young yet) then her water usage would simply transfer elsewhere rather than 'add' to the system I think ?
Gas usage = Home volume
Sewerage = Person count
Electricity = Person count, but decreasing for each additional person (Cooking efficiencies in the main)
7330 houses over a 7 year period is obviously much better than 334 homes per period, so well done. But its not enough to close the shortage given we have a systemic shortage and ongoing population growth and demographic changes, much, much more than that should be possible.
You are making a mistake in looking at it by percentages. A high percentage of a small number is still a small number, while a small percentage of a bigger number can be a bigger number still.
The fact you've got few houses currently doesn't mean you should build few from here, it just means you've got more potential to do more than places that are already more developed.
Given the demands in places like Oxford etc why can't a few new towns be supported in Vale? Outside of AONB which only covers the south half of Vale - the north half of Vale which is not in the AONB still covers an area roughly equivalent to the whole of Birmingham.
PS Did you hear Anthony Scaramucci saying the fear of a female Commander in Chief didn't resonate in the UK because we had had two female prime ministers? He corrected himself later, to include blink-and-you-missed-her Liz.
The stench in the Walnut Meadows development for years until we managed to force a solution just didn't happen, in Barty's world.
The houses in the Challows that STILL haven't been linked to the sewerage system years after Thames Water were supposedly required to provide the new processing plant just don't exist.
The shower of shit we saw in Shrivenham can be ignored; just pass on by. The area in which you live (Warrington, yes?) is developing at a much slower rate than here. If it is in fact Warrington, your rate of development is about a third of what it is here in "classic NIMBY"-land.
It's also significantly further to secondary schools in more rural areas. The solution is for politicians to ACTUALLY provide the infrastructure. It's something that IS in the gift of central government and CAN be done to unlock all of this. And until they DO spend on the infrastructure in advance, you're not going to see the housing come along. Because in a democracy, especially a FPTP one, the voters aren't going to support wading through shit and having no local schools or surgeries, so anyone who wants to swoop in to win election will simply advocate true NIMBYism.
It's not clear to me what rights & protections Fraser thinks gay/lesbian people/couples should have.
If he hasn't evolved his position on civil partnerships, does he think all gay couples should have their relationships disregarded for IHT purposes, for example? Even most religious/conservative/homophobes find that position pretty callous.
This happens quite a bit in Ireland, where the standard of sewerage infrastructure is markedly worse than in Britain.
(Historical note: Levitttown was built on unincorporated land -- and is still unincorporated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown,_New_York
There is another lesson in the designs chosen: The second floors were unfinished. It was assumed that families would decide how many bedrooms they needed, as their children came along, and then divide appropriately.
I suspect that this sometimes resulted in conversations like this one:
Husband: I think I'm ready to start dividing the bedrooms for our two kids.
Wife: Well, dear, there is something I have been meaning to tell you, but I wanted to be sure, first. )
It didn't really have much redundancy at 120,000. It's distinctly overloaded at 140,000. It'll collapse before 160,000.
In addition, you get hotspots - by increasing the population of a given village by 35% (like mine), the sewers and processing that worked for that village before doesn't work as well now.
https://magic.defra.gov.uk/
But waiting for Thames Water to do its job first before we build houses is waiting for the never-never. Its neve going to happen. There's no need to make this personal since I'm not suggesting that where I live is building anywhere near enough homes. I've said no LA in England is building enough in my eyes. That includes where I live by definition.
House price to earning ratios are far too high, because housing is in too low supply, everywhere. So where I live is moot, we need more housing everywhere.
The only thing about Warrington I'd note is it was precisely what I'd advocate more of - a new town. I hate the idea of referring to it still as that, so used the past tense, we need more new towns regularly not simply new towns seventy years ago.
I'd support much greater construction where I live, the abolition of the green belt where I live, and more sprawl where I live. And more new towns too. I'm consistent, but there's more potential for development in areas that are currently underdeveloped. Minds can be changed, the Overton Window can move and laws can be changed.
The key to success would be to defang local politicians by having national laws that say anyone can build what they want and local politicians then don't get a say unless someone changes the national law. That's not a debate I expect to win any time soon, but its a debate worth winning and if it changes (as it has elsewhere) then we can fix the problems.
In the recent past it was considered alien to argue that house prices being too high was a real problem, or that ever-rising prices was anything but a good thing. Now at least more people accept that more construction is required and lower real terms prices would be a good thing, even if we can't yet win the argument on how to get there its some progress.
Believe me, people who even describe themselves as NIMBYs can go all Sim City if you give them free rein over describing what infrastructure is needed. Just last month, I got a Parish Council to advocate for a new town within parish boundaries if the land was freed up and infrastructure provided.
This same Parish Council had earlier said (in the same meeting) "we won't be fooled again" when it had been pointed out that they'd supported a big expansion on the promise of infrastructure accompanying it. They went from supporting very significant levels of development a decade earlier to being very resistant - solely because what had been promised did not come about and developers had been allowed to get away with ignoring requirements on them.
You want huge levels of housebuilding? It's possible. But you've got to bring people along with you, and providing the infrastructure and giving them some say in where it all goes will bring them along.
The Council doesn't HAVE any money for funding that sort of infrastructure. I very much doubt any Councils do.
Certainly not for sewerage or roads. Neither do we have the authority for either.
Of course, if you gave us the authority and powers I suggested in my five point suggestion earlier, we'd get the planning uplift profits and be able to invest those going forwards (there would still be some planning uplift, just not the factor of 100 or whatever ridiculous amount it is at the moment).
My own very rudimentary analysis, but backs up what you have been saying. Places like Uttlesford, Telford and Wrekin, Selby are just a bit better in my view.
Or are you wanting others to pay for infrastructure on your behalf?
The developers should be building houses, no more, no less. Doing the infrastructure is your job. So if you want to do your job first, then great, but nobody should be denied a home because you haven't done it yet.
A pipe will have the capacity to cope with say 100 litres per minute of either clean water or sewage.
That 100 litres per minute will translate to x0,000 people.
At x0,000 everything will be fine
at x0,000 + 25% things will keep in place.
at x0,000 + 50% things are going to fall apart.
Yes systems may be able to cope but the infrastructure won't unless you upgrade it.
See as a recent example the Scotch Corner to Richmond road being closed for 4 weeks to upgrade the electricity supply for a new Outlet Shopping Centre....
"Build the infrastructure first - but I have no interest in building the infrastructure".
Which is precisely what I said will happen. An excuse not to build the infrastructure (which isn't needed, as the voters aren't there) and thus an excuse not to build the houses.
If the Council wants to do the investment first, then I have no problems with that, but we can't wait on the never-never for them to do so because people need houses now, not when you finally find the money to make investments.
One solution to this would be to start charging full council tax on plots 18 months after planning permission has been approved. Make the land cost developers and they will soon find tghe ability to start building on it.
I have every interest in building the infrastructure. I'd love to be in charge of building it.
Which is why I suggested a political route for giving us the authority and wherewithal to do so.
Seriously, is your position really so weak you have to misrepresent me?
Barty sees that idea as, apparently, having no interest in providing the infrastructure, for some reason.
Is it just the financial and mental hollowing-out of local government? They don't have the money upfront and nobody can imagine them exercising the power?
Then the council can decide how best to develop it, whether to sell it in blocks without infrastructure or individual plots (after infrastructure was created).
The logic of the above is that I'm not sure getting councils to manage the building of the infrastructure was the best idea. Adding a house builder or 3 to things should result in stupid mistakes being avoided.
I joked yesterday that I'm currently doing 4 weeks work that equates to 6 months of my wife's salary. it's actually 4 months but you can see the scale of the issue.. Twin A only earns £4,000 less as an (albeit well paid) apprentice...
https://x.com/richardpbacon/status/1826917782081966112
The Guardian
6 Jun 2011"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASzPaidxMXQ
Does the Guardian still think it's important to undermine and subvert things as they did 13 years ago?
The biggest problem will be the systemic reaction - that there is a human right to a decade of enquiries into the enquiries about enquiries about possibly planning a new town.
It's not that we need to throw planning in the bin. What we need is to understand that we have a choice.
You can either have a 15 foot plank footbridges that costs 250K and no foot bridges.
Or you can have 15 foot plank footbridge that cost 2.5K, and lots of foot bridges.
Pick one. The one you like.
Two weeks on, the public have a more positive opinion about how the riots were handled
Police: 63% say handled well (+11 from 5-6 Aug)
Legal system: 57% (+30)
Keir Starmer: 43% (+12)
Yvette Cooper: 30% (+7)
https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/50375-how-do-britons-feel-the-2024-riots-were-handled
In the case of one individual who received a one year sentence for charging at a police officer, six in ten Britons (60%) feel this was too light a punishment and warranted a longer sentence, while only 5% of the public feel the courts were too harsh."
We're sort of trying to prove the concept with the proposed Milton Fields development, but with no funding and having to jump through an incredible number of legislative hoops.
We'd need the authority to do it (legislation isn't there for it at the moment) and the initial startup funding to prime the pump.
Polling and finger in air, it "feels" more like should be around 4 imo. I'm on.
We have £18.4 million pounds coming in and we need to fund a shedload of statutory requirements out of that.
How many new roads and sewerage systems do you think we'll get?
We're a sensible people, us Brits.
It’s a monomaniacal spamming the threads with his simplistic view of the world and ranting like a drunk in the pub at anyone who disagrees
Come back @Leon ! All is forgiven!
You are giving an excuse/justification for not investing in infrastructure, while saying ideally you'd like to.
You're also saying that houses shouldn't be built before the infrastructure, which is a problem as you won't pay for the infrastructure.
Which is precisely what I said would happen. Councils won't pay for infrastructure for voters that don't exist before the voters move in and demand it.
Demanding the infrastructure goes in first is no solution when you have no intention or ability to pay for the infrastructure first.
The infrastructure is an issue. Simply handwaving it as "it'll get sorted somehow" or insisting that councils fund it with no funding or authority is stupidity on stilts.
We've actually managed to free up £197,000 for helping upgrade one sewage works. £360,000 for additonal berths in a mobile home park. £17,000 on upgrading parks facilities. £1.3 million on improving disabled facilities. But it's really difficult to squeeze more and more out of less and less money.
Hell, when we took over in 2019, the Vale were projected to be bankrupt by now, but we've somehow ended up in a stable and improving position.
Increased housing and population, especially when the density per place is changing, requires infrastructure provision. Failure to provide it at all causes massive pushback. Waiting to provide it years after it's needed causes chronic and unending stresses and problems and causes pushback. It needs to be solved. Denialism doesn't help.
Give us the authority to provide it, provide the initial funds to prime the pump, and allow us that route to become self-funding. And it can be solved.
Or lapse into denialism and insistence that it gets solved somehow, and just whine about it from the sidelines, because without solving it, it won't get done. And it'll just continue to get worse.
I've been arguing that for years.
It might be more pleasant than this back and forth...