Would someone know why...

harrup

Cleaver wrote: »

Every 1 in 14 of my posts are sensible and refreshingly free of sarcasm.

I guess you could ask your question another 13 times? To be honest, writing out the same thing again and again may be good practice if you ever do get to the planning permission stage.

Perhaps not an entirely useless suggestion after all.

13 times, you say?

Ehem....could someone please tell me why there are no building.......?

Only 11 more to go. However....If I HAD a plot of land I COULD build a house in that time. Complete with cellar n'stuff. We Austrians are efficient! When not sociopathic rapist fathers. Ja, ja.

harrup

epz wrote: »

Pretty simple really, local government controls planning permission. Local government is inherently bias and tends to be incompetent and corrupt.

Planning permission is one of the main reason the housing bubble lasted so long and its impacts will be much worse.

only a fraction of the county is actually built upon but people !!!!! about losing the green belt as though our economy being destroyed by planning policy isnt really an issue.

I hear what you are saying.

BUT.....this still doesn't entirely explain it. The UK isn't governed via dictatorship.

If the local government folks don't play ball - why don't the good citizens of the UK not insist that they are swiftly replaced by some more enlightened members? They are supposed to represent THEIR interests after all, aren't they?

Don't look at me - I'm not allowed to vote ( and quite rightly so) as I'm only a "resident alien". But if I could, I'd pester the pants off them to change the current situation.

Geenie

I live in Devon, and I suppose one of the reasons it was voted recently the best county to live in, is because of all the green fields and open spaces that produce such good food for sale in local markets.:D

That said, I know farmers who would gladly sell off plots of land for development, but can't because of planning rules and not building outside settlement areas. They can't even sell off barns for converting into residential use, as local planning laws say they must now be used for light industry!! Trouble is, there is no light industry wanting to come out to the middle of the country side so far, so they stay unused and contine to fall down.

harrup

Geenie wrote: »

..... They can't even sell off barns for converting into residential use, as local planning laws say they must now be used for light industry!! Trouble is, there is no light industry wanting to come out to the middle of the country side so far, so they stay unused and contine to fall down.

Quite mad, isn't it? Incomprehensible gibberish rules which serve and benefit no one.

WHAT the Dickens is "light industry", anyway? A farm shop? A mini retail park? The first one I can still understand as sensical - although not every farm lends itself to it, of course - anything else is , IMO, a darn site less appropriate than selling it off for building some houses. NICE houses with sufficient distance between them.

I like Devon with it's vast rolling fields, too. But a few ( hundred) less of them wouldn't be noticed and still leave PLENTY.

The existing status quo pertaining to planning permission does warrant re-examining, IMO. If for nothing else - I'm surely not the only one who had friends and aquaintaces emmigrating. These were skilled people, too: nurses, vets, midwives, carpenters, policemen. Their primary reason for leaving? The sky high house prices. Unless they were prepared to mortage themselves over both armpits - which many weren't - they looked elsewhere. And others were mortgaged over both armpits....and sick and tired off going to work just to fulfil the mortgage payments with little left for enjoying life. Pity. For the country, I mean. The ex-patriotes as as happy as pigs in clover in their new countries.

As for the current mania of happily granting planning permissions for whole houses to be built in modest sized private gardens - hells bells. WHO came up with that stellar idea? Prescott wasn't it? I don't know about you but if ANYTHING should be classified as a "green zone" or whatever it's called....a garden surely is THAT. A few years ago many people weren't allowed to add a single room extension to their own property...but now they can build a whole 4 bedroom 2 story house there. Astonishing.

Better apply to build a house in my back yard before they realize their folly and reverse the rules. Someone hand me a shovel and a digger - quick! Time is of essence.

vivatifosi

I can't remember the numbers as I'm tired and can't look them up as I'm going to bed, but I saw a programme (Channel 4?) once which divided the land in the UK by how it was used and only something like 7% was used for housing. That may not be the correct figure but it was ridiculously low. So compare not only population but distribution of land with Austria and you have an even bigger disparity.

Hopefully someone with a more awake brain will come along and back this up for me, rather than telling me I dreamt it as I am half asleep.

chopperharris

There is areas in scotland where planning is realatively easy , as is getting a plot that after building you can swing a cat in .Unfortunately though these are rural , yes i did say rural , in areas where industry like mining has died...so the council have to repopulate it somehow.

I know what you mean though , you buy a 4 bedroom house these days and theres exactly six feet between your outside wall and the neighbours one.The garden equates again to 6 ft deep , so your garden isnt even big enough for a decent conservatory.IF you seen the price of these timberframe self builds , and add on that the developer actually builds it for less that you could , then you have to ask yourself why would you pay 3x what it would cost for you to do it.

This brown feild thing its a laugh though , can any one person buy up some brownfield land and build , no I dont think so.Only developers can , and they are told by hmg the minimum per acreage of housing...so you cant really blame them on the tiny gardens.

Wheres these eco towns , now we are in a recession I dont think there will be much talked about that neither.Wheres the next wave of new towns , to relieve the strain on the cities?

We keep being told about that we must use public transport , yet theres no plans in place to use it.For pitys sake how hard is it for a developer to buy up some large farms that arent making money next to motorways and train lines , even the canals can be used.

Instead the want to knock down rural villages surrounded by feilds and put a runway on top of it.While those that want to build in the country to escape that are told no.

Money speaks

planning_officer

epz wrote: »

Local government is inherently bias and tends to be incompetent and corrupt.

Eh? What crass generalisation. Totally untrue, and a very insulting and unnessary comment. This is based on what exactly?

epz wrote: »

There's a reason the government is taking the power away planning authorities for important stuff like power stations and transportation hubs.

Yes, because they're NATIONAL issues, not LOCAL ones. Duh! Local Planning Authorities = local issues; Central Government = national issues. Quite a simple concept really.

epz wrote: »

Planning permission is one of the main reason the housing bubble lasted so long and its impacts will be much worse.

Er, no actually. There has been blame directed at the planning system and yes it can be pretty restrictive in certain areas, but there's clearly a balance
to be had between protecting the environment and building new houses/industry/infrastructure etc. In actual fact, there are literally thousands of acres of land in the UK WITH PLANNING PERMISSION TO BUILD - but who owns this land? The developers have planning permission granted and then just sit on the land, adding it to their huge land banks. A report in 2008 by the RTPI revealed that house builders have land banks WITH planning permission of 14,000 acres, enough for 225,000 new homes!!

Regarding the brownfield comments above - brownfield land is not land that has planning permission; it is land that has been previously developed and is probably suitable for new development. The Government includes back gardens as falling under brownfield land, so blame them for the spate of backland development. Although, having said that, just because land is part of a garden there is no presumption that it should be wholly developed (see PPS3 - Housing).

Anyway, in many cases developing urban areas at a higher density is far more preferable to developing green and open countryside which will then be lost forever. Urban areas make up 9% of the country, but that only includes towns and cities and not the thousands of rural villages and isolated dwellings in the countryside - if they were added, the percentage would be higher.

epz wrote: »

only a fraction of the county is actually built upon but people !!!!! about losing the green belt as though our economy being destroyed by planning policy isnt really an issue.

Like I say, it's a balance between protecting the environment and building new development. Green Belts are the most highly protected, to stop the larger urban areas sprawling out into the surrounding countryside - they also assist urban regeneration by directing new development into the cities where there is the best infrastructure to support it.

planning_officer

chopperharris wrote: »

This brown feild thing its a laugh though , can any one person buy up some brownfield land and build , no I dont think so.Only developers can , and they are told by hmg the minimum per acreage of housing...so you cant really blame them on the tiny gardens.

Well, not exactly true - the minimum density for housing advocated by Government guidance is 30 dwellings per hectare (dph) - now that is perfectly ok for all houses to have decent gardens. However, developers never see it like that - we always have schemes for sometimes in excess of 100 dph being submitted - occasionally around 200 dph!! So, yes money speaks - but in my experience it is the cash tills of the developers that results in these very dense schemes always being proposed. My authority is very strict on garden sizes - we won't allow any development that does not have good sized gardens. This results in quite a few refused schemes and appeals - some which are won, some are lost. But whilst housing is obviously needed, it is so important to balance the need for housing against the living conditions for future residents - something developers don't really do.

Geenie

planning_officer wrote: »

In actual fact, there are literally thousands of acres of land in the UK WITH PLANNING PERMISSION TO BUILD - but who owns this land? The developers have planning permission granted and then just sit on the land, adding it to their huge land banks. A report in 2008 by the RTPI revealed that house builders have land banks WITH planning permission of 14,000 acres, enough for 225,000 new homes!!

I bet Tesco's have a fair amount of land they are just sitting on!! The figures you quote above are astounding Planning_Officer!! Would never have thought that much was just sitting idly whilst people were craving a home. I think there should be different rules for developers and the 10 year rule reduced by half!

planning_officer

Yes I just had a search for figures on Tesco's land bank - seems like there were 319 land bank sites for new supermarkets in England in 2007 and Tesco owned 55% of them - so quite a lot of land for 175 supermarkets!