Nice People Thread Number 10 -the official residence of Nice People

michaels

vivatifosi wrote: »

In terms of planning, I think it is because they are busy over developing. Where my parents live, developers managed to plonk 7 houses on a former back garden and a further 15 on the former pub site a few houses down. Consequently parking is a nightmare and there is no run off to the back of their house so it floods. A lot. Planning numpties shrug their shoulders as it is not their problem. They get it wrong both ways.

I think this is the flip side of the same coin - because it is so hard to get permission, the price of land with permission is very high so the builders have to 'maximise the density' to make a profit. Add in policies to discourage car ownership by specifiying new builds with insufficient spaces and you get the situation Viva describes.

I still hate getting up for work

purch

chewmylegoff wrote: »

My mum is a much nicer person than me but I'm afraid that she has taken to nimbyism like a duck to water. Probably partly due to boredom in retirement.

Yes, that is probably the case. My Mum too is a far better person than I could ever be, but since retiring she takes far more interest in things she would never have bothered with when she was working and busier.

I think it's reading the Daily Mail (or Express) that does it for retirees, if you have too much time on your hand you just end up reading and believing drivel !!!

lostinrates

purch wrote: »

Yes, that is probably the case. My Mum too is a far better person than I could ever be, but since retiring she takes far more interest in things she would never have bothered with when she was working and busier.

I think it's reading the Daily Mail (or Express) that does it for retirees, if you have too much time on your hand you just end up reading and believing drivel !!!

Or maybe being a stay at home gives you a different perspective on community?



There is no doubt bigger scale new build or lots of smaller scale new build CAN change the nature of a community dramatically. Change isn't necessarily bad, nor controllable, but I can understand concern.


We're all a little predisposed to think our view is the right one, but that doesn't mean it is.

John_Pierpoint

michaels wrote: »

It would only be school kids who'd pay a fiver for the sort of 2 quid a bottle plonk we normally have lying around at home

DG, I think I am building communities, bringing neighbours together against a common enemy, even people on the next street Anyone who thinks we are going to solve the housing crisis by building more houses is in for a shock.

Isn't the £2 bottle of wine now a fiscal impossibility; unless you buy it in Calais? [Anything with alcohol in it is really dirt cheap, were it not for the government's ability to get away with sin taxes on it]

Doozergirl wrote: »

I've been there and yes, the crisis will not be solved. You have several NIMBYs (not in my back yard) and a NOTE (not over there either). The real problems are BANANAs (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything) and I think they work in the planning office. Looking at plans and relating them to national policy is a bit too much like hard work when you can just say 'No'.

Generali wrote: »

The council/Government should have 'land releases' like over here. They put in infrastructure (roads, shops etc) on a large piece of land and then sell off individual blocks. You can then get someone to build you a house on it as long as it conforms to the local building code and the diktats of the suburb. The profit on the sale of the land provides the money to provide the infrastructure.

There'll be a few builders in any given area offering 'house and land packages' where they'll stick one of a selection of houses on a piece of land for you. e.g. link. Because those builders are constantly working with the council you can be pretty sure the plans are up to code. It also gives you a large choice of houses to choose from rather than having to choose from one of 2 or 3 near-identical places. You get the home you want rather than what was pre-approved by the planners.

Yes, this means green field building but that's what's going to be required if the UK is going to house her population properly.

I thought we were now in a new system, where the planners get more money, extract more development gain from the developer (and get to keep their jobs) by saying yes.
"Sustainability" seems to be the watchword where you fill in half a dozen pages of a tick box form, the answers are graded red amber and green (geddit) and score points. Get enough green points and the local authority then knows it will lose at the planning enquiry and so rolls over.

Having got the outline permission, which almost always runs with the land not its owner, the land then gets put up for sale, because the density makes it not profitable (the profit has already been made in the planning permission).

Then the local authority is offered the choice: How about doubling the density or I will sell it for cash to the Irish travellers [...and you can spend another £8 million sorting out that mess ?].

Job done - trebles all round and jobs for the boys.

The previous technique, something closer to "socialism", a bit along the lines of generali's down under system: Find an area of poor people, be they farmers or rural cottagers. Offer then something over the agricultural value with some cash up front, in exchange for an option. Spend ages trying to plan and finance "a new town/eco village/garden city". Have lots of politicians kicking the football

Eventually the previous owners, of the nationalised land, discover they have been royally ripped off by inflation and are now living in a nice modern council flat, with resettled "immigrant" neighbours. They hate it.

I don't think that will work in today's climate, because teh majority of farms in the home counties are owned by landowners who only get a minority of their income from farming and that is probably done on a share farming basis - think people who have/are making serious money: industrialists, bankers, hedge-fund managers, even names at Lloyds.

It is nice to have a subsidised hobby with capital tax advantages ?

PasturesNew

I don't like the land with PP granted as the house is never going to be what I'd want to build - and trying to get it changed is just as hard/impossible as starting from scratch.

I don't want to build a 4-bed detached house, with 1' round it and a 6' strip of back garden - I'd rather build a 2-bed house with 3' round it and a 20' of garden and a garage.

Generali

I heard a really nice story yesterday on the radio. A woman was living in Council Housing (no right to buy). The system over here is a bit weird: your rent in Council Housing is a proportion of the 'market value'. That means if you give it a lick of paint or put in a new kitchen, paid for yourself, your rent will go up!

Her mother died and left her a few $10,000s. This woman had been in council housing for 25 years and those places get into quite a state over that sort of period.

She took the money she'd been left, upped sticks and moved to what is slowly becoming a ghost town, an old mining town. She paid $50,000 for the house. She'd gone from living on Highway #1 in the big city in a run down house with a courtyard to owning a garden with 7 trees! She had just enough left over for a new fence and garage.

PasturesNew wrote: »

I don't like the land with PP granted as the house is never going to be what I'd want to build - and trying to get it changed is just as hard/impossible as starting from scratch.

I don't want to build a 4-bed detached house, with 1' round it and a 6' strip of back garden - I'd rather build a 2-bed house with 3' round it and a 20' of garden and a garage.

That's one of the good things about the Aussie system: you buy a plot and you can build what you like as long as it's within the code. The plot is zoned to be built on, the conversation about what to build is a separate thing.

dryhat

Happy Satoshi day to all you NPs

tomterm8

The planning system in the UK is insane. It's one of the single most crazy things about Britain.

PasturesNew

I've always thought you should be able to buy a bit of land with Planning Would be Approved ..... then you make an appointment, go into the office and flick through a book of what you might want to put there.... then thrash out the changes/details with a little man and go away an hour later knowing what you're going to have, the changes you can make ..... and off to an architect to say "draw that" - or even take that architect with you.

A month later, job done, submit the drawings for approval, which should go straight through .... and start building.

Doozergirl

purch wrote: »

Yes, that is probably the case. My Mum too is a far better person than I could ever be, but since retiring she takes far more interest in things she would never have bothered with when she was working and busier.

I think it's reading the Daily Mail (or Express) that does it for retirees, if you have too much time on your hand you just end up reading and believing drivel !!!

Yes, my in laws are daily Daily Mail readers. They are immigrants from Europe, moved here 50 years ago. They are British Citizens, more British than the British and can't stand immigrants