Green Belt - what's it good for?

ukcarper

princeofpounds wrote: »

If that's a personal charge, that's quite a stretch to apply it to an individual you know little about. It's probably true of the majority of people however, which is a good reason why the system actually needs the capability to discount some of these considerations.

It wasn't a personal charge just an observation and I think it is more than probably true that the majority would object to development affecting them. The other misconception is that all people opposing a development are NIMBYs.


Things do need to change but the system does have the capability to discount some things. What you don't want is what some people seem to be arguing for is that everything should be disregarded and development should go ahead irrespective.

Generali

ukcarper wrote: »

It wasn't a personal charge just an observation and I think it is more than probably true that the majority would object to development affecting them. The other misconception is that all people opposing a development are NIMBYs.


Things do need to change but the system does have the capability to discount some things. What you don't want is what some people seem to be arguing for is that everything should be disregarded and development should go ahead irrespective.

What is needed is for housing and infrastructure to be built together. The simplest way to do that is for the Government (local or national) to buy up land and then use the profit from selling it on with planning permission to provide infrastructure.

ukcarper

Generali wrote: »

What is needed is for housing and infrastructure to be built together. The simplest way to do that is for the Government (local or national) to buy up land and then use the profit from selling it on with planning permission to provide infrastructure.

I agree that is what's needed They could identify the areas where development could take place with the least impact and build there.


Do you think there is a chance of that happening?

CLAPTON

ukcarper wrote: »

I agree that is what's needed They could identify the areas where development could take place with the least impact and build there.


Do you think there is a chance of that happening?

yes, it happens all the time

where I live there has been a reasonable amount of new building (all opposed by the local community on the usual grounds)
all of the new stuff is in keeping with the neighbourhood and in appropriate places.
over the years the infrastructure has grown piecemeal i.e. the schools have expanded, surgeries have grown, some road junctions designed etc all without any fuss or grand regional plan

Generali

ukcarper wrote: »

I agree that is what's needed They could identify the areas where development could take place with the least impact and build there.


Do you think there is a chance of that happening?

CLAPTON wrote: »

yes, it happens all the time

where I live there has been a reasonable amount of new building (all opposed by the local community on the usual grounds)
all of the new stuff is in keeping with the neighbourhood and in appropriate places.
over the years the infrastructure has grown piecemeal i.e. the schools have expanded, surgeries have grown, some road junctions designed etc all without any fuss or grand regional plan

The problem is the scale of what needs to be done.

Let's say you guys need another 2,000,000 houses over a decade over what is currently being built, most of which are needed in the SE. That's an awful lot of piecemeal development.

I wonder whether local councils have the project management skills required to enable that level of building. At least central Government has deep enough pockets to be able to rectify things when they beggur them up.

CLAPTON

Generali wrote: »

The problem is the scale of what needs to be done.

Let's say you guys need another 2,000,000 houses over a decade over what is currently being built, most of which are needed in the SE. That's an awful lot of piecemeal development.

I wonder whether local councils have the project management skills required to enable that level of building. At least central Government has deep enough pockets to be able to rectify things when they beggur them up.

if one's aim is to build brand new towns then obviously a pretty substantial planning exercise would be useful

there is about 2,000 'towns' in the uk; so building 200,000 house per year is about 1000 per town
let each area decide how and where to build within a 'numbers only' framework.

cells

Generali wrote: »

What is needed is for housing and infrastructure to be built together. The simplest way to do that is for the Government (local or national) to buy up land and then use the profit from selling it on with planning permission to provide infrastructure.

NO no no

People use infrastructure not homes infrastructure should be paid for out of general taxation. Think of the opposite. If I buy two homes and make them one I've got rid of a house so should I be entitled to a 50k tax refund?

Also most the need for additional homes is for the current population.

For example. A town of 240k people with 100k homes needs to become a town of still 240k people but 120k homes. The housing stock needs to grow by 20% but the number of people is the same. You don't need more schools or hospitals or railroads or shops or industrial sites as you have the same number of people.

Also the idea that infrastructure is or needs to be expensive is false. Look at China still a poor second world country yet its currently building more than all our infrastructure every single year

cells

Generali wrote: »

The problem is the scale of what needs to be done.

Let's say you guys need another 2,000,000 houses over a decade over what is currently being built, most of which are needed in the SE. That's an awful lot of piecemeal development.

I wonder whether local councils have the project management skills required to enable that level of building. At least central Government has deep enough pockets to be able to rectify things when they beggur them up.

Its not difficult at all

The stap issue level over the last 20 years was about 200k a year. It just needs to double

Go back more than 3-4 decades and the stamp giving was closer to 300k a year


Also there are some 650 MPs. If each of their areas issued just 700 stamps a year that is 455k a year. Why would you think a council woild fid it impossible to stamp 700 homes a year which would nit be 700 separate stamps ans investigations its more likely to be 100 or less developments with multiple homes per development



control needs to be removed from the councils as they have clearly funked up for the last 2-3 decades. Fine them heavily (eg maybe £50k fine per unit below 700 a year. So issue 600 stamps and get fined £5million. Previous years excess can be used for future year offsetting)

Currently there is no punishment for councils not providing enough homes so they choose to not provode many homes

Mallotum_X

We have built at that rate before. Was reading recently that post WW1, there were roughly 8m homes in the UK, by WW2 that was at 12m, or 2m per decade.

If we really want these things to happen we need to change the mindset of some, and get on with it. Perhaps it helped at that time that there was an attitude of providing housing for war heros. Maybe some of the problem is the perception that new housing is needed for "chavs, single mums and foreign types".

cells

ukcarper wrote: »

Perhaps you could say where you think those 10 new boroughs could be placed especially as using your figures they would need to be 5km x 5km.

'London' is ~1575 km2

But inside the m25 is closer to 2300 km2

The difference of 700 sqkm is largely empty space most of it greenbelt

10 new boroughs each roughly 25km2 and housing 300k people each would thus take up 250 out of the 700 km2 of largely empty space inside the M25

These 10 new boroughs could allow London to expand by 3 million people without the existing borough needing to build more dense

Also these ten new boroughs would only need 1 tube station each seeing as how everyone would be within walking distance of this one tube station.

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Of course existing boroughs have been building more and more dense and this will probably continue for a time but I suspect some areas are near saturation. Eg Islington and Hackney is already over 13k persons per km2 and im not sure they could go much past perhaps 15k even if they wanted to do so.

The next 20 years may see the UK population go up by 10 million and the UK will need some 10 million more homes. Either this is spread very evenly and most towns expand their population by20% and their hhousing stock by 30% or this increase needs to be concentrated. If it is to be concentrated then London and tje SE will take more people and need more homes.