Largest housing rally ever across the UK

cells

westernpromise wrote: »

The issue with plonking new towns down, or massively expanding existing ones, is that all the infrastructure is based around the existing small population level.

Roads, schools, amenities etc all need to be constructed as well as the houses. If these are lumped into the price of newly-built private houses they'll probably then be unaffordable and if they're built as council houses then the cost is dumped onto everybody else, despite everybody else not usually having had the opportunity to vote on whether they agree with the expansion of population in the first place.

The planning rules we have contain an unstated assumption that the population is stable, in the sense of not increasing or doing so slowly. As such one can argue that they are working quite well - by inflating the cost of housing, they will eventually stop population increase because nobody will be able to afford to immigrate.

I am not sure that, just because immigration policy is stressing our planning policy, this means that it's the latter that has to change to accommodate the former. The reverse is also perfectly viable.

generally speaking there is no need for more commercial or industrial or retail or warehousing or power stations etc etc

Those buildings can be and have been utilized better each year.

So a 20% increase in the housing stock doesn't require a 20% increase in other buildings

Even such things as schools and hospitals are utilised more efficiently rather than an absolute need for more of those. an example is my old college, the year I left it was greatly expanded in size to take on about 600 more students.



and finally the immigration is causing a need for more housing theory is mostly incorrect. we need more housing to allow the household size to fall. an example is the UK between 1974-1979.
The population was exactly flat at 56.2 million so your theory would be that no homes were needed becuase there was no population growth. Instead what happened was that during those 5 years nearly 1.5 million new homes were built!

no additional people, yet the need for 1.5mil new homes!!!



The same is true now. Even if the UK population was flat for the next 20 years. eg it goes from 65 million in 2015 to 65 million in 2035 the UK would still need to build about 3 million additional homes to allow the household size to fall

cells

Generali wrote: »

There is always a good reason to object to building. Widen the roads, put on another couple of trains.

The arguments of insufficient infrastructure strikes me as extremely defeatist. Why do some people think we are incapable of building more roads or rail or whatever. The opposite is true we are more than capable and the infrastructure spending is a good way to invest in the nation and create jobs

Also a lot of infrastructure can and is used more efficiently so more people and certainly more homes doesn't mean there is a need for a proportional increase in infrastructure


The railways are a clear example, their use has nearly doubled over the last two decades even though the number of tracks and stations has hardly moved. Likewise if you look at the airports you find things like heathrow going from 30 million passengers a year in the 1980s to 75 million passengers a year now. The size of the airport hasnt increased yet the number of passengers has more than doubled

cells

westernpromise wrote: »

But to claim the benefit, you have first to be in the house, do you not? What if there's no house?

Imagine a country in which there are 10 houses and all houses can hold 6 people each. 60 people are now living in the houses. What happens when person number 61 arrives?

The assumption seems to be that the other 60 should absorb the cost and inconvenience of allowing a new 6-person house to be built.

The trouble of course is that 6 more people may arrive. So you have kicked the can down the road but still have a problem, which is that you don't have enough houses. You've got 67 people trying to live where there's space for 66.

If you reverse the situation and allow housing to be rationed by price, the population will have to stop at 60, no? The 61st person will look around, find no house and go home?

how fekin stupid is that!

no, it wont mean that #61 has to go home

what it means is that the 10 homes with 60 people in them, become 10 homes with 61 people in them

the household size increases in your example and that is both a terrible thing and historically something that has never* happened in any developed nation





* apart from the UK very recently. The UK household size continuously fell from 1900 to 2007 but since 2007 has been INCREASING.

That is both AMAZING and a huge social NEGATIVE

westernpromise

cells wrote: »

how fekin stupid is that!

no, it wont mean that #61 has to go home

what it means is that the 10 homes with 60 people in them, become 10 homes with 61 people in them

the household size increases in your example and that is both a terrible thing and historically something that has never* happened in any developed nation

Precisely.

But at some point household capacity is exhausted. It's not infinite. In my example total capacity is hit at 60 people.

What happens when that point is reached?

westernpromise

cells wrote: »

generally speaking there is no need for more commercial or industrial or retail or warehousing or power stations etc etc

Those buildings can be and have been utilized better each year.

So a 20% increase in the housing stock doesn't require a 20% increase in other buildings

Even such things as schools and hospitals are utilised more efficiently rather than an absolute need for more of those. an example is my old college, the year I left it was greatly expanded in size to take on about 600 more students.



and finally the immigration is causing a need for more housing theory is mostly incorrect. we need more housing to allow the household size to fall. an example is the UK between 1974-1979.
The population was exactly flat at 56.2 million so your theory would be that no homes were needed becuase there was no population growth. Instead what happened was that during those 5 years nearly 1.5 million new homes were built!

no additional people, yet the need for 1.5mil new homes!!!



The same is true now. Even if the UK population was flat for the next 20 years. eg it goes from 65 million in 2015 to 65 million in 2035 the UK would still need to build about 3 million additional homes to allow the household size to fall

All of which doesn't really get us anywhere because what we're talking about is incremental demand for houses and related infrastructure in consequence of rising population. Regardless of whether a static population requires additional housing or not, it is clear that an expanding population must require more housing than one that's not expanding.

The existing planning process can handle adding 1.5 million new homes over 5 years (in the example you gave). The issue is whether it can handle more than that, and why it should do so. If, as I gather is the case, most of the population increase is immigration and an ageing population, these groups do not contribute nearly enough or indeed any net tax with which to fund adding the infrastructure required. Fortunately most of the elderly are already housed, so the question is, who should fund this infrastructure for the rest, and when did I agree to do so?

cells

westernpromise wrote: »

Precisely.

But at some point household capacity is exhausted.

What happens when that point is reached?

There is virtually no realistic upper limit to what the UK can achieve with its current housing stock

Even if you made building new homes ILLEGAL the result would be that household size increases

We currently have nearly 28 million homes in the UK. If the household size increased to 3.5 persons per home that would mean a UK population of 98 million

So even if you assume no new builds at all, the UK could absorb a population growth of HALF A MILLION PEOPLE PER YEAR FOR 66 YEARS until the population reaches 98 million people and even then the household size would 'only' be 3.5

---

Of course for the household size to increase to 3.5 would mean UK homes everywhere cost a hell of a lot of money.
some might like the idea of that but the result would be the rental sector expands and the owner sector collapses to maybe 80:20

cells

westernpromise wrote: »

All of which doesn't really get us anywhere because what we're talking about is incremental demand for houses and related infrastructure in consequence of rising population. Regardless of whether a static population requires additional housing or not, it is clear that an expanding population must require more housing than one that's not expanding.

The existing planning process can handle adding 1.5 million new homes over 5 years (in the example you gave). The issue is whether it can handle more than that, and why it should do so. If, as I gather is the case, most of the population increase is immigration and an ageing population, these groups do not contribute nearly enough or indeed any net tax with which to fund adding the infrastructure required. Fortunately most of the elderly are already housed, so the question is, who should fund this infrastructure for the rest, and when did I agree to do so?

when you were born was the UK void of infrastructure?

also infrastructure spending is a net POSITIVE for an economy. If it wasn't how the hell could nations that have no infrastructure build it? They would stay perpetually poor

building infrastructure is an economic enabler it pays for itself many times over by what it allows the economy to do. hence why if you look at china or Brazil or turkey 20 years ago when they had less infrastructure they were a lot poorer, they spent on it and now they are a lot richer


no one is asking for you to pay for infrastructure, which you didn't largely pay for anyway

ukcarper

cells wrote: »

The arguments of insufficient infrastructure strikes me as extremely defeatist. Why do some people think we are incapable of building more roads or rail or whatever. The opposite is true we are more than capable and the infrastructure spending is a good way to invest in the nation and create jobs

Also a lot of infrastructure can and is used more efficiently so more people and certainly more homes doesn't mean there is a need for a proportional increase in infrastructure


The railways are a clear example, their use has nearly doubled over the last two decades even though the number of tracks and stations has hardly moved. Likewise if you look at the airports you find things like heathrow going from 30 million passengers a year in the 1980s to 75 million passengers a year now. The size of the airport hasnt increased yet the number of passengers has more than doubled

Of course we can build new infrastructure but the problem is it very often isn't. Perhaps you can explain how the railway into Waterloo can be used more efficiently or the south western part of the M25.

ukcarper

Generali wrote: »

There is always a good reason to object to building. Widen the roads, put on another couple of trains.

I also know the area well. I bet the Tories have another couple of people putting their hands up to stand for council next time around.

What do you reckon 12 each way M25 the 6 are quite often stationary.

ukcarper

Generali wrote: »

There's a huge amount of land that could be built on between Horsham and Guildford. The A281 could be upgraded to a dual carriageway and the old railway line reopened as a bus road or light railway.

Rudgewick & Shamley Green could be made the size of Cranleigh and Bramley, Wonersh and Shaldford merged into another small town.

You could build 10,000 houses in that space quite easily while maintaining the beauty of the North Downs. You'd never even notice it from Pitch Hill or the Edge of the World.

The road definitely needs improving and a light railway would be good what do you think the chance of both happening is. I would imagine if you were going to quadruple the size of rudgewick the sewers and electrical network would need to be improved. But if all that could be done it's not a bad idea.

On the subject od disused train lines there are quite a few that would be useful now.