No more building in Haringey

padington

Looks like haringey is finally full ...

'Last week, Haringey council told Inside Housing magazine that it plans to return all right-to-buy receipts to the Treasury, stating that it was simply unable to build. The London borough returned over £15m of revenue from sales of council homes in 2012, because regulations on spending the money and constraints on building made it impossible to build replacement homes. '

http://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2015/oct/02/right-to-buy-housing-crisis

No more new planned supply ever, just increased demand. I wonder what that
could mean ... ?

Generali

padington wrote: »

http://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2015/oct/02/right-to-buy-housing-crisis

No more new planned supply ever, just increased demand. I wonder what that
could mean ... ?

People looking to live somewhere other than the Peoples Republic of Haringey...?

princeofpounds

It would be interesting if the article actually explained/investigated the reasons for these so-called constraints. Haringey is hardly Monaco or Manhattan. That would actually be enlightening.

As it goes, it pretty much takes the assertion at face value and then rants against RTB policy. Fine, if that's your thing, but it doesn't really leave us with any more understanding, or even much to discuss, as a result of reading the article.

MS1950

princeofpounds wrote: »

It would be interesting if the article actually explained/investigated the reasons for these so-called constraints. Haringey is hardly Monaco or Manhattan. That would actually be enlightening.

As it goes, it pretty much takes the assertion at face value and then rants against RTB policy. Fine, if that's your thing, but it doesn't really leave us with any more understanding, or even much to discuss, as a result of reading the article.

“80 per cent of councils responding to a new Local Government Association (LGA) survey feel that the current system does not allow them to replace these lost homes. This hinders councils' efforts to find homes for those residents currently on their waiting lists. With almost 1.7 million households currently waiting for a home, the LGA said it is imperative that councils have the powers to replace housing sold through the Right to Buy quickly and effectively.

Now the LGA, which represents almost 400 councils in England and Wales, is calling for councils to be allowed to retain 100 per cent of receipts directly from Right to Buy sales to support new housing.

This would mean scrapping the current arrangements which involve time and resource-intensive form filling and restrictions on how councils use the receipts and their own land and assets to build new homes....

Under the current system, the amount of receipts kept by the Treasury is based on the predicted amount of Right to Buy sales in each authority. This means that only when the Treasury has received the predicted amount does money become available to be retained locally via a process set up and administered by the Homes and Communities Agency.

The Government has put in place an application process for local authorities to retain a share of Right to Buy receipts locally to invest in replacement stock. The current system requires councils to submit quarterly returns to Government setting out the amount that it will retain and the amount that it will pay to the Department. The process requires that capital receipts must constitute no more than 30 per cent of the total amount spent on replacement homes. In addition, councils are prohibited from counting the contribution of their own land as part of the development cost for the purpose of providing a site for social housing.

The agreements also prevent any expenditure ‘wholly or partly' funded by HCA grant from being funded by Right to Buy receipts. The current arrangements allow a council to grant fund another body to build or acquire using Right to Buy receipts, however, they prevent it from giving over receipts...to an ALMO or other organisation that the council has control over”.

http://www.local.gov.uk/media-releases/-/journal_content/56/10180/6040787/NEWS

http://www.thetottenhamindependent.co.uk/news/13763879.display/

princeofpounds

Thanks now that is interesting, although I haven't had time to go through the links you provide or do the sums yet.


One thing is clear though; councils don't need to retain the full market value of the houses if they own land - the build cost in most of the country will be much lower than the value of the properties themselves.

Fella

I used to go to Harringay greyhound track. Went to the last ever meeting there in fact, in 1987. People were ripping out the fixtures & fittings as mementos. Grizzled men were almost in tears, largely at the prospect that in future they'd have to to to Romford (East End dog afficionados went to Walthamstow stadium on the days it was open & Harringay the days it wasn't. When Harringay closed the only local alternative was Romford, where the racing was & is dire).

No reason to go back to Harringay since then.

cells

the councils have a lot of land via their estates which can be knocked down and rebuilt better and at higher density.

I think specifically all the zone 1 and 2 boroughs should be exempt from car parking quotas on new builds which would allow higher density builds

Generali

cells wrote: »

the councils have a lot of land via their estates which can be knocked down and rebuilt better and at higher density.

I think specifically all the zone 1 and 2 boroughs should be exempt from car parking quotas on new builds which would allow higher density builds

Part of the solution has to be better use of what's already there I agree. Part I suspect should also be expanding towns on the edge of London, places like Guildford, Sevenoaks etc which have plenty of space around them to build into and very good infrastructure/transport links already.

cells

Generali wrote: »

Part of the solution has to be better use of what's already there I agree. Part I suspect should also be expanding towns on the edge of London, places like Guildford, Sevenoaks etc which have plenty of space around them to build into and very good infrastructure/transport links already.

pretty much everywhere in England has the demand for more homes and if its met with available finance and ability for builders to build it will be met

Inner London either needs to sell off its council/HA homes (so the unemployed and pensioners move further out and workers move in) or destroy and build at a much higher density to keep grandma in a flat overlooking the old city walls. I suspect both needs to be done or we are heading towards £50k a year rents for the low end stuff in z2 within a decade

chewmylegoff

This is great news. No more social house building by the council in Harringey means that the market value of a 2 bed terrace in Ally Pally will go up by 78.1% by next Tuesday instead of the originally estimated 78%.

daveyjp

cells wrote: »

the councils have a lot of land via their estates which can be knocked down and rebuilt better and at higher density.

I think specifically all the zone 1 and 2 boroughs should be exempt from car parking quotas on new builds which would allow higher density builds

Except many of those huge Council estates are no longer owned by the Council. A little exercise called Stock Transfer lead to the end of that.

If you demolish houses where do you put people while you build the new ones and where does the vast amount of capital come from to carry out the work?