The Nice People Thread, No.16: A Universe of Niceness.

GDB2222

“Trust me, I'm almost a doctor.”

Headline in the Guardian.

Actually, what the NHS is doing, postponing less urgent work and so on at a time of high seasonal demand, is eminently sensible. But it’s a headline writer's dream.

michaels

silvercar wrote: »

Inner Hertfordshire people with an interest in libraries:

There seems to be a consultation open on moving the library services away from local authority control.


https://www.hertfordshire.gov.uk/about-the-council/consultations/libraries-and-archives/inspiring-libraries-2018-2021.aspx

vivatifosi wrote: »

AIUI, it won't make much of a difference to the service the public receive. It's all down to saving money. If you run libraries as charities or non-profits, you don't have to pay rates, which you do if you are local government. It would make sense for the government to reduce this crazy anomaly, but until they do...

Thanks for mentioning this SC, I has seen the stroy and planned to ask our resident expert what the correct resposnemto the consultation should be but then life had got in the way and it had slipped my mind.

We are also supposed to be commenting on the local plan that due to a long-running failure has gone from needing to add a few hundred green belt houses a year to needing to add about a thousand. I big chunk will be built near me, I don't think it is right to object on nimby grounds but of course the problem is the houses will be built but the infrastructure, most visibly roads, will not be upgraded

silvercar

but of course the problem is the houses will be built but the infrastructure, most visibly roads, will not be upgraded

Which is exactly my world. Loads of new flats, no new doctors' surgeries or schools. Very congested roads.

GDB2222

silvercar wrote: »

Which is exactly my world. Loads of new flats, no new doctors' surgeries or schools. Very congested roads.

Do other countries manage this sort of thing better?

vivatifosi

If you think things are bad where you are michaels, spare a thought for Kings Langley. The most expansive part of the Dacorum council plan could see a doubling in size of the village, which is already congested.

My worry is that they want to build more houses due to local demand, but they will be bought by people wanting to move out of over priced London. So we will end up busier, without solving the actual issue. Ie demand needs to be met everywhere, not just Herts.

St Albans and Hemel Hempstead will more or less be joined together by the development plans. I went to look at a new house in Hemel recently, one end of the street the bins were collected by Hemel bin men, the other St Albans! Goodness knows what that complication means for schools, docs, etc. Could you in theory be right by a Hemel doc but forced to go further into St Albans to register.

michaels

GDB2222 wrote: »

Do other countries manage this sort of thing better?

Yep - they give up sufficient land from the 95% plus not built on so that house prices are not artificially inflated and thus using some of that land for infrastructure is not prohibitively expensive in terms of houses forgone....

Where I live was fields in the 1930s until my street was built, for some reason the consensus is that what was decided at that moment in time should be set in stone (concrete?) and no further development of the countryside should take place - despite the population having doubled since then. If the countryside is really of such value, does it not make sense to demolish my street and revert the land to countryside? Why is there huge value to existing countryside but zero value to creating new green space?

michaels

vivatifosi wrote: »

If you think things are bad where you are michaels, spare a thought for Kings Langley. The most expansive part of the Dacorum council plan could see a doubling in size of the village, which is already congested.

My worry is that they want to build more houses due to local demand, but they will be bought by people wanting to move out of over priced London. So we will end up busier, without solving the actual issue. Ie demand needs to be met everywhere, not just Herts.

St Albans and Hemel Hempstead will more or less be joined together by the development plans. I went to look at a new house in Hemel recently, one end of the street the bins were collected by Hemel bin men, the other St Albans! Goodness knows what that complication means for schools, docs, etc. Could you in theory be right by a Hemel doc but forced to go further into St Albans to register.

Well the St Albans rejected plan was to build loads of houses in the bit of St Albans district that butts up to Hemel close to Redbourn - which would pretty much have put all the infrastructure burden onto Hemel and the M1 whilst St Albans would have gained the council tax - you can see why they thought this was a win and why Dacorum got a judicial review to have it stopped. Given we need to build a new Harpenden I think we should build a new town with the full facilities of a town in that sort of area as it doe shave suitable road links and why not build a new railway branch line as well, the French would.

I notice that we will also see a (further) big build on the St A side of Hatfield although this development should still use Hatfield facilities but also a 'new village' very close to London Colney but outside the St A district which looks like it will use London Colney facilities as that will be the closest existing infrastructure.

Personally I would like to see some densification (including garden building) closer tot the train station - densities in some roads close to the station are very low which makes little sense given there is non-car infrastructure available there whereaas instead we will no doubt end up building much higher density further out which then requires car use (Google the 'Supurbia Report' for what I would like to see).

Fianlly apparently we are short of flats and small houses so this is what will be built - I suspect that whilst the 'homeless' lists are full of such households in reality we are short of larger houses but that those who would wish to move out of 1-2 bed properties into 3-4 beds are unable to afford this and thus the smaller properties are not freed up and that if more larger properties were built bringing down prices the shortage of smaller properties would 'fix itself'. Two pieces of evidence support this, (1) the huge gap in prices between 2, 3 and especially 4 bed properties, much greater than the difference in build costs and (2) the epidemic of house extensions going on in every street which can't be a cost effective way to increase the size of the housing stock.

silvercar

Fianlly apparently we are short of flats and small houses so this is what will be built - I suspect that whilst the 'homeless' lists are full of such households in reality we are short of larger houses but that those who would wish to move out of 1-2 bed properties into 3-4 beds are unable to afford this and thus the smaller properties are not freed up and that if more larger properties were built bringing down prices the shortage of smaller properties would 'fix itself'. Two pieces of evidence support this, (1) the huge gap in prices between 2, 3 and especially 4 bed properties, much greater than the difference in build costs and (2) the epidemic of house extensions going on in every street which can't be a cost effective way to increase the size of the housing stock.

Round here (southern most tip of Hertfordshire), the price of a new build 2 bed flat is only marginally less than a 3 bed ex-council (but bought out road) solidly built terrace.
If I didn't think that house prices here were grossly over inflated, I would buy a house ready for when the millenniums in the flats produce mini millenniums and want their own house.

Th land for these flats came from knocking down schools that were too far down the league tables to be attractive. Soon we will have a shortage of school places.

LydiaJ

The vast new estate not far from here has a doctors' surgery, a primary school and some kind of multi-purpose community building.

Pyxis

Demographics are interesting, especially as they can suddenly change.

When I first moved here, 30-odd years ago, I learned that the Council had found a lot of its primary schools were undersubscribed, so it had closed quite a few.

However, just before I moved here, a lot of big firms had decentralised, (finance, insurance, etc.) bringing young professionals into the area.

One of the biggest firms relocated not far from me, and a whole new, large estate of good quality houses was being built next to this firm, to accommodate some of these young families.

All of a sudden, because of this influx of young families, my town was the only place in the country with a rising birth rate!
Couple that with the general mini baby boom of 1980, and suddenly, in the mid 1980s, the demand for primary school places shot up!

The Council had to start building new schools!

Caught on the hop, or what?