Land Shortage

[Triassic]

One of the UK's largest housebuilders has called for a "critical reassessment" of green belt land to help solve Britain's housing shortage.

Legal & General chief executive Nigel Wilson said that if 1% of green belt was released for building, it would be enough for up to one million new homes. 

And the L&Q housing association said Britain faced a choice: build on "green field" or continue with a shortage.

 

Source - BBC

 

So it's a shortage of land and not a lack of skilled labour that's stopping the UK building houses!

[ProDave]

It depends where you are?

 

when I was in the south, individual building plots were as rare as rocking horse (you know what). And the village we lived in had many suitable infill plots but nobody could get planning permission. Even a lovely barn in between two houses was refused PP many times.

 

But up here in the Highlands, there are always several plots on the market at any one time and the local house builders don't seem to be struggling for land. I regularly pass a 30 house development site that's been on the market about 5 years now.
 

[Onoff]

That's the problem with land, they stopped making it a long time ago.

 

.....unless you're the Chinese government!

[Triassic]

So if there's land available in the North and not the South, then channel all future business development grants to businesses to in the North, that should sort out the population imbalance in the long run!

 

 

[Jeremy Harris]

10 hours ago, Triassic said:

So if there's land available in the North and not the South, then channel all future business development grants to businesses to in the North, that should sort out the population imbalance in the long run!

 

 

 

I remember writing much the same years ago on the other place.  We were plot hunting and I was looking at the massive difference in plot prices in different areas.  A bit of quick and dirty analysis showed that when the balance of employment moved away from manufacturing towards the service sector, jobs started to disappear in the North, West and Midlands and increase in London and the South.  Some areas experienced mass migrations of the younger population, as they moved away to find work.  I remember when I was caving regularly 20 odd miles up the valley from where Nick here lives, in South Wales, about 30 years ago.  There were whole villages up there stood empty, with very few young people, as the pits had closed and the young men had mainly moved away.  At that time it was all a bit strange, as many of the younger women had stayed behind with their parents.  I well remember the fact that young girls outnumbered young men in the pub we used to drink in by about ten to one.

 

Anyway, this migration of jobs is, I believe the root cause of the "housing shortage", I'm not even convinced we have a massive housing shortage, I think we just happen to have houses where there are no jobs, and not enough houses where there are jobs. 

 

Successive governments have failed to address this, despite a lot of money being spent to encourage employers to move to places that were formerly manufacturing or mining centres.  Some of it is the chicken and egg problem.  No employer likes to train people, they would rather be somewhere where there is a pool of people with the skills they need.  Before an employer will shift to somewhere with cheaper land prices, grants etc, they will want an assurance that they can recruit staff with the right skills quickly, to get their relocated business up and running as quickly as possible.

 

The flip side if that no one will bother to learn skills if there's no call for them in the area where they live.

 

Government has had a programme of moving public sector jobs out of London and the South East for a couple of decades or more now - my last job involved relocating 1400 people and there is a "forbidden zone" that has been around for a very long time where you are not allowed to create a new Civil Service job, and it's well defined; London, South West as far as the Hampshire/Wiltshire border, North East as far as the Kent border.  The result has been the shift of fairly big public sector centres to places like Newcastle (HMRC), Bristol (Defence Procurement) etc. 

 

The idea was that the private sector would do the same, with a bit of encouragement, but that just hasn't happened.  The private sector looked at the costs the government incurred in relocating all those jobs (when I was doing it the average business cost of relocating a job was about £30k per job) and decided it was unaffordable). I can fully understand their view, and what's more, when the public sector places relocated only around 70% of staff tend to move, which meant there was a pool of people ready to take on private sector jobs in the vacated areas.

 

Somehow there needs to be more done to make areas where land is cheap more attractive to employers.  Crack that problem and I think a fair bit of the housing crisis goes away.

 

 

Edited February 2, 2017 by JSHarris

[billt]

It's just the house builders annual call to get rid if the green belts. They've been doing it since green belts were imposed.

 

Of course it would be ideal for them, nice green field sites, easy and cheap to develop and close to demand so they can charge premium prices - lots of lovely profit.

[Barney12]

16 minutes ago, billt said:

It's just the house builders annual call to get rid if the green belts. They've been doing it since green belts were imposed.

 

Of course it would be ideal for them, nice green field sites, easy and cheap to develop and close to demand so they can charge premium prices - lots of lovely profit.

 

Yes exactly this. I think they must have an Outlook diary reminder to run the story every 12 months.  

Of course they are also trying to preempt the long overdue housing white paper.

http://www.propertyweek.com/news/housing-white-paper-delayed-for-second-time/5087429.article

 

[Onoff]

It's the brownfield sites within the Green Belt that cause the controversy round my way. Old poultry farm, orchard/cider mill, nursery, small caravan parks etc. All derelict and an eyesore tbh and bought for a relative pittance. A Mecca for vandalism and fly tipping. Often I feel the developers turn a blind eye to it. Traditionally these would have little and then only maybe seasonal traffic.

The developers of course want to squeeze as many houses on as possible. The roads and infrastructure often struggle with the sudden population increase. 

[Ferdinand]

3 hours ago, billt said:

It's just the house builders annual call to get rid if the green belts. They've been doing it since green belts were imposed.

 

Of course it would be ideal for them, nice green field sites, easy and cheap to develop and close to demand so they can charge premium prices - lots of lovely profit.

 

I think there is a good case for a review - in England Green Belt is now 12-13% of Land Area.

 

That is 6,300 square miles - by definition all of it near towns or cities and pretty much on top of all the all the National Parks etc. It is like a ligature.

 

I do not think we can *all* of:

 

1 - Population growth.

2 - All the existing green belt being kept.

3 - Lower land prices.

4 - Several million new houses.

 

You can't buck even the not very transparent market we currently have.

 

Ferdinand

 

Edited February 2, 2017 by Ferdinand

[SteamyTea]

I seem to remember that housing takes up about 2% of the land area (not to be confused with urbanisation at about 9%).

 

I think the real problem is that the general public dislike new housing near them.  By its very nature it is going to be near someone.

The planning people probably have the same view and just use the planning rules to reinforce it.

 

There is also a difference between releasing land and affordable prices.  I am not sure that they are directly connected (correlated).  It may seem they are on the basic data, but that can be very misleading.

[Roger440]

On 01/02/2017 at 22:07, Triassic said:

So if there's land available in the North and not the South, then channel all future business development grants to businesses to in the North, that should sort out the population imbalance in the long run!

 

 

 

True. But we are going to build a railway so even more people can get to the south east quickly!!! To just make it worse still........................