New homes boarded up in Cornish village in planning row

[Alan Ambrose]

Nice...

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-68546662

[ToughButterCup]

Quote

Cornwall Council said it was: "Committed to working with developers that have been granted planning permission to ensure that a housing development, and the agreed number of affordable housing homes, are delivered in line with the planning permission."

 

And so the Council neatly ignores the issue of finance. Surprise surprise, it all cost more than the developer thought it would. Now where have we all heard variations on  that type of  story before? 

Oh yes. Here.

[DreamingTheBuild]

It did seem a rather calamitous error with regard to the retaining wall, seems fairly clear more than one thing went wrong on this project.

[ProDave]

What I got from this is the planners say they have to build so many "affordable" homes, which they can only do by subsidising those from the profit made on market value homes?  Then the additional costs due to delays, interest and that retaining wall means even selling the market value homes, they could not afford to subsidise the "affordable" homes.  And unless they can do that they can't sell the market value homes.  Is that somewhere close to what happened?

 

I have never been comfortable with the concept that private developers must subsidise "affordable" homes from the profits made on normal homes.

[Dave Jones]

developer is playing the long game to reduce or possibly eliminate the social housing element would be my guess.

 

 

[Alan Ambrose]

I think that LPAs consciously use delays to achieve what they want using their leverage and regardless of the financial impact on the developer - or perhaps deliberately using that potential financial impact to get what they want.

[joe90]

2 hours ago, ProDave said:

I have never been comfortable with the concept that private developers must subsidise "affordable" homes from the profits made on normal homes.

+1

 

1 hour ago, Alan Ambrose said:

I think that LPAs consciously use delays to achieve what they want using their leverage and regardless of the financial impact on the developer - or perhaps deliberately using that potential financial impact to get what they want.

Also +1 but maybe not consciously, I think many here have suffered from planning delays, which may just be underfunding. I think planning departments need change to meet current demands more appropriately (my LPA were told they were not abiding by their own policies when I took them to appeal and won, but cost me money and about 18 months delay with no recompense!).

[saveasteading]

2 hours ago, ProDave said:

private developers must subsidise "affordable" homes from the profits made on normal homes

But that is not the case. Only a story spun by the developers and lapped up by certain of the press.*

They know what they have to do, including 10% affordable or whatever (which is nearly always much more cheaply built anyway.. Then they pay too much for the land. They don't lose money on the affordables or subsidise them....just perhaps make less than planned on the overall project. Then they ask to reduce their obligations knowing that the planners don't understand money.

Do they lose money? Normally no. We don't get to see the figures anyway.

 

If they paid less for the land then it all works out...apart from the landowner getting 5% less of a windfall. £950k an acre instead of £1M for £10k farm land.

Fairer I would say than being subsidised by rates or tax.

 

Whatever, they will sell the finished houses for as much as possible and won't  donate any surplus for council houses.

 

*mixed metaphors. Sorry.

[SteamyTea]

I just had a look at my local council website and found some data about social housing in Calstock.

https://www.cornwall.gov.uk/housing/housing-intelligence/

 

Seems that in April 2022, there was 8% social housing.

I think that is not too bad for a small place.

St. Ives and Pensilva is the same.

 

Camborne, one the poorest parts of Europe is 15%, similar to Porthleven (a posh place they like to think) at 16%.  Interestingly, St. Just, almost at the end of the country, has 33% (837) social housing.

 

The county, as a whole (pun intended) is 8%.

 

 

As for second homes, there is still a lot of ignorant bollocks spoken.

The country as a whole has 11% second homes (household spaces with no permanent residents), 5% as according to the below map..

But the distribution is very clustered.  Not many second homes in the middle bit, the part that is environmentally scared from 3 hundred years if mining and agriculture.

I am still looking for the places that claim they have "80% holiday homes that are only used for 2 weeks of the year".

 

Edited March 19 by SteamyTea