Reform the planning system and reinstate local targets to help build 1.5 million new homes over five years

[AliG]

Prior to the election I got into an argument with our local Labour candidate, now MP and a Facebook group trying to stop a new development being built a couple of miles away.

 

Funny how labour policy is to try and ignore local objections, yet he was massively in favour of them in the run up to the election.

 

My argument was that the land where building was proposed was within the bounds of Edinburgh (inside the city bypass which is normally considered the boundary of the town with greenbelt on the other side). Thus it has access to buses, shops etc and would be a much more sustainable place to build than out of town.

 

Local residents have got up an almost 1000 people Facebook group and similar number of objections to a new development. Their objections are nonsense in my opinion.

 

Edinburgh has a target of 35,000 houses to be built. A lot of land has been allocated to this target outside of town on the greenbelt where there is literally no infrastructure at all, no schools, roads, buses, nothing.

 

The locals' argument is that it is hard  to get registered with a doctor locally and into the local school (just built with a nearby development) and that traffic will get worse. I pass through the area all the time. Traffic is much less bad than the main area of development around the airport and it there are no doctors with capacity for the 35,000 houses due to be built no matter where they are in the town, so this is in now way a reasonable argument to not build in this area, it is just a straw man argument from NIMBYs. I put up a very robust argument against every point they made.

 

I doubt they will get permission this time, but I reckon they will five to ten years down the road. Indeed every contentious plot of land in the town in the last 20 years has ended up being built on, just later than expected after years of arguing. Perhaps this shows what a real waste of time and money it all is. Usually stuff gets built eventually.

 

 

[Alan Ambrose]

>>> Maybe we 7 +1 should write to our mp.

 

I'm up for that. My other half works for government, so will ask her the best approach.

[Alan Ambrose]

Yeah, I hope they find a way to build more houses, but pretty much every government for the last 50 years has made housing 'a priority'. Also, you have the entrenched planners, appeals system, nimbys etc in place and even if you invent new policy that doesn't mean you will change the system at all quickly.

[JohnMo]

2 minutes ago, AliG said:

Prior to the election I got into an argument with our local Labour candidate, now MP

 

within the bounds of Edinburgh

That falls under devolved powers and zero to do with the last parliamentary election or any of Labour manifesto pledges. What gets built and how it gets built in Scotland starts and stops at the Scottish parliament.

[AliG]

Two posts as this is separate to my above point.

 

Assuming a roughly 100 year lifespan for a house, we need to build around 300,000 houses a year just for replacement. In the short run of course whilst houses are in short supply they are less likely to be replaced.

 

A target of 400,000 a year would be needed to keep up with this and population growth and maybe eat into the shortage that has been created by building only 200,000 a year for many years. The number of households has also been increasing driven by the increase in single person households.

 

The trouble is that planning alone won't achieve this. There presumably aren't enough people available to build 300,000 houses a year, there are not thousands of unemployed tradesmen at the moment.

 

It requires a bit of imagination. For example could prefabricated social housing be built? On site build costs are high and quality variable. Maybe something more standardised and mass produced could be created.

 

The broader picture is that the shortage of housing/building land is in my opinion behind an enormous amount of problems in the UK.

 

People do not realise how the cost of property impacts the cost of everything. Supermarkets, cinemas, pubs etc all have some of their costs driven by development and building costs and this is passed on to consumers in higher prices. The combination of this plus overpriced housing reduces everyone's standard of living. It also drives up taxes. Infrastructure invariably costs way more to build in the UK than elsewhere. The government also spends a fortune on housing benefit which is rising with increasing rents.

 

To fix this I would propose whatever measures necessary, planning is one, to not only encourage house building but all kinds of infrastructure. NIMBYs should not be able to excessively delay wind farms new railways etc. This is costing everyone money.

 

Now lots of people have mortgages audit is dangerous for the economy to have house prices collapse, but if there was a road to gradually reducing the shortage over time by building say 400,000 homes a year you could see house prices and rents rising below inflation over time with people gradually getting better off. It would be a very slow fix, but the problem has been 30 years in the making.

 

 

[AliG]

15 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

That falls under devolved powers and zero to do with the last parliamentary election or any of Labour manifesto pledges. What gets built and how it gets built in Scotland starts and stops at the Scottish parliament.

Yes planning is devolved. The guy is currently the local Labour councillor so does ave some impact on planning issues.

 

Nevertheless, Labour describe this as their "Plan for Britain" and their Scottish manifesto has on it "Planning reform to get Scotland building" It is not unusual for devolved policy to be similar to England and Wales policies. It is Labour policy to ease planning and build more houses everywhere in Britain. There is a good chance that Labour will form the next Scottish government.

 

The point anyway is that politicians are hypocrites. It is clearly Labour policy to encourage building houses, but how many Labour MPs, or for that matter MPs of all parties with similar aspirations to see more houses built, have simultaneously stood for more building on a national level whilst being against specific building on a local level. This use of local planning as a way to canvas votes is the very reason that planning rules have to be changed to reduce local political interference.

[JohnMo]

4 minutes ago, AliG said:

There is a good chance that Labour will form the next Scottish government.

Good chance, but SNP for now

 

5 minutes ago, AliG said:

politicians are hypocrites

They follow party line, and the Whips ensure that. Their personal view has little to do with how they are instructed to vote etc.

 

18 minutes ago, AliG said:

To fix this I would propose whatever measures necessary, planning is one, to not only encourage house building but all kinds of infrastructure. NIMBYs should not be able to excessively delay wind farms new railways etc. This is costing everyone money.

And maybe even bring net migration into some sort of control. We only have an issue because our population has grown so much.

[AliG]

3 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

And maybe even bring net migration into some sort of control. We only have an issue because our population has grown so much.

I don't disagree with that, although the issue existed before this latest debacle made it worse.

 

It is a spectacular failure for the Tories to campaign on reducing net migration only to see it explode under their management.

 

Irrespective of whether you agree with their policies, they campaigned for one thing and achieved the exact opposite and have unsurprisingly been punished for it.

[SteamyTea]

I think part of the problem is that we talk of 'building houses', but we don't define what a house is.

So why not have a population target. Like taxes, the arguement can be over the percentage increase i.e. 1, 3, 5% population grown in your local area. House builders could then do so market research and decide the most likely demographic to move to an area (partly influenced by local trade, commerce, manufacturing, service etc) and build houses that are most suitable.

 

On the local services, as many may have found out, getting a local NHS dentist is just about out of the question. Bur down here, in one of the poorest parts of the old EU, even if we had 5,000 new dentists, a large part of the population cannot afford the basic fees. 

Not sure what to do with that one.

[AliG]

24 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

So why not have a population target.

This is actually part of what caused Brexit If you ask me.

 

The EU insists on all member countries abiding by similar immigration rules.

 

But the UK was seeing some of the fastest population growth in Europe whilst other countries were seeing population declines.

 

Strict adherence to arbitrary rules irrespective of circumstances is never a good idea.

 

The freedom of movement rules could have been modified to take into account population growth targets.

[SteamyTea]

3 minutes ago, AliG said:

This is actually part of what caused Brexit If you ask me.

It worked so well.

What is the saying 'be careful what you wish for'

 

[saveasteading]

Compulsory purchase of the land they claim wasn't commercially viable ( where they built the easy bit). So can't be worth much in CP.

 

I'm thinking of brownfield sites where they build on the easy yard areas, and leave the old railway sheds / factory units / tip areas.

Cleverer designers and contractors than the house builders could do lots of flats and community buildings at decent cost levels.

[joe90]

Planning is a bit like the immigration problem, not enough planners to do things quickly and not enough gov staff to deal with those awaiting decisions on being able to stay. (Hotel costs for those waiting years on a decision). Both needs investment from the gov to get the staff numbers. Regarding immigration the money saved on hotels would help pay for the extra staff. Timescales for both need cutting.

[Pocster]

I have all the solutions to everything, bare with me ….

 

prisons . Execute all those mofo’s . That would then be a good incentive to potential future criminals . Those empty prisons ( now ) can be converted into accommodation.

 

Don’t thank me - send money ( PayPal is preferred ) 

Edited July 17 by Pocster

[SteamyTea]

9 hours ago, Pocster said:

Execute all those mofo’s