If it happens, this will be the highest level of housebuilding since the 60s.
It won’t reverse how things currently are, but if it’s sustained, it should help out a lot over time.
I just worry that some people will look at house prices in 4 years, see that they’re obviously not cheap, and then give up entirely/vote in a party that will do nothing. Tackling the issue of decades of low building rates is a significant challange, and housing estates don’t spring up overnight.
I just worry that some people will look at house prices in 4 years, see that they’re obviously not cheap, and then give up entirely/vote in a party that will do nothing. Tackling the issue of decades of low building rates is a significant challange, and housing estates don’t spring up overnight.
Indeed, the political rewards might not come as we’d like, but they have to build anyway, as it’s just the right thing to do!
“I think my experience of 18 years of being an independent parish councillor and a district councillor has demonstrated that the system has utterly failed and government is absolutely incompetent for trying to deliver infrastructure services to local people.”
A typically coherent NIMBY comment, here. ‘The government is terrible at delivering infrastructure. That’s why I’m opposed to the government delivering infrastructure.’
Also notable that 14 of those 18 years were under a Conservative government dedicated to cutting government services and infrastructure.
I don’t think it’s entirely unreasonable. “Infrastructure” in terms of discussing housing developments tends to mean roads, doctors surgeries, shops etc. The things that don’t seem to get built (despite promises) when both green and brownfield sites get cleared and blanketed in suburbs.
There are always some who so deeply NIMBYish that they will oppose anything and everything for the sake of it, and there will never be any appeasing them. But the most common real complaint I hear about new housing is the lack of new services to keep up with the increasing population. If Labour could finally make those kinds of infrastructure commitments really stick to new housing projects I think a lot of NIMBYness would subside.
Most people don’t object to having a few more neighbours, but they do object to feeling they have to fight them for a GP appointment.
The things that don’t seem to get built (despite promises)
But this is flatly untrue. There are laws requiring local authorities to take this into account and they can compel developers to contribute either financially or in-kind. What causes the problems with doctor’s surgeries is not new developments, but austerity, which is why it’s a problem everywhere.
But even aside from austerity, nimbyism significantly contributes to the problems you’ve identified, at the local level both directly and indirectly. E.g., here’s an example of NIMBYs trying to prevent a school building a garden (a direct example). But, it also happens indirectly:
- NIMBYs oppose housing, infrastructure and business development
- Prices rise
- No one can afford housing in the area
- People leave for jobs/houses elsewhere
- Businesses can attract neither investment nor customers, because no one lives there any more, so they shut down, so there are even fewer jobs and more people leave
- The economic case for maintaining existing schools, hospitals and other infrastructure in the area collapses, so they close
- NIMBYS complain that their infrastructure has been shut down and that their high street is terrible
This is the reason that, e.g., many rural schools have shut down. There was a particularly good example within the last year or so of a councillor celebrating preventing a housing development and then, mere weeks later, the very same councillor complaining that the DfE had ordered the local school to be shut down because there weren’t enough children in the village!
EDIT: A further indirect consequence of NIMBYs causing the kinds of problems they claim to oppose is that you simply cannot have economic growth without development. When so much development is blocked and delayed, it leads to less growth, which means government revenue falls, which means less money for development… etc.
But this is flatly untrue. There are laws requiring local authorities to take this into account and they can compel developers to contribute either financially or in-kind.
There have been multiple developments in my own area where the initial proposals included service provisions alongside major housing. But for each one the infrastructure commitments get dropped but the houses go up anyway.
We may well have laws on the books that are supposed to address this, but they do not seem to be working.
What causes the problems with doctor’s surgeries is not new developments but austerity, which is why it’s a problem everywhere.
I agree austerity is also a problem, and it has to be addressed to make provision for community infrastructure.
We must have a carrot and stick approach to this issue. It’s not unreasonable for people to object to their communities being turned into giant dormitories. If they can’t make that heard at local planning committees they will make it heard at the ballot box. Labour’s reforms will do no good if they are all undone in a backlash at the next election.
Whatever the underlying reasons, service infrastructure must be delivered alongside housing commitments. It’s the only way to ensure this shift will be politically sustainable. I am not convinced that only increasing housing supply will itself attract infrastructure development later. It’s not really doing so in my own community.
It’s not unreasonable for people to object to their communities being turned into giant dormitories.
Counterpoint: yes it is. All communities are full of houses that are empty for a lot of the time while people go to work elsewhere. My road in inner-city London is exactly like this. The ‘dormitories’ meme is just another NIMBY talking point, I’m afraid, which makes no sense at all. What are we going to do, forbid people to work outside of ‘their communities’ (whatever that means)?
Leave the green belt alone, build on golf courses. It’s a shit sport that toffs use to run private business meetings and uses far too much land.
A lot of the ‘green’ belt is golf courses. Also, a lot of it isn’t really all that green, certainly not if ‘green’ means something other than the colour (like ‘biodiverse’, for example). It’s very often low-quality, inaccessible, economically unproductive land that would be much better off with people living on it.
I didn’t know that, thanks. I was under the impression that green belt meant somewhat wild, not monocultures of grass and a couple of ornate trees
Yep, part of the difficulty is that people have a very inaccurate picture of what the ‘green belt’ looks like. When the green belts were drawn (70 years ago!), they inevitably included some already developed land which now can’t be redeveloped. As a result, it currently includes not only low-quality ‘green’ spaces but in some cases car parks, disused petrol stations, dumping grounds next to railway sidings - it’s ridiculous.
For what it’s worth, “green belt” can be quite a misnomer.
The name implies luscious countryside and national parks. In reality much of it is unproductive fields, disused ‘farmland’, etc.
Misleading people with what “green belt” means is a typical tactic amongst NIMBYs.
Cheers for the info. Useful.
My point still stands, fuck golf.
Having not read the article and going by the picture…
Is the first test “what do we do about castles?” because I think that can wait.
Convert the castles into affordable homes, perhaps?
