Planning reform - presumption in favour of development

[Alex133]

Anyone else been following this?
It seems really worrying that the absolute overriding factor in the Planning Reform proposals will be a presumption in favour of development. Basically this suggests a free for all for developers on pretty much any green field site they fancy. There's a bit of protection for green belt but that isn't very extensive anyway - Wiltshire doesn't even have any.  A good local plan provides some protection but that's dependent on having a decent council who have got their act together already. Ordinary people (i.e. us lot) may have some say but only in the detail of a development not in it actually being allowed. This site gives a lot of background info if you want to know more - www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/hands-off-our-land/

[Alex133]

[betula]

I wonder what will happen?

Our Allotment is a field owned by a farmer and he is about to open a second field due to huge demand............would someone like him be so keen if he could build ??

Also heard that my old Allotment ,always under threat as owned by a builder,now has a planning application in :(

[Chrispy]

We are obsessed in this country with our houses and gardens.
If we built more apartments like they seem to do in the rest of Europe (4-5 levels, not the high rise horrors) then we could fit more people in, everybody could have more space for less money and there would be more land for communal open spaces, including allotments.

Instead of this we get developers building tiny houses with tiny rooms and tiny gardens on every tiny plot of land they can find.

We don't need more lax planning rules, we need a major rethink about housing in this country.

Chrispy in the crowded SE

[OllieC]

I was trying to read my way through this article the other day. What it does well is cite it's sources... a bit boring though!

http://www.monbiot.com/2011/09/05/terra-nullius/

I was reading it because last week a local councillor told me I was talking men's bits when I said it would just mean developers building where they like. Supposedly towns with a clear plan (like we apparently have in Guildford) will be fine. Time will tell, I guess.

[Ellen K]

It's the Tories desperately trying to stimulate any economic activity to pull us out of the recession.

At any price it would seem.

[manicscousers]

God help us in Wigan, then, they've been doing this for years and not putting in new roads, they're grid locked every day  :-\

[Chrispy]

Supposedly towns with a clear plan (like we apparently have in Guildford) will be fine.

We have very clear plans, in colour and everything, but there seems to be a wide gap between what is planned and what actually happens.

[OllieC]

Can we keep this on topic please? I've moved the stuff on immigration - it's nothing to do with planning law.

[djbrenton]

Well said Ollie.

[lincsyokel2]

a link to where its been moved to would be nice, i cant find it.............

[ACE]

Bring it on. When I got this place  I had in mind of selling the house and land at a later date for some shoebox housing. Now it should be easier to rip out the orchard and build a couple of blocks of flats. LOADS OF MONEY.

[Alex133]

It's a good article OllieC, but worrying. I have a horrible feeling that this reform will be waved through and we'll end up with pathetically little say for ordinary people, and not much even competent councils can do against rampant development by landowners and developers whose only concern is profit, and who are the only ones with enough resources to keep on and on until they get their own way.

[Unwashed]

I'm not completely up on the detail, but I broadly support the idea.

I believe that people should be able to afford to buy a home to live in, and that means starter homes around £30k, and family homes around £50k.  It would be perfectly possible to build them for that in a free market if the planning system were to be substantially abandoned.

It's the restrictive planning system that creates the planning up-lift - a plot without planning might be worth 1k as farmland, with planning it's worth £100k.  A bonus if you're successful in your prospecting, but at an apalling social cost.

And with a restriction of supply also inflates the cost of a home.  Again, a bonus if your granny pops her clogs and you inherit, but at what cost to the mortgaged generation - we're happy to blame bankers for the mortgage crisis, but the cause of the crisis was actually unsustainable borrowing.

So I would welcome a presumption in favour of development because it would knock the bottom out of the land-speculation market and fuel a building boom which would flood the market and collapse the house-price bubble.  The government would need to step in and buy back the negative equity that the state regulation originally created, and after that it would be a free market.

Of course, a presumption in favour of development doesn't mean you can build anything anywhere.  It would be easy enough to create style guides and zone areas so as to maintain some kind of town planning.

Anyroad, isn't it a presumption in favour of sustainable development?

[betula]

Ollie this forum is full of theads that go off topic. ??? ??? ???

[Ellen K]

Why exactly should people be able to buy a house ?  It is quite acceptable to rent, possibly even the norm in some countries.  

It's the fact that there is so much money to be made that drives development - if prices drop so will the number of planning applications.  Sadly, I don't think house prices are ever going to return to their 1960s values, too many people have got too much invested in the system is it is now.

[OllieC]

Ollie this forum is full of theads that go off topic. ??? ??? ???

There's straying off topic and then there's hijacking a thread to make your own political point, winding people up in the process. This was the latter.

[pumkinlover]

I would like to see far more done to use empty houses which are just left to go to rack and ruin.  Some houses remain empty for years and decades and nothing seems to happen to them.
IMHO house price boom was caused by estate agents telling people there houses were worth more and more- which made them more profit and fed an upward spiral.
The housing market is pushed upwards because if a mortgagee defaults and the house has to be sold the building society want to sell it on again at enough profit to cover their costs.
The whole system works (or not) dependant on house price inflation, Maggie T. sold off the council house so they became part of the profiteering system and now there is nothing at a reasonable price.

We need to look at ways of improving the housing stock we have, and using the many empty houses, oh and stop building so many bl.....y shopping arcades or malls whatever you call them now.
Crikey a rant :-[

[betula]

Like everything it is supply and demand..............if everyone stopped buying watch those prices fall.

[lincsyokel2]

Why exactly should people be able to buy a house ?  It is quite acceptable to rent, possibly even the norm in some countries.  

because

1. they have a right to choose. This is a democracy, isnt it? Who are you or anyone else to say im not allowed to own property ?

2. house owning stimulate house building which stimulates the economy, which is good for everyone as it creates jobs.

[Ellen K]

Sure, people should be able to afford a decent home nobody is arguing any different - but that doesn't mean they need to buy it.

It is this British obsession with owning a house that has driven up prices in the first place.

And the Buy-To-Let boom has distorted it even further.

Edited to add: my original comment replied to UW's post about how house prices must come down several fold so that everyone could afford to buy.  I'm not denying the right to buy, nor that house prices shouldn't fall, just that one should drive the other.