Housebuilding targets scrapped

These people are a disgrace. We have top down restrictions on housebuilding and now have removed any top down targets.

Can we just get one thing straight, there is not enough brownfield land available to deliver the houses we need.
 
Straight from the Mouths Horse:

Government ambitions for new housing supply​


In their 2019 election manifestos, all the main political parties included commitments to increase housing supply in England.
The Conservative manifesto pledged to “continue to increase the number of homes being built” and referred to a need to rebalance the housing market towards more home ownership. It said progress towards a target of 300,000 homes per year by the mid-2020s would continue, which would “see us build at least a million more homes, of all tenures, over the next Parliament.”


Both the Public Accounts (PDF) and Housing, Communities and Local Government Committees have sought greater clarity on how the target of 300,000 housing units a year will be met and why this number was chosen.
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How much new housing is needed?​

It’s difficult to put a precise number on the amount of new housing needed in England.
Need for new housing arises when population growth leads to new households forming, but other factors also have an effect. There’s a backlog of need among people currently living in unsuitable accommodation, and affordability pressures can prevent people accessing the housing they need.
According to one estimate commissioned by the National Housing Federation (NHF) and Crisis from Heriot-Watt University, around 340,000 new homes need to be supplied in England each year, of which 145,000 should be affordable.

When people are unable to access suitable housing it can result in overcrowding, more young people living with their parents for longer, impaired labour mobility, which makes it harder for businesses to recruit staff, and increased levels of homelessness.
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[https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn01013/]


www.dailymail.co.uk

Homeless former soldier died as he slept on the streets of Edinburgh

Ex-squaddie Darren Greenfield, 47, who fell on hard times after leaving the Army, died on the streets of Edinburgh just a week before Christmas.
www.dailymail.co.uk www.dailymail.co.uk
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They build out and out on Greenfield sites and the inner cities and town centres are just left to rot. Then they wonder why the high streets are dying.
 
The tories are the rentier class. Many of their MPs and cronies are landlords. The last thing they want is affordable, available housing for the drones.
 
The rising and high cost of housing is causing all sorts of problems in our economy. Its been allowed to become a problem by many Governements in the last 33 years, because there are more voters who own property than the otrher way round imo.

A shortage of property to buy and/or rent has pushed up property prices and rents.

If rents say go up by 7.5% a year and wages by 2.5% as has happened in recent years, you don't need Einstein to see after 10 years there is a major problem where people are paying £900 per month to rent a modest house in an average area of the UK and its taking over 50% of their take home income. Hence they may have to visit food banks despite having a full time job. They may leave expensive areas to rent, leaving major labour shortages in low paying sectors such as social care, hence care homes struggle to cope and this knocks on to Hospital A & Es.

The UK population is rising by around 550,000 a year, we need to build around 185,000 new properties just for the population increase, never mind replace demolished properties, increase in holiday/second homes, people wanting properties with more space etc. Most properties are not built on what many people consider countryside, many are on brownfield sites or plain farmland that would be single mono crop supporting virtually no wildlife that borders existing developments. In the last ten years we have built about 140,000 new properties a year, in the 1960s it was 300,000 when we had a smaller population.

As BMart says building land is so expensive the house builders claw money back by reducing build quality, as a generalisation.
 
asredastheycome said:
They build out and out on Greenfield sites and the inner cities and town centres are just left to rot. Then they wonder why the high streets are dying.
Click to expand...
Surely the high street is dying due to shopping habits -- online, supermarkets and shopping Malls
 
asredastheycome said:
They build out and out on Greenfield sites and the inner cities and town centres are just left to rot. Then they wonder why the high streets are dying.
Click to expand...
I don't think that's the reason for the demise of the High Street.

How many cities have allowed their central areas to rot, not many I can think of but there's a lot I haven't visited. Newcastle, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool etc have all seen redevelopment to their central areas.

We need to let the region's make their own decisions on social housing. If our local councils think it's worthwhile building properties owned by the local authority and rented out then we should be able to do that. The income from them could then be used to employ tradesmen to maintain them and more gardeners, park keepers etc to tend for the parks and green spaces, create safe spaces for our youngsters to play.
 
thewanderer said:
People want a nice house with garden in a nice area. Nothing wrong with that.
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For me its about having new estates with houses with gardens, but also having urban housing such as flats too. In Middlesbrough for example there is limited new quality accommodation near the town centre, that is not for students. New housing appears more to be on the outskirts. South Bank in the main has been demolished with very little in place to replace it, with some new housing built at the top of Flatts Lane - 3.5 miles away. I am not saying this is wrong but it what has happened. My guess with South Bank the residents were happy to move 3.5 miles away and people have moved out for at least 60 years.

Strangely enough a recent trend is for town gardens in quite large houses on new estates in the last 15 years. A town garden is really a large patio to me. Its not somewhere you can go out and kick a ball around in. A town garden cuts down on maintenance and more importantly reduces the footprint of the property, so more properties can be fitted onto modern estates.
 
ThePrisoner said:
The tories are the rentier class. Many of their MPs and cronies are landlords. The last thing they want is affordable, available housing for the drones.
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I agree a good number of Tory MPs are landlords, but they also want people to own property for political voting reasons hence all the subsidies thrown at the housing market to get new buyers on the ladder, which in my opinion inflate prices.

Currently they are fightened of traditional Tories voting against them because they had plans to build tens of thousands of new houses in the Home counties and affluent rural seats outside the SE. Recent by elections results in such seats in relatively heavy defeats. Conservative Councillors often block new developments and even Conservative MPs join in, but in Parliament complain about lack of new housing in the UK!
 
Corcaigh_the_Cat said:
I don't think that's the reason for the demise of the High Street.

How many cities have allowed their central areas to rot, not many I can think of but there's a lot I haven't visited. Newcastle, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool etc have all seen redevelopment to their central areas.

We need to let the region's make their own decisions on social housing. If our local councils think it's worthwhile building properties owned by the local authority and rented out then we should be able to do that. The income from them could then be used to employ tradesmen to maintain them and more gardeners, park keepers etc to tend for the parks and green spaces, create safe spaces for our youngsters to play.
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Don't disagree with this, but it will still need radical changes to the planning act to ensure the supply of land for building on is available.
 

How many empty homes are there in the UK?​

Campaigners are calling for government action on rising numbers of long-term empty properties across the country
Liam Geraghty
25 Nov 2022
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Extract:

According to the most recent government council taxbase figures released in November 2022, there are 257,331 homes in England that are classed as long-term empty homes. This means that they have been left vacant for more than six months.

That is a rise of 20,000 compared to the previous year and the highest level in over a decade, outside the height of the pandemic.

Chris Bailey, national campaign manager for AEH, said: “After more than a decade of intense housing crisis it is shocking to see long-term empty homes in England rise to 257,331 – another 20,000 more wasted empties, while nearly 100,000 families are trapped in temporary accommodation, costing the nation over one and a half billion pounds a year.

“A new national empty homes programme is long overdue – government needs to step up to the plate and offer funding and incentives to get these homes back into use.

“Long-term empties are a huge missed opportunity to invest in green retrofit and create new jobs.”

Generally, the number of long-term empty homes has increased in the last few years. Empty homes were at the lowest point in the last decade back in 2016 when there were just over 200,000 properties left vacant. Since then that figure has risen by 20 per cent.

AEH’s most recent research – the Nobody Home report – found one in three homes in London’s financial centre are empty, many left to appreciate in value on the housing market.

While the City of London came out on top, Kensington and Chelsea – the borough where the Grenfell Tower disaster happened in 2017 – followed with one in eight homes left unoccupied.

AEH’s Will McMahon said: “With at least 100,000 homes with no permanent residents it’s time for action. That means getting to grips with the 30,000 long-term empty homes in the capital, controls on Airbnb, and support for local communities that want the low-cost homes Londoners need, not more of the ones they can’t afford or never even get a chance to rent.”

www.bigissue.com

How many empty homes are there in the UK? - The Big Issue

Campaigners and local councils are calling for government action on rising numbers of long-term empty homes across the UK
www.bigissue.com www.bigissue.com
 
r00fie1 said:

How many empty homes are there in the UK?​

Campaigners are calling for government action on rising numbers of long-term empty properties across the country
Liam Geraghty
25 Nov 2022
View attachment 48940
Extract:

According to the most recent government council taxbase figures released in November 2022, there are 257,331 homes in England that are classed as long-term empty homes. This means that they have been left vacant for more than six months.

That is a rise of 20,000 compared to the previous year and the highest level in over a decade, outside the height of the pandemic.

Chris Bailey, national campaign manager for AEH, said: “After more than a decade of intense housing crisis it is shocking to see long-term empty homes in England rise to 257,331 – another 20,000 more wasted empties, while nearly 100,000 families are trapped in temporary accommodation, costing the nation over one and a half billion pounds a year.

“A new national empty homes programme is long overdue – government needs to step up to the plate and offer funding and incentives to get these homes back into use.

“Long-term empties are a huge missed opportunity to invest in green retrofit and create new jobs.”

Generally, the number of long-term empty homes has increased in the last few years. Empty homes were at the lowest point in the last decade back in 2016 when there were just over 200,000 properties left vacant. Since then that figure has risen by 20 per cent.

AEH’s most recent research – the Nobody Home report – found one in three homes in London’s financial centre are empty, many left to appreciate in value on the housing market.

While the City of London came out on top, Kensington and Chelsea – the borough where the Grenfell Tower disaster happened in 2017 – followed with one in eight homes left unoccupied.

AEH’s Will McMahon said: “With at least 100,000 homes with no permanent residents it’s time for action. That means getting to grips with the 30,000 long-term empty homes in the capital, controls on Airbnb, and support for local communities that want the low-cost homes Londoners need, not more of the ones they can’t afford or never even get a chance to rent.”

www.bigissue.com

How many empty homes are there in the UK? - The Big Issue

Campaigners and local councils are calling for government action on rising numbers of long-term empty homes across the UK
www.bigissue.com www.bigissue.com
Click to expand...
That's less than 1% of the housing stock, just shows how bad our housing shortage really is. You can't have a functioning market if there is nowhere for people to move too!

Just for info, Burnley is the place with the highest vacant property rate however this is still lower than Paris!
 
I live in a semi rural area/West yorks and the place I live has grown enormously over the past 10 years. Problem is - roads, facilities, schoools etc were not upgraded.
It's fine building houses but there is hardly ever a plan to accomodate the infrastructure. The main objective is developers making $$$$$$
 
Wiseman_Vaughn said:
I live in a semi rural area/West yorks and the place I live has grown enormously over the past 10 years. Problem is - roads, facilities, schoools etc were not upgraded.
It's fine building houses but there is hardly ever a plan to accomodate the infrastructure. The main objective is developers making $$$$$$
Click to expand...
That's no different to Teesside. New builds are flying up on greenfield sites without infrastructure development. No shops, no schools and no public transport to access those that have to be used.
 
thewanderer said:
That's less than 1% of the housing stock, just shows how bad our housing shortage really is. You can't have a functioning market if there is nowhere for people to move too!

Just for info, Burnley is the place with the highest vacant property rate however this is still lower than Paris!
Click to expand...
Its something people dont automatically think about. London, for instance, has a huge number of empty properties, second and third homes of millionaires - left to rot away. The issue is that the value of land in London has increased exponentially more than in any other part of the UK. Big investyors from abroad spend millions acquiring land for offices and buying up ex social-housing stock for demolition and rebuilding. There are thousands of empty square-feet of office space in the City and Central London - but reduced income is offset by increasing value.

Places like Middlesbrough, Hartlepool, Burnley, have higher indices of relative deprivation - the lack of jobs, poor infrastructure and lack of available skilled workers, means that properties are under-used or left empty. The issue is clearly a complicated one.

As for our housing stock. Since Thatcher - the biggest issue is that over 2,000,000 of social housing stock has been hived off into the housing "market" - providing cheap housing for rogue landlords to buy up cheaply and rent them out to tennants - often supported by housing benefits. So, not only are local people being deprived of access to affordable decent housing to rent, but the public purse is paying money into private pockets. With the "Right to buy" still legal, there is no incentive for Local Councils to build Social Housing, because it is still subsidising the housing "market". Many local authorities have had to buy-back decaying and abandoned former social-housing properties. In places like the Birchfield Estate in Walsall, there has been a major attempt to turn round the dereliction and deprivation - not least the number of abandoned former council-owned homes. Its appalling that public housing stock should be gifted to the private "market" at give away prices and years later, local councils are having to spend public money, buying back those properties in a poor state.

I`l give an example: Nottingham used to have 65% of its housing stock in Local Authority ownership. This was good quality housing stock - with green spaces, gardens and facilities for local residents including schools, local GP surgeries and health services and good local transport. Nottingham now has over 9000 people on the waiting list - many are families with children and dependents. Although Nottingham City Council has attempted to build houses, the number of properties is a drop in the ocean. The council budget has been slashed by the Tory Government to the tune of over £100,000,000 per year. What is required is a Government funded building of new social housing coordinated by local authorities [who know their local needs best] - abolition of the "right to buy" [right to be homeless] and the integration of "Housing Associations" back into Local Authority Housing provision and control. There are brownfield sites available to build, but the local authority has been robbed of finance to invest in those sites to build affordable local housing. Meanwhile, house-builders [Like David Wilson Homes] are building into the "Green belt" on land they bought decades ago and are making millions on what they paid for it.

This Government wont change direction [because it values what people can afford - not what they need], so we will see the continuing depreciation of the value of public housing stock, increasing homelessness and over-crowding and increased stae-subsidy [public money] of private landlords. We need to restate the "Decent Homes Standard" and ensure that every exisiting rented home [including the private rented sector] should be up to that standard. Today, "Fit-to-let" is the standard, because many authorities havent trhe finance to upgrade every home to "Decent Homes Standard".

For those who may be interested, this is one particular article in the New Economics Foundation [https://neweconomics.org/] which you may find informative>>>
neweconomics.org

The damaging legacy of right to buy

Boris Johnson wants to extend right to buy to housing associations. But he's ignoring the grave costs of the policy.
neweconomics.org neweconomics.org
 
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