A Million New Homes by 2020

[Lord Tyrion]

Surely Northumberland isn't full.

No, but we are flooding nicely. There are huge empty parts of Northumberland but they don't want to build there. They want to build in the nice towns, ruining them by over over building, too much congestion etc and increase the flood risk by building on empty fields that used to absorb the rain.

They need to think more about the type of properties needed, lots of single people now in this land of divorce, renovating terraces, city centres etc rather than simply buidling more and more in green areas. Only more flooding and a reduction in quality of life will come of this idiocy.

 

[Rooter]

My town has already started, just in the final planning stages of 2000 houses to built near where i currently live. The road infrastructure will buckle and will be carnage. They have committed to build new schools, doctors surgery etc as part of it though. Its going around ancient woodland in the towns greenbelt.

 

[jp5]

Why this utter and absolute obsession over home ownership?

Do you own your home?

I'd say the desire to be a homeowner comes down to:

1. Preparing for the future - someone that owns their own home is likely to be in a stronger position in retirement than someone that needs to continue paying rent.
2. Stability - many people are vulnerable to the whim of their landlord to increase rent / repossess the house. Especially with young children attending local schools, it's not a nice worry to have.
3. Building a home - whether it be decorating or owning a pet, when owning your house you can make it a home. I'd not be surprised if people felt a better sense of community amongst homeowners than renters, knowing that they are committed to the local area.

 

[fundy]

My town has already started, just in the final planning stages of 2000 houses to built near where i currently live. The road infrastructure will buckle and will be carnage. They have committed to build new schools, doctors surgery etc as part of it though. Its going around ancient woodland in the towns greenbelt.

View attachment 18058

2000? They call that a small infill site in Milton Keynes lol

All well and good political parties telling us what houses are needed but they need to look at the whole process from smart to finish to address the full implications.

Where is the skilled labour needed just going to appear from? Are the banks going to lend the required money to developers? What infrastructure improvements/additions are needed (and should be done in advance!) What impact does the development have on surrounding area. What type of housing is needed? How much needs to be affordable housing and on what basis etc etc

Or you can just pull a number out of the air which looks quite similar to how much you are missing your own immigration targets by

 

[jp5]

That is a load of rubbish. Immigrants are not the problem, the problem is a combination of factors including the dramatic fall in council home building, the explosion of second homes and unoccupied properties, the downturn in the economy which reduced private house building and as pointed out by someone else, more middle aged and older single dwellers. This is not a small country. There is plenty of room, and we need more young people working and paying tax to fund public services. The Tories have lied before about house building plans. No reason to believe this isn't just an even bigger lie.

~1.2million people have come to this country over the past 5 years - 330,000 this past year alone. Is that sustainable?

 

[Sweep]

Not really sure why the government has to directly commission 13,000 new homes to be built over 5 sites. If these homes were so badly needed, surely the construction companies would be falling over themselves to build and no government intervention would be required.
A million homes by 2020? On a reasonable calculation, that is homes for 2 million people. My question would be, where are these 2 million people now? My fear is that a lot of land will be CPO'd for housing and the construction companies won't build, because housing on this scale will not be required.
National and regional governments have to understand that this isn't free council tax. Every single person living in these homes needs investment in schools, hospitals, surgeries, roads, electricity, gas, drains, sewers...... There is simply no point in planning new homes without first planning and implementing vastly improved infrastructure, especially bearing in mind the infrastructure we have now can barely cope.

 

[Lord Tyrion]

Rooter - The market town where I live has committed to the same amount of new builds as yours, around 2,000. The infrastructure is not there, roads, doctors, school places, parking etc but the local council stated that once the house have been built and the shortfall recognised then they will look to improve the situation. You can't beat a bit of forward planning. Deeply depressing.

 

[Rooter]

Rooter - The market town where I live has committed to the same amount of new builds as yours, around 2,000. The infrastructure is not there, roads, doctors, school places, parking etc but the local council stated that once the house have been built and the shortfall recognised then they will look to improve the situation. You can't beat a bit of forward planning. Deeply depressing.

thats the problem here, its an old town that is dissected by a canal, a river and a railway line. Between 10AM and 5PM there are 2 ways to cross it. One of those will be closed for 12 months due to the electrification of the railway line. They closed it for 5 months pre xmas and it was carnage. Add a possible 4000 cars to the morning commute and its screwed. Iat its worst, it took me an hour to get to one side of town to the other, thats about 2 miles maximum... There is talk of ANOTHER Newbury Bypass... Has anyone got Swampy's number? he might be back!

 

[Hacker Khan]

Do we need a million homes in four years? Is there a million families looking for homes now ? Or in four years time ? Will it end in four years time the need to build any more houses? When the homes are filled will we need more homes for a larger population ? when does house building actually stop?

Well it's been going on since Ugg the caveman thought his existing cave was a bit small for his expanding family and fancied a new gaff with a little more space and made out of dirt and animal hides . So I doubt it will be stopping soon.

 

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

Do you own your home?

I'd say the desire to be a homeowner comes down to:

1. Preparing for the future - someone that owns their own home is likely to be in a stronger position in retirement than someone that needs to continue paying rent.
2. Stability - many people are vulnerable to the whim of their landlord to increase rent / repossess the house. Especially with young children attending local schools, it's not a nice worry to have.
3. Building a home - whether it be decorating or owning a pet, when owning your house you can make it a home. I'd not be surprised if people felt a better sense of community amongst homeowners than renters, knowing that they are committed to the local area.

...and all those young folk in continental Europe for whom renting is how it is - they don't have similar aspirations that are met by rental accommodation?

If you have a mortgage you have a huge debt. When you rent you don't have any debt. I'd have thought that for younger folks that would be not a bad thing.

Owning a property encourages borrowing on the basis of unrealised equity - and as we know that way lies trouble. Renting you borrow on the basis of what you actually have.

Key to long term rental is realistic and affordable rents and ling term security of tenure. And as far as I can see that can only come either through government setting rental bands or when the owner does not rely upon the rental income to service the borrowing that bought the property in the first place and is not simply in the rental business to buy-let and then sell at a profit. Long term tenancy should enable those renting to do decoration etc to their own tastes and as and when they want - and provide the long term security for having children at school.

I'm only asking the question. Many answers (including your own) to 'why ownership and not rental?' are predicated upon the current way we do renting in the the UK - and not how it should be done to meet the requirements you state.

 

[doublebogey7]

Not really sure why the government has to directly commission 13,000 new homes to be built over 5 sites. If these homes were so badly needed, surely the construction companies would be falling over themselves to build and no government intervention would be required.
A million homes by 2020? On a reasonable calculation, that is homes for 2 million people. My question would be, where are these 2 million people now? My fear is that a lot of land will be CPO'd for housing and the construction companies won't build, because housing on this scale will not be required.
National and regional governments have to understand that this isn't free council tax. Every single person living in these homes needs investment in schools, hospitals, surgeries, roads, electricity, gas, drains, sewers...... There is simply no point in planning new homes without first planning and implementing vastly improved infrastructure, especially bearing in mind the infrastructure we have now can barely cope.

They've not been born yet, they are living overseas or they are homeless. The UK population grew by around 500,000 in 2015 and ther are around 30,000 registered as homeless. On top of that you can add those living with friends or relatives who would rather have their own pad and it is clear that the Government committment is insufficient.
As far as infrastructure is concerned there is no denying that there are problems, though increased building does not create a bigger problem as the people to fill the houses will be here anyway.
The real problem of course is that if we are ever to have sufficient housing for our needs, then house prices will go down(supply and demand). That is not seen to be in the interests of the economy and is most definately against the interests of builders and land owners.

 

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

Not really sure why the government has to directly commission 13,000 new homes to be built over 5 sites. If these homes were so badly needed, surely the construction companies would be falling over themselves to build and no government intervention would be required.
A million homes by 2020? On a reasonable calculation, that is homes for 2 million people. My question would be, where are these 2 million people now? My fear is that a lot of land will be CPO'd for housing and the construction companies won't build, because housing on this scale will not be required.
National and regional governments have to understand that this isn't free council tax. Every single person living in these homes needs investment in schools, hospitals, surgeries, roads, electricity, gas, drains, sewers...... There is simply no point in planning new homes without first planning and implementing vastly improved infrastructure, especially bearing in mind the infrastructure we have now can barely cope.

You only putting an average of 2 folks in every home? I'd have thought new homes would be built for couples and families. Singletons don't need new houses. So I'm guessing that 1,000,000 homes would house more like 3.5 million people.

Anyway - given the Tories want to slash immigration and slash the deficit to zero over the same timescales - who is going to build these 1,000,000 houses and who is paying?

 

[ger147]

The current average number of people per UK household is 2.4 according to the ONS.

 

[Doon frae Troon]

~1.2million people have come to this country over the past 5 years - 330,000 this past year alone. Is that sustainable?

Do you know how many Brits left the UK to become immigrants in other countries ?
Last I heard it was not a great deal different from those inward bound.

 

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

The current average number of people per UK household is 2.4 according to the ONS.

In new houses?

 

[FairwayDodger]

Singletons don't need new houses.

Where do they stay?

 

[Kellfire]

Where do they stay?

In the existing buildings that would be vacated by families moving into more suitable sized living quarters.

 

[Ethan]

We are a small country, the urbans areas are creaking where the existing houses are, to create more housing, means more green belt and park areas becoming built on, which will just increase the flood risk to many areas.

A few years ago when Newcastle was hit bit a massive rain storm, houses which were built on land next to a dene, had to be demolished, this was due to the area being built on. Had there bee no houses the land would have absorbed the deluge, but with it being urbanised the water was concentrated into a torrent, which washed away foundations and left some of the housing unsafe.

Many new estates are being built on land that is liable to flooding, by building on fields that flood, you just bring misery to those who have bought there, misery to others down stream of the flood water as its got to go somewhere.

Forget building on new green field sites, leave the grass green, develop brown field sites, with modern high rises, encourage growth within the cities.

We aren't too small. Plenty of room, just not in Surrey or London. I am not sure one anecdote about flooding in Newcastle says much other than the choice of cut-price land by the developer.

~1.2million people have come to this country over the past 5 years - 330,000 this past year alone. Is that sustainable?

By sustainable, do you mean is it OK if it continues in perpetuity? Probably not, but that isn't going to happen, though.

In the short to medium term, though, not only is is sustainable, it is necessary. Germany is not taking all those Syrians out of the goodness of their teutonic hearts. They are doing it because they have a bad demographic imbalance between older non-working resource consuming people and younger wage earning, tax paying, lower resource consuming people and these immigrants will help redress that. The UK is not quite as bad as Germany, with a higher birth rate, but is on the spectrum. The better birth rate in the UK is largely driven by immigrants.

 

[pendodave]

We can't keep building over our country for ever.

Government should actually plan and govern for a change.

Increase use of existing stock and prevent it being used as an investment vehicle for the wealthy :

- Legislate to allow local authorities to co-opt empty houses/flats.
- Legislate to only allow only allow EU purchasers to residents of 10years or more (including brits, so non-discrimatory. I believe they do this in Copenhagen)

Get control of the population. Its madness to continue on our current path.

- Actually deport people who shouldn't be here.
- Stop non- EU coming in and use EU 'special needs' clauses to stop the entire contents of Eastern Europe rocking up.
- Get a grip of the 'overseas students' nonsense.
- Pay people to have less kids. A lot cheaper than building all the infrastructure required to support them through life.

To paraphrase David Attenborough (national treasure) "There's no problem that wouldn't be more easily solved by reducing the number of people"....

 

[jp5]

Do you know how many Brits left the UK to become immigrants in other countries ?
Last I heard it was not a great deal different from those inward bound.

The 1.2m over 5 years and 330,000 last year are the net figures.

Gross figures for last year were 660,000 in - 330,000 out.