With a breathtaking lack of understanding of economics, the Council for the Protection of Rural England have claimed that building more houses won't get prices down.
There are two ways to get prices down:
1. Build more houses. And I agree that most new housing could and should be built on "brownfield" sites (rather than on floodplains!), but there is a maximum density in towns and cities as well. The next best place is in the Hallowed Greenbelt. Most people don't seem to know that only 10% - 15% of UK land by surface area is developed, 15% to 20% in the South East incl. Greater London. The Greenbelt does not separate one town from another. It's fields that separate towns from fields.
2. Encourage more efficient use of available housing. Land Value Tax (or a Progressive Property Tax as in Northern Ireland) would encourage people to bring empty homes back into use and would encourage single pensioners to trade down into smaller homes. The proceeds of a fiscally neutral LVT could and should replace Council Tax, Stamp Duty Land Tax, Inheritance Tax and Capital Gains Tax on sales of second homes and investment properties. Two thirds of households would pay the same or less in LVT as they did in Council Tax. A third would pay more, but there would be no SDLT (which costs rich people 4% of the value of their home every time they move) or Inheritance Tax (pensioners would be allowed to roll up LVT at low or no interest until death - unless they live to be a hundred, the rolled up LVT will be much less than IHT would have been).
Is either solution acceptable to the Whining NIMBYs? Nope. The CPRE is a pressure group for rich old people who live in the countryside and want the value of their homes to be kept as high as possible, and damn the rest of us.
*The CPRE qualify for a "Liars" tag but not "Fuckwit", as they know exactly what they are doing.
Forbidden Bible Verses — Genesis 43:24-34
4 hours ago
6 comments:
>>Most people don't seem to know that only 10% - 15% of UK land by surface area is developed, 15% to 20% in the South East incl.<<
But land surface is not the true figure of what can be developed, unless of course you are suggesting developing new cities in the Highlands of Scotland? so too japans population is crowded in the cities as most of the country is inhabitable and most of Australia's population is crowded towards cities.
The problem is not housing per se, its the development that is needed to support it, schools, hospitals, tescos ect.
>>The problem is not housing per se, its the development that is needed to support it, schools, hospitals, tescos etc<<
If you are bulding whole new towns, yes indeed.
If you are just filling in gaps in existing towns and allowing them to expand slightly, then this will all even out. This is hardly a threat to the "countryside" per se.
The number of children is falling so we have over-capacity in school buildings anyway.
And 95% of the cost of the NHS is staffing, they can easily recruit more nurses in hospitals in areas where the population increases.
Tesco can look after themselves.
Ill think you will find that the population is rising mainly due to immigration.
Thus the services, infrastructure, business ect will have to be built or at least expanded to cope with the new levels demanded, regardless be it new or existing towns.
For me the UK has become over populated, and it is effecting the quality of life here, small housing, poor services, expensive cost of living...so ill do my bit to help out and ill be moving back to Perth WA in around 8 to 14 months time.
good luck with sitting on the motorways for half your life.
"the population is rising mainly due to immigration"
True. In fact it's solely to do with (net) immigration.
Best of luck in Perth.
Mark - im still not sold on this, mate.
You say that the South East has only 10% of its surface in housing. That may well be the case.
But i was shocked to discover how busy London and my home town in Surrey had become since we were last over. Traffic was horrendous, everywhere you went it was heaving with people.
Or maybe im just spoilt living in Sydney's Northern Beaches..
Sure Pommy, but it's either build more housing OR introduce LVT. One or t'other.
If you prefer paying LVT to building more housing, that is fine by me. Others might prefer to build more housing, in which ase applying LVT to brownfield sites will do the trick.
Milton Friedman did say it was the "least-bad" tax.
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