From the FT:
Mr Pickles laid an order in parliament last week formally to revoke regional strategies, enabling councils to ignore the regional housing targets. “Communities (1) will no longer have to endure the previous government’s failed Soviet-style top-down planning targets: they were a terrible, expensive, time-consuming way to impose housebuilding (2) and, worst of all, threatened the destruction of the Green Belt (3),” he said.
1) Are young people who would love planning regulations to be relaxed so that they too can afford a house not part of 'the community'? Or are they just so much cannon fodder for the Home-Owner-Ist wealth-destruction machine?
2) Sure, it was an expensive and time-consuming way of getting housing built. But why was it so 'expensive and time-consuming', exactly? Was it not the self-same NIMBYs - to whom the fat bastard is now pandering - who made it 'expensive and time-consuming' by taking every last planning approval to the last round of appeals?
As to 'Soviet-style', why is preventing economic activity from taking place any less Soviet-style than allowing supply to increase to meet demand?
3) Why is it acceptable for politicians to lie like this? At current building rates, it would take us centuries to fully develop The Hallowed Greenbelt - not 'destroy', it, please note, but 'develop' it, or "use it in such a manner as to create more happiness and help the economy" as I'd like to put it. And even if the entire Hallowed Greenbelt (currently covering about one-eighth of the UK) were developed, that would still leave more than three-quarters of the UK surface area as farmland or completely undeveloped.
Monday, 12 July 2010
Not until long after you are dead you fat, lying bastard
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23 comments:
"even if the entire Hallowed Greenbelt (currently covering about one-eighth of the UK) were developed, that would still leave more than three-quarters of the UK surface area as farmland or completely undeveloped."
Right then, leave the bloody green belt alone and build on the other three quarters.
Well, I'm not sure the "fat" bit is relevant, but other than that, I'm with you on this one!
The regional strategies were just an attempt to paper over the cracks of a completely broken planning system. So good riddance to them - but getting rid of them won't tackle the real issue, as you said.
Mind you, this may actually lead to MORE housebuilding. Local councils usually take their pound of flesh out of any development. If you're a council strapped for cash, letting a builder put up a few hundred houses in exchange for contributing to local amenities is very tempting. So Mr Pickles may yet be surprised by the outcome of this.
I am not sure that Pickles is all you say he is. he's probably just a product of his environment like we all are, to a greater or lesser extent.
Mind you, I agree generally about the dysfunctional planning, aka land rationing, system. But if you are going to liberalise it there are a couple of other things you must also do. One run sound money, and two change the balance of taxation away from work and capital and onto land (or have we already covered that elsewhere?).
Lola,
"run sound money"
I hope you're working on a strategy for this one.
D, so your answer is to build dormitory towns in the middle of nowhere with very long commutes to where the jobs are? Remind me again, where is your daughter supposed to live?
AC, I suppose it's possible that it will lead to more house building, but it would be nice if this were done primarily with the interests of young families and workers (and indeed employers) in mind and not those of "cash-strapped councils".
L, yes of course, if we rejigged the tax system, it would all sort itself out and we'd suddenly find we needed hardly any new houses, and certainly very little 'greenfield' development, i.e. we'd use urban land more efficiently.
TT, Lola is Financial Services Minister in my Bloggers Cabinet and for a start he will shut down FSA and Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee. That will do for Week One.
You actually have ministers in your fantasy cabinet?
So far all I've made my mind up on is lining up one of my old school chums for the new 'Office of the Inquisitor in Chief'.
He was over the moon, didn't stop cackling for well over a minute.
SL, yes of course, most of them accepted quite graciously (but a couple never bothered). I'm also happy to say that I'm Chancellor of the Exchequer in a couple of other bloggers' cabinets.
MW. Actually I'm going to do that on the Monday morning of day one and then give myself the afternoon off to spend time luxuriating in the anticipation of what I'm going to do on Tuesday morning.
Trooper Thompson. Ooohhh yes.
I know it is sacrilege to say so, but there is plenty of cheap housing on the market, even within the gravitational orbit of London.
Newish-build two-bed flats for sixty grand? Cheap, if you ask me.
We can resolve our perceived shortage AND keep most of the land green quite simply and cheaply. But only if local councils are allowed to innovate.
Three cheers for Mr Pickles.
What we need is for those currently in housing pay who don't want the greenbelt developed to pay for excluding those people who want to develop the green belt.
Has anyone got a way to do this? :)
adamcollyer,
Mind you, this may actually lead to MORE housebuilding. Local councils usually take their pound of flesh out of any development. If you're a council strapped for cash, letting a builder put up a few hundred houses in exchange for contributing to local amenities is very tempting. So Mr Pickles may yet be surprised by the outcome of this.
The problem is that in the areas where we need housing the most (the home counties), this won't add up. A council like Bracknell Forest has few costs and is stuffed full of rich people with houses that they paid a premium for because they live in a semi-rural location.
Now, we could keep on tacking onto the outskirts of places like Slough where the LVT impact would be small, but that hardly seems very fair when their population density is already 3 times what Bracknell Forest is.
Blue Eyes,
I know it is sacrilege to say so, but there is plenty of cheap housing on the market, even within the gravitational orbit of London.
Newish-build two-bed flats for sixty grand? Cheap, if you ask me.
We can resolve our perceived shortage AND keep most of the land green quite simply and cheaply. But only if local councils are allowed to innovate.
Right. Where are these mythical 60K flats? A 1 bed apartment in an OK part of Swindon is £110K.
We can't all live in the country and work in the city, otherwise where "we" live is no longer "the country" and becomes a suburb. Much of the attraction of the Green Belt over the suburbs is precisely because it's the Green Belt. Turn it into the suburbs and that attraction, to both home owners and developers, is lost. There is little evidence for housing bubbles being deflated by increasing the supply of houses and quite a lot against. If you risk ending up replacing the Green Belt with square miles of expensive suburban houses that no-one really wants, at which point you can't really go back to square one.
South East London, less than an hour from Charing Cross. Not mythical, just not fashionable to the masochists and foolhardy who actually seem to enjoy spending half their lives on trains, probably so that they can spend the other half moaning about it.
BE, go on, track one down on Rightmove and post the link.
AC1, yes, me sir!
B, I personally am indifferent as to where people live, as long as they can live where they want. LVT would discourage development in inappropriate places as much as it would encourage development in more appropriate places.
As a matter of fact, most people (including me) prefer the suburbs - the staunchest defenders of The Hallowed Greenbelt are people who live in the outer suburbs and not farmers or ag. workers.
bayard,
There is little evidence for housing bubbles being deflated by increasing the supply of houses and quite a lot against.
I'd like to see your evidence. Normal economics would say otherwise: that increasing supply to meet demand lowers prices.
But this isn't just about bubbles. I don't like the idea that a 1 bed flat in Swindon costs £110K at the bottom of a housing slump.
JT, be careful here.
In the long run, you must be right, but the real life example of Ireland shows that building like topsy does not dampen a bubble once it has started; interest rates and speculative fever are far more important factors.
In that case you end up with ghost estates that should never have been built (the worst of all worlds); and even where there is demand for new flats, it is not enough to build them, you have to have a tax system that ensures that the owners actually live there or let them out, rather than leaving them vacant to make speculative gains.
See also: people in rural or tourist areas who can't afford to buy while surrounded by holiday homes that are only used for a few weeks a year.
PS, we are far from the bottom of the housing slump; either in terms of future percentage price falls or in months and years.
"D, so your answer is to build dormitory towns in the middle of nowhere": where I live, you could spare the green belt by building on land less than two miles away. In one case, less than half a mile away, and that actually nearer to the city centre.
D, you might care mainly about the fields at the back of your garden, but that is not 'the green belt'.
The green belt is in fact slightly larger than the total developed area, and stretches for miles in each direction.
If you mean building more in the suburbs, then the NIMBYs in the suburbs refer to this as 'garden grabbing' and bat the problem elsewhere.
And if you mean building on old factory sites, then other NIMBYs wail about 'pressure on local services'. Which is also bollocks, as those services are provided by people - as long as the corresponding proportion of newcomers are nurses, teachers, coppers, dustbin men, it all sorts itself out.
Mark, I don't doubt what you say about Ireland. Bubbles can get out of control.
See also: people in rural or tourist areas who can't afford to buy while surrounded by holiday homes that are only used for a few weeks a year.
But the problem in many of those areas is planning. The Nailsworth/Stroud area has lots of weekend homes for city people, and locals can't buy around there, yet there's plenty of land to build on.
JT, yes, with tourist areas it has heart-breakingly to do with planning restrictions. But the present owners act out of naked self-interest - we know what kind of tax would give them the kick they need...
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