So much to 'direct democracy' and 'the Big Society'. From the BBC:
Government plans to hold local referendums on new housing schemes in England could tear village communities apart, rural campaigners have said.
Oh? And why would they say that?
They say plans to require at least 90% of local people to approve new building schemes in villages would create conflict and bring projects to a halt.
The way I understood the feature on Radio 4 this morning, these new buildings schemes will require 80% approval in the local referendum (not 90%) and that the 80% is not just of people who bother to vote, but in absolute terms - in other words, for anything to ever be approved, the turn-out at the referendum would have to be over eighty per cent, even if only very few of those who turn out to vote actually vote against.
Whichever interpretation is correct, that is the end of that for young English people in villages, or 'rural communities' as they are now known. It's hardly surprising that more and more farm workers are from even poorer countries abroad, is it?
Put On Your Big Boy Pants, Maybe?
29 minutes ago
15 comments:
I have not read the article but this is my initial reaction; is it not a good thing that people can decide whether or not more housing is built in their vicinity?
Correct me where I have gone wrong, as this does clash with your stance.
13S, what this does is make it IMPOSSIBLE for any new housing to ever be built. Game, set and match to the NIMBYs and Home-Owner-Ists. The dream of ever rising house prices is one step closer!!
Ahh; now see there is the problem.
"The former Lib Dem MP Lord Taylor, who chairs the Rural Coalition, said: "On its current course, with no change in policy and no commitment to action, much of the countryside is becoming part dormitory, part theme park and part retirement home."
This>is the main thrust of NIMBYism, the propping up of house prices is a mere unintended consequence.
NIMBYs are almost entirely dormitory dwellers or retired and they want their village to stay in some sort of sanitised bucolic faux-C19th idyll. They don't want the countryside to be somewhere where people work, and they don't want their illusion of living in the past spoiled by new houses, nor do they want the country lanes full of other peoples' cars; they want to be able to drive their SUV to the shops without meeting another.
I think Bayard has hit the nail squarely on the head. But the thing is, if this very unattractive vision is wrong, what are villages for? Come to that, what is the countryside for? Neither the central government nor the local 'planners' seem to have any idea.
The village I live in has been here since the Doomsday Book, once a little collection of small farmers and peasants. In the nineteenth centuary the mining started and the miners needed somewhere to live. None of them left now so it's commuters and pensioners. No more than a handful work on the land, even including the shift to 'horsieculture' that has taken place on the land not run by the industrial farmers.
Agreed the 80% referenda are hopeless and un-necessary but wrenching planning decisions out of the hands of unaccountable 'professionals' is a cracking idea. I know, why not devolve the decisions to elected representatives....... nah, it'd never work.
These are the sort of places that Directors of Planning, or these days the 'Director of Change and Regeneration' usually live.
buildingstoat,
Agreed the 80% referenda are hopeless and un-necessary but wrenching planning decisions out of the hands of unaccountable 'professionals' is a cracking idea. I know, why not devolve the decisions to elected representatives....... nah, it'd never work.
What's someone building on a piece of land got to do with anything but the people building on it (as long as noise, light, access have anything to do with it)?
Let me rephrase what you're saying: "people in a village should be able, by referendum, to decide that old farmer Ned will not be allowed to sell his crops outside the village". That's how ridiculous planning permission by democracy is. That you, as a villager, despite having no rights over someone's property, can stop them doing something that has little or no impact on you.
Villages are as they are in their because of the towns. The people in Wantage have their sanitised bucolic faux-C19th idyll because of the power station at Didcot and the local council yard that fixes the roads and the sewerage which is some miles away.
Perhaps we should have referendums on building things, and we can start slapping conditions on things built in towns. The road going past my house gets lots of traffic, but it's not doing me any good - it's ferrying villagers into town. So, next time someone wants to improve it or repair it, the town should have a referendum and tell the villagers to go shove it. When someone wants to link villagers by broadband, we'll tell them that they can't go laying new fibre optic cables on our land. Good luck preserving that idyll when the towns don't allow your infrastructure to improve because we enact the same attitude to villages that villagers do to outsiders.
Joseph Takagi, well said, but don't forget to cancel the subsidies for rural bus services, village post offices and mail deliveries, etc.
Joseph Takagi
You misunderstand me. All I meant by that paragraph is that there is no need or point to having a new mechanism of referenda when there is already a system of Parish, District and County Councils that is effectively by-passed for the purpose of most planning applications.
However, if you don't want planning by democracy, you seem to be left with either Planning by diktat (essentially what we have now) or no Planning at all. Your first paragraph rather suggests the latter, and that is my preference too. The vast bulk of buildings in this country and almost all the ones that are deemed to need 'conserving' were put up before there was any planning or building regulation at all by people taking responsibility for their own property - I'm all for it.
Bayard, buildingstoat, SL, JT, Ed excellent stuff, I couldn't agree more.
I'm all in favour of 'planning' in the sense of preventing it in flood plains; ensuring that roads and sewage works etc are expanded to match usage; and ensuring new houses are properly built (if that includes making sure they follow regional vernacular, then so be it), but any sort of quantitative restrictions should go straight out of the window.
MW - I am much more laissez faire about 'planning' than you, it seems.
If someone is stupid enough to build/buy a house in a flood plain - so what? Anyway you could build them on stilts and the flood plain would still work. I don't care if houses are badly built, Gresham's Law and the market will eventually sort them out. (My house was / is atrociously built. I got it for a low price and set about, with my specialised knowledge, putting it right). Just don't get me started on 'vernacular building'. All manner fascists use that excuse to strangle building innovation. Infrastrucrture will sort itself out. F'rintance I have my own sewage plant (I like that. It's my favourite bit of civil engineering. You know exactly where you are when you in the shit). And so on.
I live in a very rural location. I confess I am extra nimbyist. Or rather as Mrs Lola would say ' Bloody Hell, you really are an anti social bastard.' And so is my No. 1 dog.
L, sure, building on stilts works for me as well. Why not? That is the vernacular in some places, or would rapidly become so.
As to crap build quality, I find this a tad unfair on the unsuspecting new buyer - the builder has taken your money and disappears into the sunset, leaving you stuck with the mortgage and the crap house.
It's not like being served a lousy meal where you just never go there again. For sure, the home builders' guarantee thingy sort of helps in this regard (and would be a good semi-private way of sorting it out).
As to 'vernacular' I refer purely to the external appearance of the building, not the size or the number of storeys. I will never enter 99.99% of the buildings in this country and am not bothered what's on the inside, but some look really nice (and cheer me up) and others are depressingly ugly (which depresses me).
MW - Para 2. Get a good surveyor. It's fairly easy to see what's crap and why. Anyway lenders will sort this one out by loading loans to buyers of houses from builders known to be dodgy. And the surveryors PI insurers will soon sort out the dodgy surveryors.
'Vernacualr'. I am with you all the way on good architecture. But as you will no doubt be aware most crap design stems from the Stalinistas in the planning departments whi assume that they are the sole arbiters of what constitutes good design. When if fact they are just bureaucrats.
Correct about farm workers and the post in general IMO. Farm workers and other unskilled labour set the wages of all others, in general, all the way to the top. unless you increase farm workers wages those above them will not increase either short of special protection and even then only for a short time following competition. The "marginal worker"
Nice new blog title BTW (: You should have a poll asking who shoud be the first to go come the revolution. Those who live by 1) earned or 2) unearned income
Get a good surveyor. It's fairly easy to see what's crap and why
I think it is not just a question of crap workmanship in some cases, but also a very low expectation of what the proper standard of design and construction should be. For example, I was reading at the weekend about the One Hyde Park development in London (flats ranging from £20 to £140 million[1]), and was wondering what happens if someone lets their sink or bath overflow in the flat above? Does the design and construction prevent any damage occurring in the flat below? IMHO this should be the case in £100k flats.
[1] No, I'm not planning to buy one, I was just marveling at the stupidity of those who do.
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