From The Lancashire Evening Post:
Bosses at housing giant Wainhomes have warned they will appeal if planning committee members turn down plans for 25 new homes in Long Moss Lane, New Longton, tomorrow... Wainhomes first submitted an application for the site in 2010. It was refused on the grounds that it was not completely affordable housing and was therefore contrary to the council’s ‘local needs in villages’ policy.
I don't get this 'affordable housing' nonsense, more houses is more houses, and even if you only build top-end housing, then some people will move up a rung or two and then it will be easier i.e. cheaper to get on the bottom one. It's like telling BWW that for every flash expensive car they build, they have to build an 'affordable one'.
So what happened next..?
The company then submitted a new outline application for 40 affordable homes which was also refused because the number of homes was considered “out of scale” with the area.
The ultimate Catch 22! The story continues...
The firm took the first application to a planning appeal. It was turned down by an inspector in June this year, but on the grounds that one of the plots was too close to two existing houses, not on policy matters. Now Wainhomes has submitted a new application with the offending plot moved – but it has also been recommended for refusal on the grounds of ‘local needs in villages’ policy and also on a new policy, currently being consulted on, which says the site has been identified as protected open land. Today, the company said if it is refused they will appeal again.
Ah, The Hallowed Green Belt, there's so little of it left, food security, rare butterflies etc, Let's have a look at Google Maps and try and imagine what it would look like with another 40 or even 65 houses:
View Larger Map
Let's finish off by seeing what the planners have to say...
South Ribble Council planning committee chairman Coun Jon Hesketh, said: “The over-riding factor in any planning application is making the right decision for our communities, and it would not be appropriate to get involved in debate or discussion before the meeting. The council’s planning policies have changed this year, so the committee will have to take that into account.”
Surely, most people interested in buying a house in that village already live in or near that village, are these people not somehow part of the community? And if they move in from further afield, then they will definitely be part of the community anyway. Aren't the NIMBYs always wailing on about 'preserving the Hallowed Green Belt for future generations'? What's wrong with thinking about people who are alive now, and desperately looking for somewhere nice to live?
Via Mark and Khards at HousePriceCrash.
Tuesday, 8 November 2011
NIMBYs Of The Week
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22 comments:
Hmm, the total land area of UK is 60million acres. Total number of households is 20million. Average plot size of 4 bed home is 1/10th acre.
Thus we see that even if you re-housed the entire population in brand-new purpose built detached houses it would only occupy about 3% of the total land mass of the UK.
Now we could have a planning process that considered the need to re-build and expand our housing stock, ensuring plenty of land was made available for the process and give permission for plots of 1/10th acre well in advance of demand, thus keeping prices plenty low enough for young people to buy without going cap in hand to their parents. That would be the sensible thing to do. Price of a 4 bed detached house would be about £50,000. The building industry would explode giving plenty of jobs to the unskilled and semi-skilled.
Now why wouldn't anybody want to do that?
Because rich bastards that have owned the land since the Norman conquest will jump through all kinds of hoops to ensure that whereas the land is worth merely £10,000 per acre as farmland, as soon as your local council which you voted for gives it that special bit of paper called planning permission it will rise in value to £3million per acre. They will employ every trick in the book to ensure that each small plot is fought over one bit at a time like it was a piece of heaven fallen to earth.
Anon, excellent maths. According to official land use statistics, our entire housing stock, including gardens and residential roads/pavements covers about 4.5% of the UK by surface area.
As to the mentality, there are shades of that, but I think this is actually a war between land owners - those WITH planning don't want those WITHOUT planning to dilute their monopoly value. Young people and construction workers are just so much collateral damage.
And of course now that 'Gordon Brown raided our pensions' (not true) older people find it perfectly acceptable to prevent young people becoming home owners as they want them to be tenants.
"Now why wouldn't anybody want to do that?"
Because it wouldn't work? All you'd end up with is a lot more expensive houses and if the price of the land (which is the variable and expensive bit) did come down, you'd have a dearth of developers wanting to build because they'd all be waiting for it to go up again.
"Because rich bastards that have owned the land since the Norman conquest will jump through all kinds of hoops to ensure that whereas the land is worth merely £10,000 per acre as farmland"
If you'd actually lived in the country you'd know that NIMBYs are almost invariably offcomers and the less time they've lived in the village, the louder they yell about not allowing any more housing to be built. The ones that have lived there since the Norman conquest are usually all for it, either because they own the land and want to build houses on it, or they can't see the problem with having more people in the village, which might mean a better bus service etc. They are not hankering after the rural idyll, they know what the countryside is like, they grew up there.
This bunch of NIMBYs is a classic: if their houses are anything to go by they've all moved there in the last 20 years.
MW: Question (allowing for the fact I may not be the sharpest knife in the box)
Taking Anon's figs he states that rehousing entire population totals only 3% of entire land mass, (or your 4.5% figure.)
I do not see anywhere that that computation allows for 'free' (ie unused) land mass. So if we deduct the land used by 'trunk' roads, (ie roads other than residential roads) railways, govt buildings, industrial parks, public parks etc etc; by how much is Anon's percentge figure altered?
Just asking.......
WFW, I summarised the official land use figures here.
There was another survey out that said the developed bit was even less than that, see Daily Mail.
Thanks MW
I don't even care about freeing up the land, I'd like people who do prevent supply reacting to increased demand, to pay for their benefit.
AC1
WFW, I'm here to inform and entertain.
B, I'm in two minds about that (states in the USA with no planning restrictions did not have house price bubbles), but as AC1 says, the ideal solution is LVT, that would sort out supply and demand at the drop of a hat.
Although we have more or less unlimited physical land for building, by definition, there isn't very much where people want to live, i.e in the middle of towns or at the edge of towns, commuter villages etc.
If you'd actually lived in the country you'd know that NIMBYs are almost invariably offcomers and the less time they've lived in the village, the louder they yell about not allowing any more housing to be built. The ones that have lived there since the Norman conquest are usually all for it, either because they own the land and want to build houses on it, or they can't see the problem with having more people in the village, which might mean a better bus service etc. They are not hankering after the rural idyll, they know what the countryside is like, they grew up there.
The irony is that it's the NIMBYs wanting their FBRIs that ruined the character of the countryside. The residents took the money and went elsewhere, and you got people who didn't use the pubs, shops and didn't go to things like visiting fairs. They then weep about how their community Post Offices are closing, despite the fact that they rarely shop in them, and simply want a subsidy from us townies so that they can buy their shopping at Waitrose, but still have somewhere to pick up a loaf of bread when they can't be bothered driving.
JT, all I can say is that NIMBYism is rampant in London as well, from the centre to the suburbs to the outer edge where it is almost Hallowed Green Belt.
Would it only be 'another 40 or even 65 houses' though?
JH, let me turn that question on its head.
If you went to that village and told the people that unfortunately, some houses had been built on the HGB and we are worried about 'food security' and 'protecting England's green spaces for future generations' blah blah blah and told them that we have to demolish 65 houses to bring it all back into balance and the unlucky 65 will have to take the loss on the chin and f- off elsewhere, how many villagers would voluntarily vacate their own houses and offer it up for demolition?
Answer, none.
So the government announces that 65 houses will be drawn by lot, do you not think that the villagers will be out in force demanding that only 40 houses are demolished 'to protect the fabric of rural communities and to protect the English way of life'?
You may well have noticed that 2 of the nation's housebuilders have signalled that they are very appreciative of the taxpayer funding they are getting, which financial support probably goes some way to taking the sting out of the "little niggles" that arise from time to time when it comes to finding places to build houses and also provides a handy prop to keeping the prices of the new houses up such that even in a static market they have predicted better second half profits above the 9% they made in the first half, and one company is even bold enough to say "can we have some more please?" Judging from the estimable Grant Shapp's performance since May 2010 the answer will probably be yes, especially as those Labour johnnies in the person of Hilary Benn were complaining recently that the government isn't throwing enough taxpayer money at private housebuilders ....
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/constructionandproperty/8877523/FirstBuy-helps-Persimmon-and-Bovis.html
James Higham,
So, where are people going to live? Go and dig up the Barker Review of Housing Supply which points out that house prices in the UK have risen 2.4% per annum in real terms over the past 30 years compared to a 1.1% EU average. We are under supplying homes in a way that the rest of Europe isn't. Is Belgium a concrete wasteland?
You just have to look at Mark's various maps to see that adding a few million homes just wouldn't make that much difference. You could stick another 6000 homes in that area and you'd still have plenty of countryside for people to enjoy.
What always surprises me is how much people talk about protecting our ancient woodlands blah... blah... bats... blah... blah... yet when I take my kids to go walk the dog in them on a weekend there's no-one there.
Joseph Takagi - what's FBRI?
"So, where are people going to live? "
Er, where they live now? The people who are priced out by the "2.4% per annum in real terms over the past 30 years" price rise you report are not on the streets at the moment. Quite apart from the fact that that price rise has very little to do with the "undersupply" of new homes (actually an oversupply, if you go by population increase only) in the past and much more to do with a desire to "get on the housing ladder" and "make money" by owning your home, in the mistaken belief that "property prices can only go up".
If this extraordinary popular delusion was finally debunked, you'd be amazed by how much of current demand for new housing would simply evaporate.
JM, FBRI stands for "Faux bucolic rural idyll", it's a defined term round these parts.
B, fair point, since 1945, we've allowed 16 million new homes to be built (and knocked down an unspecified number) and the population has gone up by 16 million.
But the facts are, we were crappily housed in 1945 and half of households are crappily housed now, something has gone badly wrong somewhere (or 'badly right' if you are a Home-Owner-Ist), mainly because houses are totally unevenly distributed, i.e. the average amount of space per person is irrelevant.
Anon 23.20, yes that was at HousePriceCrash as well. "We own land! Give us money!" is their motto and they are getting away with it yet again.
Don't forget that housebuilders have options on land that have asset value EVEN IF THEY DONT BUILD ON THEM!
It follows that housebuilders are in no hurry to see their land holdings turned into real houses (and thus priced to market and not to model....)
It is all the most horrible bltant con and ordinary people are too readily sucked into it.
How much COMMERICAL property is empty? Still looks good on the books unless the auditors really want to price to the real market (which they never do...). They never sell or lease these properties because the glut of commercial property on the market would push prices lower (and that wouldn't do your books any good either)
Are you getting the picture now?
Anon, ordinary people are so brain washed that they think new housing is the work of Satan.
Therefore they are quite happy if owners of land banks don't build on them. In fact, if the government announced that they were going to spend money on buying up land banks, removing planning permission and giving them away to farmers, the Home-Owner-Ists would be very happy indeed.
Commercial land and buildings are liable to Business Rates, so it's not quite as extreme there.
Clearly the Builder hasn't given SRBC enough cash.
At a Planning Committee meeting in August 2010 a Developer/Builder wanted to build 52 Luxury houses on the only piece of green belt land left between Farington and Lostock Hall. SRBC voted it through and also had to ask special permission from the Government to allow building on green belt land. How much did this cost the Developer/Builder, a mere £1.1 million as a donation towards social housing - simple isn't it?
Anon, Surely this is a good reason for LVT. As greenbelt, land has little value, so little tax would be charged. Once it is converted to building land, it then has immensely more value, so immensely more tax revenue could be collected by the council. Under LVT, councils rather than landowners would gain from new housing development, thus eliminating the corruption where the landowner(builder) has to bribe the council to get permission to build.
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