Why so many bad, disconnected, ecologically-terrible housing developments in the English countryside?
Posted by sadpterodactyl@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 253 comments
Anyone travelling around England right now will see lots of new housing estates, with many identikit box houses. They seem to be built without any regard for the local area, in terms of scale and aesthetic character, and often have no logical connection to the town or village they're being built near, like vast tumours on a small body.
They don't have any kind of organic 'centre'. No street where you might have a few local shops, pubs or village halls. No public greens, no village ponds. Nothing that would make a pleasant community out of a lot of atomised houses.
Also, they're just environmentally very bad, oriented around car dependency. Lots of big, tarmacked driveways. No trees, wildflowers, wildlife corridors. No stipulation to keep things green amidst a biodiversity crisis.
There are ways to organically, tastefully and carefully build things. And ways to build things where they're needed. This is not it. We'll really regret trashing the countryside and rural settlements like this sooner rather than later.
FamSender@reddit
These developments are like Americanisation aren’t they. They depend on everyone having a car.
EtoshaLeopard@reddit
True but also if you drive round these estates you find that many have roads barely wide enough to fit a bin lorry down and one car driveways when each household has 2-3 cars and / or a work van.
I don’t even blame the builders, I blame the council planning departments for letting them get away with it.
bothydweller72@reddit
Planning powers have been seriously eroded over the last 20 odd years by a succession of governments trying to encourage house building at all costs without any checking to see if the houses being built are what is needed locally or just what the developer thinks they can make the most profit out of
paradoxbound@reddit
No this is planning committee corruption at the local council level. Looking at you Buckinghamshire Council.
Harry_Hindsight@reddit
if the developer is making maximum profit, doesn't that imply they are building in the areas where the need is great?
bothydweller72@reddit
Some of the time that may be true. I know in my area, there is a huge need for starter homes and 2-3 bed family houses with gardens and local infrastructure. What the developers want to build are 4-5 bed executives homes with multiple car driveways and pocket handkerchief gardens destined for the rental market. As always, markets work to identify profit, not social need; that should be where government (either local if empowered or national) should step in
QVRedit@reddit
The council should say want they want built, and if they build executive homes - require them to seek them at family home rates - that will change their attitude quickly enough..
bothydweller72@reddit
Shoulda woulda coulda. Local authority planning departments should be empowered and supported by government to decide what housing, in which areas are appropriate. The fact is that successive national governments have taken powers away from local authorities to decide local planning whilst continuing to pass the shit down when there’s blaming to be done
LongjumpingTank5@reddit
What powers have councils had taken away? Councils have huge powers to decide on where housing should be and what it should be like through Local Plans and Design Codes.
The fact that many councils don't have up to date Local Plans (despite this being "mandatory") seems to be strong evidence that this is nonsense.
strum@reddit
Except that their plans are forced by central govt to fulfil central's policies, & the plans can (& are) over-ruled from Whitehall.
If locgov tries to enforce planning law (if they have to staff to do so) the devs can appeal to Whitehall, with the assumption that the devs win.
fixed_grin@reddit
The problems exist largely because government stepped in decades ago. The policy was to make land expensive, the rational response is to spread the land cost as much as possible. As planning permission generally restricts them to one home per plot, that means one big house.
If you put a cheap house on expensive land, people don't want it, they'll just drive a little further away to where land is a bit cheaper and get a lot more house. This is why starter houses seem to have disappeared, there is no longer a glut of cheap empty land near urban jobs like there was when mass car ownership was new.
The only way to have starter homes on expensive land is to split the land cost by building flats.
LongjumpingTank5@reddit
I find this kind of sentiment both very common and baffling.
A four-bedroom home with space for two cars is not some bizarre "executive level" luxury home. It's a total normal house for a family with two children.
I'm not really even sure I understand what the complaint is. What would you prefer to see done with that same patch of land? Smaller homes so families with more than one child can't live there? Fewer homes so that there could be bigger gardens ?
MixedFancy@reddit
Of course when an executive moves into their new home the old one is just blown up; creating no new net housing stock
fixed_grin@reddit
Right, the problem is that they aren't building where the need is greatest, because that's illegal.
Planners want disconnected sprawl.
QVRedit@reddit
Or that they are ripping everyone off…
MixedFancy@reddit
Planning powers have been seriously eroded over the last 20 odd years
Evidence for this:
IridiumFlareon@reddit
Lol have you read a newspaper like one time since 2010? Tories made it so central govt can overrule local planning
LongjumpingTank5@reddit
Do you think the secretary of state is calling in lots of these unremarkable suburban developments for decision? Obviously not
The Tories removed mandatory housing targets, so local authorities didn't even have to pretend they were trying to hit targets. That was reversed by the current government - a small improvement in an otherwise underwhelming record.
LongBeakedSnipe@reddit
Bigger picture is megadevelopers giving governments long lists of unremarkable suburban developments that can be mass approved. Nobody said the government is going to have to pay attention to minutiae
withdynamite@reddit
Yeah I’d like to know too. Only way I can see it is in the way they now have to account for so many statutory consultees (ecology including BNG, nutrient neutrality, fire regs, placemaking, design codes they themselves set, national policy, etc) instead of just making a decision themselves.
Proof_Drag_2801@reddit
The council where I am stipulates 1.5 parking spaces per house.
HappyMarvin42@reddit
How many households have 1.5 cars?
Proof_Drag_2801@reddit
A question many have asked but none have answered.
LongBeakedSnipe@reddit
Many households near Luton
BrillsonHawk@reddit
The housebuilders intentionally build the roads too narrow so they don't meet the councils standards for adoption. That then allows the housebuilder to sell the maintenance requirements onto third parties
notreallysure3@reddit
Maintaining roads and other services (e.g. sewers) is an absolute pain. There aren’t a lot of companies that want to take it on in perpetuity. I think you’re confusing this with general estate management which is mostly grass verges. Developers work really hard to get roads adopted by the local highways authority so they don’t have to have the hassle even in the medium term. Planners also require roads to be adoptable standard (there’s a national guidance called Manual for Streets alongside local guidance). It’s not always possible as you get some geniuses at the council landscape department requiring streets to have lots of large trees planted close to the road, which their own highways department won’t adopt as the roots will wreck the drains in 5years.
mycatiscalledFrodo@reddit
Our house is a 5 bed himself with a garage and 1 parking space. Most houses around us are rented to 3-5 adults all owning a car and even if that wasn't the case as a family of 4 we could have 4 cars in 7 years time. We looked at 6 bed houses with 1 parking space allocated. Ridiculous, even more so with the government push for electric cars, you need 1 space per car
FamSender@reddit
5 bed himself?
mycatiscalledFrodo@reddit
Hmm townhouse no idea what auto correct was doing there
FamSender@reddit
Ah, I do love a townhouse.
GuyOnTheInterweb@reddit
Also the nice loaves of bread!
Chorus23@reddit
Forget the planners, they're useless. I blame the builders for trying and the buyers for buying.
QVRedit@reddit
People get desperate to buy somewhere - so they can live..
Edible-flowers@reddit
To save money, lots of city planning department management axed staff to literally skeletons!
QVRedit@reddit
Possible if the departments are given dictatorial powers…
Japhet_Corncrake@reddit
Not literally. Skeletons can't sign off shit housing plans.
sega20@reddit
And provide parking for 1/2 a car in the driveway for a household which has 2-3 cars.
eairy@reddit
Outside the reddit bubble, people actually like cars and like having space to park one.
strum@reddit
People actually like public transport, bikes & walkable neighbourhoods - if they can get them. Car-dependent developments isolate those without access to a car, and ensure road congestion, further down the road. And everyone's health suffers.
FamSender@reddit
Where are they providing parking?
Every new build development I see has far too many cars for the available parking space.
worotan@reddit
And on the building industry astroturfing the idea that any objection to their plans to make money by people who actually live in and care about an area, are just nimbyism.
sadpterodactyl@reddit (OP)
Indeed.
bannanawaffle13@reddit
Because it's all about developers earning the most out of the site as possible, they use cookie cutter architectural plans build them as dense as they can, as cheaply as they can while meeting the target demographic so near me it's link detached houses as it's a poorer area, council estates it's terraced and pack them in as tight as possible. Proper town planning costs money that doesn't have a good ROI so why not just makes as many houses that have huge returns and leave the local council and other public bodies to provide the services needed, socialise the losses privatise the gains? Why don't local councillors and government do anything? Due to lobbying and conflict of interests
StIvian_17@reddit
Terraced doesn’t have to mean crap though, as many Edwardian or Victorian terraces that are still standing prove, especially ones that have been well maintained. Even the 60s terraces while not so visually prepossessing actually have space around them.
sadpterodactyl@reddit (OP)
Yes, I think Victorian and Edwardian terraces are very beautiful, dignified and durable.
fixed_grin@reddit
The issue is that this is what the planners want. The planning system was explicitly intended to create disconnected sprawl and make the cities unaffordable.
Likewise, current planners, local politicians, and the local electorate are, by definition, people who think that local housing costs are worth paying. Collectively, the population would like the expensive cities to have more and therefore cheaper housing. But the only people who get a say are the people who haven't been priced out.
strum@reddit
What utter drivel. The planning system was created explicitly to avoid sprawl - that's what the Green Belt was about.
We have sprawl because the planning system has been by-passed.
fixed_grin@reddit
What do you think sprawl is? The intention was to move a significant amount of urban populations from high density housing in the cities to new much lower density housing built on farmland some distance away. And those distances kept expanding, so new towns for "London overspill" went from Stevenage or Crawley to Peterborough or Northampton. AKA expanding sprawl.
The green belts just meant it wasn't contiguous.
nostalgebra@reddit
Survivorship bias to the extreme. There were a lot of Victorian houses that were horrific. They were all pulled down decades ago.
sadpterodactyl@reddit (OP)
I'm sure there were. But the best ones - the kinds you find in the inner neighborhoods of most British cities - are often beautiful, lasting and dignified. They're built from good materials, have decorative, individual stylings, and feel quite humane. For two stories, they're often space efficient, they have nice, established gardens, and encourage more active travel, as there isn't tons of parking space.
nerveagent85@reddit
Plenty of them are absolutely cookie cutter, plain, little to no garden, open on to the street, street is jam packed with cars, bathroom is through the kitchen, damp, cold, crumbling etc…
TheMusicArchivist@reddit
Don't ever go to Cardiff and say that, because the Victorian terraces there are closer to slums. Low ceiling heights, no front garden (just a front door onto a small pavement), most have been extended backwards so there's no rear garden, so no green spaces whatsoever. No architectural merit whatsoever, and since most are populated by a transient student population there's no long-term desire to improve the areas. Would be worth buying them up slowly, demolishing whole neighbourhoods, and building six-storey flats like Rome or Barcelona or any other sane European city.
dma123456@reddit
& were middle class homes, working people lived in back to backs, or often houses with just one room all of which were demolished during the slum clearances midway through the 20th century
beaufort_@reddit
Some were middle class homes. There are lots of very shit, cramped terraces in mining, port and industrial towns that are still standing that were for working class people.
There are definitely some that are middle class homes, and those tend to be the ones people make endless videos about renovating but the vast majority were working class homes.
Pitiful_Control@reddit
Not all, there is still plenty of those in cities like Leeds (my son lives in a back to back, in a neighbourhood full of the same, many divided up and rented to groups of students or with large families in 3 rooms.
QVRedit@reddit
Quality lasts..
space_guy95@reddit
Many of those pulled down were not horrific though, there were many lovely examples of Victorian housing that were neglected and pulled down in vast demolition projects in the 60's and 70's to make way for the ghastly tower blocks and council estates that were supposed to be the future of housing.
A huge amount of architectural vandalism was committed in that era in the name of "progress" and cost cutting. It was simply seen as economically unviable to restore them in the financial climate of the time, and there was simply no interest in doing so, so they tore everything down instead.
Don't get me wrong, there were plenty of slums torn down too, but just because some houses did not survive doesn't mean they were shit like the econoboxes being thrown up today.
thorny_business@reddit
This is survival bias. What about all those awful back to back terraces? All the slums that were cleared?
StIvian_17@reddit
Sorry I thought it was obvious that I didn’t mean “let’s rebuild the slums” - I’m quite clearly relying on the examples that have stood the test of time, not the shite that’s been demolished.
DMMMOM@reddit
I live in a victorian place and it has bags of land, 150 foot garden, large garden/drive at the front and side access. They don't make them like this anymore. All of the victorian properties in this area remain as they were built with a bit of infilling going on.
bannanawaffle13@reddit
I didn't mean terraced were bad, just an observation from my local area, it seems the richer people are, the further they want to be from others.
daddywookie@reddit
I mean, have you met other people? They’re mostly awful. I don’t miss hearing every fart and footstep when I lived in flats and terraces.
inevitablelizard@reddit
Thing is it's not real density. Density would be better achieved by building up a bit, but we do this worst of both worlds approach of building 2 storey sprawl but try to make it "efficient" by cramming in individual houses with uselessly small gardens.
Real density would actually improve most of this. Building up, freeing up space for community green spaces, allotments, etc. The houses with gardens could have larger gardens, with flats for those who don't want them. That would be better use of space than every house having a shit small garden, with some unhappy at a small garden and others astroturfing them because they don't want the upkeep.
TheMusicArchivist@reddit
I want to see densification along existing transport arteries. I see too many semidetached houses on major roads where in Europe we'd see blocks of flats (and not necessarily ugly blocks of flats either).
inevitablelizard@reddit
Exactly! I see this all the time and it pisses me off. Including one of the main roads into Middlesbrough not far from where I live, 2 storey sprawl is all over the place and it's just such a waste. We're pretty much permanently destroying bits of countryside to build houses - we should get it right from the start and build something that's actually worth the trade off.
Every time I see this 2 storey sprawl next to major transport routes I just get so pissed off at the awful missed opportunity. Shitty lazy "that'll do" attitude is rife in this country and it ruins pretty much everything we do.
AggressiveTooth1971@reddit
I lived on one of those two story sprawls for a while, the ones where you look out your window and see into about 20 postcard sized gardens.
I couldn't help but wonder what it would be like if they had the same amount of land, but made a couple blocks of flats instead. The rest of the land could be used for whatever the community wanted - a pool, a gym, kept some of the woodland that was chopped down to build the houses, vegetable patch, etc. There's probably even room for a doctors surgery, a school, some shops, etc as well. I personally think it would be a really nice way to live (in theory), but in practise, who knows. They already all pay yearly fees to live on the estate, and the only public area is a tiny patch of grass thats apparently a local park.
jobblejosh@reddit
That's what I'd really love to see.
More flats, apartments, low-rises etc being built on brownfield and waste ground.
Usually they've already got decent road and public transport connections (or aren't a million miles away from the town/city centre). Add in a row of shops on the ground floor to prevent car dependency and increase community.
I think there's some supposition of developments requiring social investment (schools, GPs, etc) but I don't know how good it is.
Manchester seems to be doing pretty well in this regard; lots of new developments that are either repurposed/renovated warehouses, or are new high density residential being built on waste ground or derelict and beyond repair warehouses.
Similar_Quiet@reddit
Even just three story townhouses would make a difference, but a lot of the public hate anything that isn't a traditional two story.
jobblejosh@reddit
Three bed semi detached and a block paved driveway.
All with alleys between that are so tight you can't fit a bin down them.
Bane of my life.
zeusoid@reddit
Cookie cutter plans are because it’s a ball ache to get variations approved. The palming system is to blame for that.
Small windows too, because of efficiency regs.
You can put in bigger windows, but buyers then complain about pricing as the bigger windows that are thermally efficient are that much more expensive
TheMusicArchivist@reddit
The cookie-cutter 1970s developments managed to be quite pleasant, though. I can fit three cars on my driveway, there's room for a big garage down the side, I have a front lawn big enough to play badminton on and a back garden with a massive deck, a shed, and a reasonable grass lawn. The rooms are spacious inside, and the sound leakage from next door is minimal because the walls are bloody thick and solid.
There's a small parade of shops round the corner, and more in the centre round the public transport links. Two primary schools, a secondary school, and a sixth-form college, sports pitches, a swimming pool, three GPs, two dentists.
The 1970s got a lot right, planning-wise.
WGSMA@reddit
That’s survivorship bias though.
No doubt in the 1970’s the owners of the day decried these new build monstrosities as ugly lol
TheMusicArchivist@reddit
I bet, totally changed the feel of the area - small countryside place, now big dormitory town of suburbia-esque buildings.
But if change is inevitable, and change is unpleasant for the first ten years, then surely the best change is immediate change so that we can get to the pleasant part of the future quicker and dwell less on the unpleasant present?
TrainingBike9702@reddit
To be fair I live in a cheap 60s built flat that is pre-fabricated concrete. I can't imagine any town planning was done then either when 30 flats were added to an otherwise quite quiet road with large town houses.
Limp_Ant_8047@reddit
Sounds like a classic case of quick fixes over long-term planning. Cheap housing shouldn’t mean sacrificing community vibes!!
worotan@reddit
And any objection to that is dismissed as nimbyism, an idea astroturfed and now the favourite way for people to pretend they are progressive without doing anything more than sneering at others online.
moremattymattmatt@reddit
Councils often don't manage to do anything because they are populated by amatuers. If they reject planning permission, the developers appeal and the council often loses because they don't have a 5 year supply of land, the neighbourhood plan is out of date, the grounds for rejection don't meet the national planning framework etc. It costs the council a fortune to defend the appeal and they lose anyway, which puts them off rejecting things.
PurpleTeapotOfDoom@reddit
[Transport For New Homes] (https://www.transportfornewhomes.org.uk/) campaign on this issue.
Intelligent-Bee-839@reddit
The priority is building houses. As many as possible. To that end, planning & environmental concerns are secondary.
sadpterodactyl@reddit (OP)
That's just insane. It's incredibly short-sighted and short-termist. It's environmental and cultural vandalism, as far as I'm concerned. No country should respond to a problem like that.
Intelligent-Bee-839@reddit
I’m not agreeing. I’m stating what the thinking is.
Previous-Anteater888@reddit
I agree with this. The worst part is a majority of inhabitants will be social housing or low income at least - turning into an amenities and food desert is completely illogical. At the very least it should have a perquisite to be serviced by a fairly regular bus route.
I also feel there needs to be more environmental responsibility from developers - sure, there is a housing shortage and these developments are needed, but there also needs to be a harm mitigation regulation in terms of replacing trees and encouraging natural wildlife (like ponds, wildflowers and green spaces with a good distribution of plants). Trees not only replenish air quality and promote wildlife, but also help with shade in summer and cushion sound from surrounding motorways.
There was one such development near where my parents live, and locals petitioned for the developers to issue an environmental report and held them responsible for shortcomings according to their planning permission application. It was only with that pressure that they bothered to improve the place. A year on the change is remarkable - an active ‘rewilding’ area of wild flowers and shrubs, a lot of trees, and a large pond that has gone from reservoir to fully inhabited by ducks, moorhens, frogs and toads.
So it can be done - but developers don’t give a damn and will get away with as much cost cutting and profit unless they are held accountable.
marvellouspineapple@reddit
Wondering where you got this info from? My most recent understanding was only 20% of a development was required for social housing. And considering the state of the economy, low income families can't afford new build homes.
Wibblywobblywalk@reddit
Housing assosciations are responsible for a lot of large mediocre developments where we live
Colascape@reddit
Because we are in a housing crisis. Unfortunately we were not sensible with building new homes for the last 50 years, so now we are taking what we can get.
sadpterodactyl@reddit (OP)
It's just very short-termist and regrettable. It contributes to a general sense of decline and carelessness. We have such a beautiful country and we could do so much better than leave these scars all over it.
Colascape@reddit
Sure, but ultimately this is the product of over 50 years of failure. And I’d rather have secure housing for the population than have no “scars”.
Popular_Platypus_722@reddit
What exactly would you like to see
Colascape@reddit
Enough housing supply to end the housing crisis
sadpterodactyl@reddit (OP)
I'm not so utilitarian, I'm afraid. It takes a long time to undo these mistakes.
Puzzleheaded-Bad-722@reddit
I completely agree with you OP. It also won't solve the housing crisis as these are sprawling, single homes, rather than the high density blocks that are needed.
Poke-Mom00@reddit
Greenbeltism and too much control in the hands of local councils has also contributed to not building enough housing near where the jobs actually are. I also would wish many boroughs of London and other cities would remove height restrictions outside of very small historic cores.
As an American living here, not even the States’ suburbs are anywhere near as cookie cutter as the development I’m seeing here 😬. Usually in the States we vary up the color of houses, brick, etc - here I feel like they use the same beige for the entire neighborhood - which is what I’m living in now.
LongBeakedSnipe@reddit
Yeh the colour of these places is awful. I guess there is one prebuilt wall supplier supplying all the countries walls
spitamenes@reddit
The best way to solve the housing crisis is to build high rise flats in urban centres, not build semi or detached houses in the middle of nowhere.
space_keeper@reddit
Which no one will be able to afford.
fixed_grin@reddit
You can't, planners won't let you. You get disconnected sprawl because existing residents get a veto over construction within a certain distance, so of course they build in empty fields.
Colascape@reddit
The phrase “beggars can’t be choosers” comes to mind.
Serious_Escape_5438@reddit
There's plenty of empty space in urban areas if they wanted.
EmFan1999@reddit
There is an old factory site in the centre of town near me. Well connected, perfect for flats, can walk to school etc. Do you think the council put forward this site in their new Local Plan? No, that would be too sensible, they favour flat green fields for developers instead
Serious_Escape_5438@reddit
Exactly, and there is tons of commercial space too, high streets are dying. Residential buildings would help bring them back to life.
ldn6@reddit
Yes but any additional density getting proposed makes local lose their shit and flip out about “our neighbourhood character”. One of my favourite examples was a proposal in Penge in South London that would replace an absolutely derelict shopping centre (yes it was actually that hideous) with a mixed-use development getting absolutely exorcised by NIMBYs. They’d rather no change even if it means keeping grotty and poor land use.
BlokeyBlokeBloke@reddit
Converting a building could very easily be more expensive than building a new one, and provide housing that is less desirable to today's market.
EmFan1999@reddit
I’m sure. So destroying the countryside is preferable I guess
PuzzleMeDo@reddit
Low-quality housing estates aren't there to solve the housing crisis, they're there to profit from it. When there's a shortage of housing, you can build just about anything and it will still sell.
Legitimate_System_63@reddit
They'll look cute in a hundred years time.
sadpterodactyl@reddit (OP)
They're very unlikely to, sadly, as most are built of cheap rubbish that will degrade and look terrible. They're not built of fine stone or good bricks.
strum@reddit
Money.
Developers repeatedly commit to 'community' centres, to 'affordable' dwellings & to greenery - but when they actually build they plead that these are unprofitable, so they're ditched from the plan.
Local govt planning departments are understaffed and underpowered, so they can't force the devs to keep their word.
Which-Procedure@reddit
The roads and masses of parking are in large part forced on developers by over-zealous highways departments who want a car space per bedroom and over-engineered roads with acres of pavements. This means new developments are ruled by the local highways design book instead of design. The other part is that people seem to want masses of parking, so we end up with loads more tarmac and block paving than good taste.
The wildlife factor is improving as the 10% biodiversity net gain law means every new development must deliver more planting, with more points in the system for native plants, hedgerows and trees. And sustainable drainage requirements happily feed into this, so many more developments are now designed with large drainage basins and other water features.
The lack of amenities is because there's little money in it, whether to build and run a new shop or more amenities. Pubs make little sense to build when so many are closing. And planning authorities like developments close enough to existing facilities that it often makes no sense to supply facilities when existing elements are within walking distance.
Planning for new housing is an extremely difficult business now. Identikit they may look, but things are improving.
eairy@reddit
Do you have a source for this (other than facebook)? It sounds like completely made up bollocks.
Which-Procedure@reddit
Nearly 20 years in planning, sadly. Meetings with multiple LPAs/Highways Authorities this month, with these exact issues.
suiluhthrown78@reddit
> who want a car space per bedroom
every new build estate does the opposite
EmFan1999@reddit
BNG is a con for your local area. They invest elsewhere and just give you acres of concrete
Particular-Bid-1640@reddit
This is incorrect. I'm an ecologist, you have to achieve BNG within the same council district ideally, or within the same NCA. The alternative is pay a lot more to buy BNG credits in an environment bank, which arguably is better as larger habitats with better connectivity is more important for wildlife.
Stan-Macho@reddit
And BREEAM requires it to be in the red line boundary
Particular-Bid-1640@reddit
Never got into BREEAM but I think I should at some point
Stan-Macho@reddit
The Ecology section is basically 100 convoluted pages saying 'just do what the ecologist tells you to do'.
And the BNG score of course (which is going above legislation in the new update).
Particular-Bid-1640@reddit
Haha love that. I have to write 'contact an ecologist for advice' so many times in a report but otherwise it'd be such a huge list of 'if this, then that'. I always think clients must think I'm just trying to get more work but I'm sincerely trying to keep it simple
EmFan1999@reddit
Yeah I know of a couple around me. Doesn’t help though when we have beautiful fields I can walk to, and now they are a 10-20 min drive away
Particular-Bid-1640@reddit
That is sad, I'm sorry that's happened to you :(
InternationalRide5@reddit
or put a bat/swift brick on the wall somewhere
Particular-Bid-1640@reddit
Bat boxes and bird boxes don't contribute to BNG. These will have been recommended as mitigation for protected species instead
sidneylopsides@reddit
About 10 years ago we went to view a new build and the development was like that, my wife was pregnant and we had one car, the nearest shop, or anything, was a supermarket about 40 min walk down a busy road.
I've driven past a few new developments that all have an Aldi near the main entrance, and thought that's better than usual.
We recently moved to one that's relatively small, has a huge park rubbing the whole length, plus a few parts when the green space cuts the development up, our house faces one of those, we can walk out the front door and walk to the shops 5 min away almost entirely through green space.
We've noticed loads more wildlife than our old estate, both quantity and variety.
EmFan1999@reddit
You should see what is happening for the area around Bath and Bristol. The plan is to absolutely obliterate 1000 year old villages with development. Concrete over grade 1 agriculture land. Forcibly buy land for “jobs”.
The roads are already clogged with traffic. Half the villages don’t even have bus routes. Can’t cycle easily as it’s hilly and the lanes are narrow. Drains can’t cope so sewage is constantly released into local rivers. Schools, GPs and Dentists are full.
And all because government has lost control over the increasing population, and developers want to make money.
WGSMA@reddit
That first paragraph sounds like great news
EmFan1999@reddit
You think so? I work in Bristol, and tomorrow I have to be there at 10am so that means either leaving 2-3 hours beforehand and sitting in traffic and risking being late, or leaving 4 hours early, so I only sit in traffic for an hour.
Putting houses here with no public transport is not a solution to Bristol’s housing issue
WGSMA@reddit
If Bristol simply did its fair share of housebuilding and hammered up Some high density flats, you could love into that
EmFan1999@reddit
That is what needs to happen. That’s what young home buyers want anyway. A new build flat in the centre was what I bought when I started working in Bristol. Turn key, nothing to do but live in it
suiluhthrown78@reddit
doesnt seem like the developers are at fault for any of this
EmFan1999@reddit
Are you joking? They are happy to buy up farmland and double the size of villages, rather than building on brown field sites
withdynamite@reddit
Not sure there’s much grade 1 agricultural land over that way
EmFan1999@reddit
Actually there is. Farrington for one. It’s one of their so called optional sites in their local plan 2025
ldn6@reddit
Where exactly is this? The biggest developments in Bristol and the surrounding area are near Temple Meade and then the redevelopment of Brabazon Airfield, while Bath is mainly former industrial land along the A36.
EmFan1999@reddit
In Bath and North East Somerset rather than Bristol. Several villages are going to double in size if the government, council and developers get their way. Green belt land between Bristol and Bath also. Keynsham, Saltford etc. Farrington Gurney and Timsbury will double in size
ldn6@reddit
What’s your alternative? BNES has a new housing target of 29,000 homes. I don’t see how you can meet that without some degree of outward expansion. Keynsham has rail as well, so there’s no excuse for it not to density. The current local plan also puts 70% of new housing in the extent built-up areas of Bath and Keynsham anyway, so it’s not some rampant green belt development.
EmFan1999@reddit
The target is from the government. We don’t want them or need them. We don’t need to build on fields to hit this target either There are plenty of houses for sale. Maybe increase wages so people can actually buy??
There are plenty of reasons not to build near keynsham. The roads are clogged as it is.
Destroying what Banes call the Somer Valley and making it a ‘growth area’ when it has tiny roads and no rail link and no jobs so everyone that can’t wfh has to commute is inexcusable as well
ldn6@reddit
That’s not how this works. The number isn’t pulled out of thin air: it’s based on an average annual requirement of 0.8% (somewhat lower than the average increase in households nationally) and adjusted based on local authority affordability levels. So yeah, you do actually need it.
EmFan1999@reddit
We if we need it, it’s funny how 99% of local people object to it then isn’t it. The only people I’ve seen say we need housing is people in Bristol, that have come there from other places etc London. The problem is elsewhere and it’s destroying our communities and it isn’t right
ldn6@reddit
Maybe it’s needed because you keep objecting to it despite sustained population growth of 10% over the past decade.
EmFan1999@reddit
Literally says it on there. Inward migration of students. It’s not local need. University is a joke now anyway (I should know, I work in one), so a good time to stop this crazy policy of moving for uni.
The trouble is, all Banes cares about is Bath. The rest of us get screwed because of it
Dangerous-Branch-749@reddit
Indeed. This is what the "build houses at all cost" crowd that is vocal on Reddit don't get. Housing alone doesn't cut it, you need a lot to go with that.
JavaRuby2000@reddit
In order to be built these estates are required to pinky promise the councils that they will build new schools, hospitals, leisure centres etc.. Except there is always a clause that says they only need to build the facilities once they have sold enough houses to pay for them. Then they sell the houses and say "oops houses sold for less than we thought sorry we can't afford your new school".
TheGrogsMachine@reddit
We're terrible at medium density in this country
ldn6@reddit
Because that’s basically all that’s allowed to get developed. The system perversely incentivises poorly connected estates because infill and higher-density projects get stonewalled to oblivion by NIMBYs and become unviable due to high input costs and planning complexity.
Sidian@reddit
And then the NIMBYs see these horrible, soulless blights on the land that only serve to clog up already oversubscribed schools, surgeries, and so on, making their lives worse, and more NIMBYs are created.
Takver_@reddit
Garden cities. That's what was/is needed, but instead it's just easier to blame NIMBYs for not wanting identikit estates that don't provide appropriate services to build thriving communities.
Cultural values - too many prefer a 4 bed (tiny) 'detached' house vs larger semi/terraced, and there is no appetite for high quality apartments that are well connected by public transport.
No school buses, so parents need a car to do drop-off/get to work on time, bookending the day with an anxiety inducing rat race.
I had to look up why British homeowners are often wary of trees near their houses. Many older homes have shallow foundations, and on clay soils tree roots can leading to subsidence. That’s why new housing developments here tend to have very few trees planted. I grew up in a 'new' city elsewhere in Europe and 30 years later there are trees literally everywhere (plus tons of parks, playgrounds) including very close to houses.
monkeyhorse11@reddit
Need to be done quick so that they can be converted to HMOs
Queasy_Jackfruit_474@reddit
💰
spitamenes@reddit
It’s sort of a cultural obsession in the UK to have a house. I agree these are stupid developments that force car dependency, are totally inefficient uses of space, and a total eyesore. Instead we should be building high rise apartments in city centres.
Bottled_Void@reddit
Mortgages are often cheaper than the cost of rent. And after 25 years, you own the house outright.
That's not culture, that's common sense.
Wise-Youth2901@reddit
Lots of Brits would never want to live in a city. I get what you're saying but it's not going to happen. The UK is what it is.
spitamenes@reddit
Exactly, it’s a cultural problem
CuriousQuerent@reddit
Yes, how dare we want outside space?
Comfortable-Pace3132@reddit
Parks
Dazzling-Werewolf985@reddit
There are many things that make parks much less viable for people. Aside from the obvious convenience aspect of having a garden (eg if you’ve ever wanted a bbq, a swimming pool/jacuzzi, a shed or have kids who have friends), parks (and flats) often attract crime and antisocial behaviour. Like are you gonna tell the women here that they’re gonna have to settle for parks in a country where it often gets dark after 6pm?
WGSMA@reddit
Lots of Brits don’t want to own a Toyota compared to a Ferrari, but add in a budget constraint and revealed preferences will show you what people actually want, not what they say they do.
EmFan1999@reddit
I think the stats are something like 80% of Brits live in a city or town
Informal_Republic_13@reddit
They are. We are being surrounded by canyon- style multiple 27 storey wind tunnel tower blocks on all sides, blocking the sun.
WGSMA@reddit
Bro lives in Zone 0 London and is complaining about the buildings
Similar_Quiet@reddit
In 3-4 cities maybe.
sadpterodactyl@reddit (OP)
Or preferably, beautiful, Haussmannian apartment buildings, like the ones you find across central Paris, but with an English styling.
superioso@reddit
One reason England doesn't have flats is the stupid lease hold system. It's much much more attractive to just own a freehold house than deal with leaseholds with ground rent and such.
Scotland has a system more similar to France, and as a result more people live in flats.
WW3In321@reddit
Grenfell (and the fallout, rendering many flats worthless) ensured that flats will remain the homes of last resort.
_a_m_s_m@reddit
Honestly, this needs to be talked about more!
Although this would probably require very serious levels of leasehold reform & bolstering of renters rights before more people start thinking about it as a serious option.
MCKALISTAIR@reddit
What’s really bugging me is how some of them do solar installs. You’ll see like 3 in roof panels done in such a way (normally dead centre of the roof) that it’ll be an expensive pain in the ass to add more panels when people inevitably realise that you need more panels to really make the most of solar
veryordinarybloke@reddit
I suspect it's because developers have far more money than councils so can frustrate the planning process endldssly. Councils end up just giving in. Also, a total lack of clear national guidance on development. Developers can pretty much do as they like, including building shit ugly estates with no social infrastructure. I bet the houses are poor quality too. Kerching.
WGSMA@reddit
As someone who has worked for a developer in their accounting department, I can assure you, they hate uncertainty lol.
Every day spent farting around with local NIMBY’s at the planning department costs the company finance expense and shareholder / investor patience.
MixedFancy@reddit
this entire thread is why we can't have nice things
people commenting in support of a planning system that stops housing being built
people complaining that new homes are expensive; yes they will be when we build so few
people complaining new housing is only for the rich; when people moves houses their old one is now free, creating additional housing stock
WGSMA@reddit
People complaining there’s not enough social housing when only 3 countries in the entire west have more as a % lol
fixed_grin@reddit
It's depressing. At the creation of the system, the explicit goal was disconnected sprawl and unaffordable cities.
People don't believe it because those are terrible goals, but that's what they wanted.
EtoshaLeopard@reddit
They’ve been building 3,000 houses near me on what were fields. Not one extra school, shopping precinct or Doctor’s surgery… none of them “affordable”, all of them ugly.
JaMs_buzz@reddit
This just proves you can’t build your way out of this housing crisis, at least not with the private sector anyway
WGSMA@reddit
If this is the case, why has Texas where they have been building like crazy seen 6-10% rent drops during period of high inflation?
WGSMA@reddit
Why the fuck is that the job of house builders and not local Gov to do?
They not only pay tax like every other business (Corp Tax, Unrecoverable VAT, ENIC), they also have a corp tax surcharge.
Sea_Warning_9140@reddit
Plans to do the same near me.
They want to build another 25 percent size of the town on the fields, when their is one GP center lol. It's just houses, and nothing else. Great.
moremattymattmatt@reddit
But its ok, because the plans include a developer-funded traffic survey which show the roads are hardly used and have plenty of capacity.
QVRedit@reddit
They also need play grounds, they should be building a community. Though only councils did that.
Sea_Warning_9140@reddit
Well the new estate near me was built by the dev but it's the saddest, most low effort thing ever
adamneigeroc@reddit
The council is doing one better near me and taking the (oversubscribed) schools playing field off the school, to build houses on, because kids should be happy with the bit of tarmac out the front and don’t need anywhere green to play or do sports, and the new houses definitely won’t exacerbate the school being too busy.
It’s fine though cos the developer has to pay a few quid to a mysterious fund that will build more school places somewhere (but not this school that apparently has land going spare?) can see why people get pissed off about it.
EtoshaLeopard@reddit
It’s criminal it really is.
OkFan7121@reddit
Private enterprise should provide shops, if planning restrictions are relaxed enough.
QVRedit@reddit
Oh dear - that’s not going to work very well… Maybe people can start to offer under-price offers on them ?
Spottyjamie@reddit
Yep theyre turning villages into towns without the amenities of a town
The cynic in me thinks a lot of northern ones are bought by southerners taking their remote jobs with them too
Mumique@reddit
As a southerner with a remote job? If I moved up north I'd like there to be amenities and a community...
Spottyjamie@reddit
As would us living there but it seems like extra housing does not bring extra amenities nor extra customers in the neighbourhood shops/pubs/cafes as they tend to drive to the retail parks and out of town supermarkets
LongBeakedSnipe@reddit
I have kind of seen that in our town. Huge amounts of developments but town centre still struggling
AggressiveTooth1971@reddit
Try living right down south in Cornwall. Almost my entire family have had to leave the county because of people earning more money than we could ever hope to earn locally buying up the houses, then add AirBnB into the mix
Slothjitzu@reddit
That's objectively a good thing. That's using the infrastructure in the south of the country to make money and spending it in the north.
Or you could just sell it exclusively to northerners and have it remain a deprived shithole.
Spottyjamie@reddit
Hmmmm in my experience the people who move from away get groceries/clothes etc delivered and shop in car based retail parks
Totally eschew the nonchain shops in the town or village who would love the extra customer base
Slothjitzu@reddit
I find it hard to beleive that you would know the shopping habits of a bunch of people you've never met if I'm honest.
But even I assume it's true, that would indicate that the no chain shops in the town or village are not competitive, or the centre is poorly planned and a retail park is more attractive as a result.
bannanawaffle13@reddit
Yeah I have seen that, live in a small market town, when I was growing up we had a cattle market, a greengrocers, butchers, a weekly fish van, we were a farming town, they then built houses on green belt with a price tg way above local means, area was flooded by southerners who came in and moaned and bitched till the town suited them, cattle market gone, all the small local shops, gone, with a huge tesco taking it's place us kids now can't afford to live where we were born and have to move from the country into the town, it's so sad.
Spottyjamie@reddit
Yep!!
But on the flipside its like when its sold as a quaint rural life but the reality is youre buying a copy&paste 4 bed detached new build in a development of 200+ houses plus where you literally cant walk/bus anywhere as its too far to walk from the actual village and 5-10 miles to the nearest town but no footpaths nor buses
AggressiveTooth1971@reddit
I think something the Americans got right is advertising houses on square foot as much as bedrooms. I've lived in an older 2 bed which was loads bigger than a new build 3 bed.
Housing developers are just throwing up as many houses as they can in the space available to maximise profits, and we buy and rent them anyway because we're desperate for housing.
Tax the rich.
superioso@reddit
This isn't a new thing at all, houses from the 50s are the same, built in estates with cul de sacs everywhere, no local amenities, identical houses etc.
Gadgie2023@reddit
In the past 10 years, I’ve seen loads of villages that have a 300 home estate plonked on the edge of them which ruins the original village.
No buses service, roads choked with traffic, no jobs, amenities and no community.
The result is a very expensive Co-Op which they have to drive to, schools miles away and massive drainage issues.
They are usually called something twee like The Brambles or Appletree Court with fuck all there.
TheMusicArchivist@reddit
I live in a place like this, but it was done in the 1970s. The town is unrecognisable from what it looked like in the 1960s (mostly a farming village and fields). But no-one would deny that the current town works fairly well and people like it. Thing is, in the 1970s they built shopping areas and public transport links and schools and they dredged the streams and rivers in a way so they don't ever flood
Dear_Grape_666@reddit
I live in a place like this right now. Actually forced me to learn to drive because yeah, the nearest shop is a Co-Op that's a 20 minute drive away. The village has no amenities, unless you count the pub.
The rent is so cheap for what we get though, it's like half of what we'd be paying for a 2 bed house anywhere else.
Plus I did kinda need to learn to drive anyway, it'll be very useful when my mum gets older and needs my help more and more.
krappa@reddit
Can you link some examples?
actualinsomnia531@reddit
It's because our economy has been propped up by housing market growth for decades, so developers & investors aren't even remotely motivated to prioritise anything other than profit. The construction industry is huge but massively disjointed with little cooperation on materials standards and practices beyond (flawed) structural and fire regs. It's a mini fossil fuel industry with a lot of sway politically.
Arbrocultureexpert@reddit
I work in a planning department do not AMA me
Raunien@reddit
Not just the countryside. A massive new housing estate is being built on the outskirts of where I live. All detached and semi detached identikit houses. "Plans" for a supermarket but no sign of it yet, and not even a hint of building schools or a GP surgery or even a children's park. Very much built around owning a car, but no plans to upgrade the already congested main roads to cope. All twisty-windy streets with no alleyways or shortcuts for pedestrians and not a tree in sight. Hideous American-style suburban hell. It's also encroaching on two nature reserves and a historical landmark.
Mccobsta@reddit
No regulation saying how they should build it where so they just popup in the middle of fuck knowhere with zero local services
TomLondra@reddit
This is happening because the house building industry is only interested in making money.
TinyZoro@reddit
No that’s a given. It’s happening because we are being offered soulless neoliberalism the cargo cult of growth as the only possible guiding principle on the one hand and undisguised fascism on the other.
Centrists are the main reason we are here. They misunderstand everything about the driving cultural and economic currents and do nothing but undermine the one real alternative the madness of 21st century capitalism.
Which-Procedure@reddit
Without the profit at the end, why bother? Everyone's got to make their way in the world somehow.
Icy_Gap_9067@reddit
I get profit but hundreds of millions of pounds is really excessive.
CorpusCalossum@reddit
It's the unbridled greed and the need to tear the arse out of everything that's the issue.
I run a small business and understand the concept of the profit motive but large corporations in this country, many of them state sponsored monopolies, get away with fleecing the public in exchange for poor quality products and near non-existent, or even negative, services.
BadAspie@reddit
Green belts. It's the green belts. Development is most difficult in precisely the areas it would be most logical to develop, pushing development further out into the countryside
Flagship_Panda_FH81@reddit
If it's any consolation, all the new apartment blocks / estates in London seem to be going the same direction: if you're lucky, they'll have a shop or two in the bottom, but loads of them seem like some sort of sci-fi designated accommodation module: No focal point or centre for a community to form, just as many flats to contain people as can be crammed into the space, with a presumption that people will go elsewhere for amenities. From Fulham to Hendon to Breadridge there are many like it.
space_keeper@reddit
The one I just finished working in (not in London) is, as always, more fucking student flats.
But on the top floor they get this silly common room with, no joke, isolation rooms the size of cupboards with a small chair and tiny shelf table thing, with a mostly glass door so they can be... near other people but not disturbed by them.
Oh and a special curtain in the room that lets you sit at the table, experience the sound of other people but... not have to see them.
In the common room. All the flats have decent bedrooms with desks and very nice living rooms. It's the most stupid thing I've heard in a while. We were creasing ourselves laughing, wondering what sort of wanker is going to sit in a soundproof cupboard.
Comfortable-Pace3132@reddit
That's kind of the point of a city no? That there are already amenities to use? Seems like we should be building on more brownfield where they don't need extra space for amenities
ldn6@reddit
We should, but good luck making that happen. A development near my old place in Central London got held up for ages because of criticisms of “overdevelopment” despite being right near multiple Tube lines and in a dense urban core.
QVRedit@reddit
That seems like an excellent place to build..
GreatBritishHedgehog@reddit
In a word, planning.
Building in good locations is basically illegal
AdOrdinary232@reddit
Are they?
Specialist-Mud-6650@reddit
Councils and locals block absolutely everything other than shite out of town sites, and complain about everything and this raise the price so much that the only option is to build on farmland with no amenities, on the edges of communities no one cares about
BestEmu2171@reddit
The housing developers are very good at £obbying counci£
DMMMOM@reddit
Near me in Mid Kent there are tons of these things popping up, thankfully not too locally but some neighbours and I the other night worked out that on a single road with a train station that serves London they have put and are putting around 12,000 houses and are also looking to commandeer a very old quarry (used in the making of the Roman structures in London) to stick another few thousand more. All they have done to mitigate traffic is add in a single roundabout and a junction with lights and this road is now choked full of traffic 10 hours a day and several of the large projects are nowhere near finished. They have built some kind of medical centre but it's not staffed or open as yet. They have built a vets that is open. The pressure on local services, schools etc is insane. The trainline is stuffed at peak times too and these houses have all been built before the other huge estate that is about 5 miles away and also has a station on that line. Soon enough if you live at the next stop along, you won't get on the train in the morning and there's no where near enough employment opportunities locally to prop up that kind of population growth. But the shareholders in the various building companies are doing well I hear.
WhalingSmithers00@reddit
At least on the tree front I will say that there are trees. They just are usually saplings that haven't grown yet.
The identical houses have been a thing since the war. Just over time people make alterations to the houses, build extensions, change the garden, the windows or paint.
Road connections often get stopped by objections from current residents so access tends to be limited to a couple of entrances. Sometimes within the estate you'll see markings where they have kept right of way if they ever get chance to make the connections they wanted.
Sepa-Kingdom@reddit
Because the planning siren is so expensive and complex, and nimbyism so strong that you only get small developments being built in areas where they offend the least number of people - so out of sight from villages and in the middle of nowhere. 500 or even 1,000 houses just wont support a pub, shop or library.
Wed me much better off if we became nimbys - yes, builds more houses in my town or village because more people will support my local high street in its fight against the internet, and more council tax will support libraries and encourage the government to build additional health facilities in my area.
Sea-Locksmith-881@reddit
Cause this country has decided that anything other than a detatched house is Actual Slavery and also that planning in general is impossible/cancerous, so we get tiny box houses in random rural areas.
Sir_Madfly@reddit
Councils have lost enormous amounts of funding and can no longer afford to do proper urban planning. They also have very limited legal powers in this regard (they can only approve or refuse planning permission, not amend plans themselves). This means that developers just build whatever is going to make them the most profit, which is cheap detached houses with no local amenities.
lubbockin@reddit
they are are everywhere and just awful. all we have left as a nation is buying and selling houses to each other. all the industry shut down etc.
adamjames777@reddit
Profit.
bunglemullet@reddit
In my experience the local authorities have been captured by small minded corporates who are seem devoid of any enlightened landscape architecture training obsessed with cost and incapable of community engagement.
Dennyisthepisslord@reddit
Near family they are planning to build solar panel fields. Sad state of affairs when those are preferable to identikit new builds
Effective_Stranger63@reddit
I think this every time I see one. No pub, post office, corner shop, or park. Nothing at all. If you fancy a walk you can walk off the estate onto an A road, or perhaps an industrial estate. They’re completely isolated from everything else.
inevitablelizard@reddit
Absolutely soulless places. Even parts of our cities are like this, the newer built housing is just soulless sprawl, a collection of houses around nothing. We must be able to do better than that.
BlokeyBlokeBloke@reddit
People don't use pubs even where they exist. That is why they are closing.
People don't use the post office even where they exist. That is why they are closing.
TawnyTeaTowel@reddit
You could have been saying this about any time since about 1970 … is this new to you?
Strange_Platform1328@reddit
My brother bought one of these a couple of years back and there's only one road in or out of the estate so there's horrible traffic jams. The developer is adding a second road soon.
I've never understood why people choose to live where there's not even a corner shop close by or a doctors and these developments have zero infrastructure for people or communities.
No_Use_850@reddit
Tell me you’ve driven around Oxfordshire without telling me you’ve driven around Oxfordshire.
sadpterodactyl@reddit (OP)
Well, I've mostly been in Suffolk and Norfolk, my home counties, but I can imagine Oxfordshire is even worse.
thorny_business@reddit
That's how every housing development is when it's new.
AutoPanda1096@reddit
Everyone wants more houses. Everyone complains about nimbys sticking up protection.
And you get crap in return
asters89@reddit
Presumably the answer is it's because it's the most profitable way to build on that land. The more interesting question is why.
I expect the answer is that no developer is going to waste land building amenities they don't have to if people drive to the nearest urban center anyway. Yes, there would be more space to build amenities if the developer built flats instead, but British people don't like to live in flats. They'll accept it if the flat happens to be in an established city or large town which are otherwise desirable places to live, but no one is going to buy a flat in an out of town estate near Bumbleton under Codgeley in the hope that it turns out to have some nice parks and a high street.
Academic-Key2@reddit
Bandaid solution to our countries problems.
It’s another source of working class misery! One that our government think is improved by these shitty soul destroying new build plots!
Particular-Bid-1640@reddit
Bandaid? The big music thing?
fimbleinastar@reddit
This is a consequence of not being allowed to build upwards
MixedFancy@reddit
because our planning system, greenbelt and building regulations. That is it.
It prevents houses being built where they are needed. You cannot build houses connected to cities.
Building codes have banned large windows because people might fall out.
Anyone commenting that it is because of private developers is missing that privater developers built our nicest city neighbourhoods. All before the town and country planning act.
AllRedLine@reddit
Survivorship bias.
Prior to the TCPA, they also built endless seas of slums. We got rid of those, and preserved the comparatively small amount of nice stuff.
MixedFancy@reddit
What does the TCPA have to do with improved plumbing and space in housing? Or the fact some houses have been extended? Are you suggesting without the act we would still be building slums?
AllRedLine@reddit
Because you are claiming these neighbourhoods are nice. I agree. But in many instances, they've only become nice after the TCPA was implemented. not because of the TCPA necessarily, but the fact of the matter is that you think everyone thought these places were wonderful beforehand, and developers - without regulatory prompt - regularly were creating the 'nicest' neighbourhoods. They weren't. In many cases, the work to make these places nice has taken place in the period post-TCPA - again, not because of it, but also that means it wasn't a barrier.
As I said, a lot of the places you consider 'nice' today were considered shitty, substandard housing in their time. Many of the places that truly were great for their time represented a vanishingly small amount of active development.
I work in the construction industry, in Private Sector planning. I can guarantee you that without regulatory standards, many volume housebuilders would gladly begin building substandard properties, slums and tenements if they could get away with it. There's zero doubt in my - experienced - mind about that.
chat5251@reddit
Profit.
_a_m_s_m@reddit
Yes, but you see this developer come in & has made a whole load of money off it & that’s very important.
But on serious note local planning officer are probably very busy & underfunded.
I also wouldn’t be surprised if they get built because there’s just a lack of people to object to them. This is very likely to make city centre brownfield redevelopment difficult.
For some hope on new development & potential solutions, this video details the Dutch newtown of Houten. Well designed place with two train stations & lots of bike paths.
kunstlich@reddit
This isn't really a uniquely modern issue. My childhood home is an identikit that was at the time built on the fringe of a town, now its closer to the centre than to the edge of it from further development.
BlokeyBlokeBloke@reddit
I live in a 200 year old terraced house that is an identikit of the 200 year old terraced house that I grew up in as a kid. Standard plans for houses have been a thing for a long, long time.
martzgregpaul@reddit
Because thats what Scott and Chardonnay like to come home to after their plastic surgery in Turkey..
A box full of grey furniture, inspirational stencils and plastic grass.
pruaga@reddit
All of the things you say that they are lacking cost money. When a private developer is trying to gain value from a site, why would they build them, when they can build an extra house instead?
That's not to say that there aren't better builders who see this, and build better developments with these things, but then the houses tend to cost more.
MixedFancy@reddit
So why did private developers build our nicest homes from the victorian period until the 30s?
Wise-Youth2901@reddit
If you go back a hundred years similar complaints were made about the expansion of suburbia. The "village" style was paved over long ago. I sort of agree with you but you're fighting a losing battle. Lots of Brits, outside of cities, are driving from 17. Living on an estate and driving to get anywhere is totally accepted by them.
TuMek3@reddit
This isn’t new. It’s the best part of British housing stock for the last century.
MushieMushroomy@reddit
Everyone feels this way including those who have to live in one like myself. Sadly it's all about greed 😔
AutoModerator@reddit
Please help keep AskUK welcoming!
When repling to submission/post please make genuine efforts to answer the question given. Please no jokes, judgements, etc.
Don't be a dick to each other. If getting heated, just block and move on.
This is a strictly no-politics subreddit!
Please help us by reporting comments that break these rules.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.