The government has decreed that pension annuities can be cashed in. With stagnation in shares, next to nothing in interest rates where is this money released to go? Why, to buy houses to rent of course. It just so happens the developers have been given more or less carte blanche to build on any green belt, common, SSSI reserve, public open space or good agricultural field they choose. Just happens that first time buyers can no longer afford to buy the houses for sale. So the retired generation, using their pension funds are snapping up, at highly preferential government incentives, any house for sale to rent out, to these first time home couples. UKplc economic 'recovery' is founded on building more houses. More houses means more furnishing, more white goods selling more means everyone feels better and jobs are generated to build the houses in the first place then all the goods needed to fill them. So simple! All boxes ticked, no one can possibly complain and everyone is happy. UKplc is all fired up.
Except it is not that simple. Another super container ship leaves China to restock all those emptying shelves. What we do not have is a resurgence in UKplc manufacturing for a world wide market. Worse still, to raise the money to buy the houses for rent requires new 'private' loans to be taken out, increasing our national indebtedness. Interest on those loans requires even more spending on stuff to pay the interest to keep the wheels turning. This then is the economic miracle that UKplc recovery is based on. Increase loans taken out so you can spend more. Developers are only in it for profit, profits come from quick turn round on easy green sites, take objectors out of the sequence and they can are performing miracles. House are shooting up all around the wealthier parts of UKplc. Towns are expanding at unprecedented rates just not necessarily houses to suit the homes needed nor necessarily in the right places.
Once apon a time UKplc used to have a vision, a view for a future and how to reorganise and arrange itself. How best to look after all its people and how to foster communities and encourage production. All swept aside. Now the only deciding factor is profit. Where can you make most profit and more quickly? These are the new ground rules that determine the future that we will pass on to our next generations. Scant else to pass on to them as all the inherited wealth we were given custodianship off has or will be sold off. National Park for sale, Stately Home for sale, Crown Estates for sale, national collections for sale. Any takers? You can name your own terms! This is not some Orwellian nightmare. This is reality, here and now.
Showing posts with label developers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label developers. Show all posts
Monday, 30 March 2015
Wednesday, 15 February 2012
Corporate Greed
Since the inception of Planning Law in 1947, a central aim, encompassed by Abercrombie in his first London Plan, was to banish squalid slums and give everyone the right to sunlight and open space to enjoy. We pay the price in multi-layers of heavy-handed bureaucracy to ensure we all benefit Pretty basic stuff but constantly being whittled away.
A large site, previously used by a utility company, on privatisation became surplus to need. The new foreign owner of this, our essential service developed over decades out of tax-payers money, was now to be maximised for the profit of their shareholders. I have no doubt that teams of experts were assembled and charged, (you will get more if you make more), with getting the most possible return out of this redundant land. Encouraged indirectly no doubt by our government who saw loads of lucre rolling into the exchequer when they sold off London Dock's, freed from planning constraints as the bait.
Our local Planning Officers do have to be mindful of the possibility of an Appeal against any unfavourable decision they might make. One important plank in their defence is that they are adhering to government guidelines. So when the government, as central policy, decrees that housing densities are to be increased to reduce the demand for green field take, our local Planner's have little option. A well muscled team can use that government directive to achieve whatever goal they have in mind leaving our local officer with no room to argue. What we end up with in our town is a new built 'sink estate'.
The one location that is doomed to ever spiral down until even the lowest of the low ask not to be sent there. Such is the certain future for this recently built development. Where developer profit, maximising the greatest number of households on the plot, is made regardless of all future consequences.They have no tie to the future of the development, only in the immediate, now, profit return to their 'foreign' investors. What we end up with is an overbuilt estate, gloomy, dank and sunless with mean spaces, dominated by car provisions and waste storage and tiny patios, (for a 'lucky' few), overlooked, cast in shadow, too small to plant and undesirable to sit out in. What left over public spaces there are, are 'greened' with robust unfriendly deterrent plants. The obligatory 'children's play area' reduced to a token with no room to run, to sit in the sun or enjoy some fresh air. Does that sound like the pre-war slums our planning laws were meant to prevent? Does to me.
Not just mean in layout and mean in usable public space, but also mean in materials and lacking in any imaginative design, detail or quality.
We have got to this point. The old presumptions that local pride and interest will ensure the quality of local development have been overturned. Now national corporations with interests far removed from the pleasure and enjoyment of local residents, now determine the quality of developments within our own patch.
Now for a final turn of the screw. The government rules that ultimately determine what shall or shall not be built are all city centric. Drawn up by civil servants that have no living experience other than London and its suburbs. Their mind sets do not encompass rural county towns but their rules, endorsed by a parliament focussed on timetables and vote catching, do set the limits. Take Taunton a rural county market town. Low rise with every expectation of still sitting out in the sun and enjoying the quiet of the countryside. Why should that expectation be set aside for all future generations just to meet a city orientated need to save space? Why should our town be forever despoiled to meet some other place needs. Ruined not just for now but for generations forward and lowering the bench mark by which future schemes are to be judged by. We need decisions by local people, judged in the context of their local concerns and needs. Not a National Policy applied regardless. A high rise development is not suited to Taunton. Flats are not the norm for Taunton and should never be. These are city solutions for city problems. Low rise and gardens are the norms for Taunton.
A large site, previously used by a utility company, on privatisation became surplus to need. The new foreign owner of this, our essential service developed over decades out of tax-payers money, was now to be maximised for the profit of their shareholders. I have no doubt that teams of experts were assembled and charged, (you will get more if you make more), with getting the most possible return out of this redundant land. Encouraged indirectly no doubt by our government who saw loads of lucre rolling into the exchequer when they sold off London Dock's, freed from planning constraints as the bait.
Our local Planning Officers do have to be mindful of the possibility of an Appeal against any unfavourable decision they might make. One important plank in their defence is that they are adhering to government guidelines. So when the government, as central policy, decrees that housing densities are to be increased to reduce the demand for green field take, our local Planner's have little option. A well muscled team can use that government directive to achieve whatever goal they have in mind leaving our local officer with no room to argue. What we end up with in our town is a new built 'sink estate'.
The one location that is doomed to ever spiral down until even the lowest of the low ask not to be sent there. Such is the certain future for this recently built development. Where developer profit, maximising the greatest number of households on the plot, is made regardless of all future consequences.They have no tie to the future of the development, only in the immediate, now, profit return to their 'foreign' investors. What we end up with is an overbuilt estate, gloomy, dank and sunless with mean spaces, dominated by car provisions and waste storage and tiny patios, (for a 'lucky' few), overlooked, cast in shadow, too small to plant and undesirable to sit out in. What left over public spaces there are, are 'greened' with robust unfriendly deterrent plants. The obligatory 'children's play area' reduced to a token with no room to run, to sit in the sun or enjoy some fresh air. Does that sound like the pre-war slums our planning laws were meant to prevent? Does to me.
We have got to this point. The old presumptions that local pride and interest will ensure the quality of local development have been overturned. Now national corporations with interests far removed from the pleasure and enjoyment of local residents, now determine the quality of developments within our own patch.
Now for a final turn of the screw. The government rules that ultimately determine what shall or shall not be built are all city centric. Drawn up by civil servants that have no living experience other than London and its suburbs. Their mind sets do not encompass rural county towns but their rules, endorsed by a parliament focussed on timetables and vote catching, do set the limits. Take Taunton a rural county market town. Low rise with every expectation of still sitting out in the sun and enjoying the quiet of the countryside. Why should that expectation be set aside for all future generations just to meet a city orientated need to save space? Why should our town be forever despoiled to meet some other place needs. Ruined not just for now but for generations forward and lowering the bench mark by which future schemes are to be judged by. We need decisions by local people, judged in the context of their local concerns and needs. Not a National Policy applied regardless. A high rise development is not suited to Taunton. Flats are not the norm for Taunton and should never be. These are city solutions for city problems. Low rise and gardens are the norms for Taunton.
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| High-rise does not suit Taunton |
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| No matter the quality, it is the wrong answer |
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