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Greenbelt ?


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Warrington seems to have plenty of empty shops in the centre which could be cleared for Housing & help to revitalise the centre.Planners seem to be locked in a mentality of spreading towns outwards & overlook chances to back fill with new building when districts become run down & redundant. Maybe there is even scope for a modern version of high rise building with updates for the 21st century & without the pitfalls of the 60s.

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Think the overall problem is, that the private sector have no intention of building sufficient housing and prefer green belt, as it's cheaper to develop.  A slow building rate keeps house prices high, which keeps their profits high. The only way to solve the problem is to allow (and fund) Local Authorities to build cheap housing for rent, including pre-fabs; in order to meet the scale of demand. Also, to prevent "land banking", planning permissions should have a 12 month time limit; no build = no planning permission. Unfortunately, such common sense runs totally contrary to Tory ideology, so yet another crisis that hasn't got the political will to resolve it.

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saw a bit on the news about the new idea of building prefabricated units that can be built at one site and shipped to the relevant areas that are low on housing. Didn't they have these during the post war years? I am sure there were some in hawleys lane at one time.

 

I am surprised that nobody has thought of using caravans to house people. Must be plenty of land that could be put over for large static caravans that would be otherwise unsuitable for building houses for one reason or another. Or maybe people could take a leaf out of the travellers books they don't seem to have too many problems finding somewhere to live for a few days. :roll:

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.......... Or maybe people could take a leaf out of the travellers books they don't seem to have too many problems finding somewhere to live for a few days. :roll:

Centre Parks over the blue bridge near Brian Bevan island top of Wilderspool Causeway seems quite popular at the moment, there's another lot there now....gawd !! 

Much nicer there with the lake etc than the Crosfields overspill car park where they (or another group) were last week......

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Developers do not want Green belt for social housing - there's not enough profit in it for them.

3, 4 & 5 bedroom 'executive' homes are what mainly gets built on green belt. Areas with good access to motorways are the most popular as they are in effect building 'dormitory' estates for people who are from and work in other areas.

 

The government have in recent years relaxed the rules on 'contaminated' land, so that now land that was considered unsafe to human health can be developed and it is this land that gets the social housing and cheap starter homes developments, often subsidised by the local authority.

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Not sure that's the answer either, from the same link:

 

...the UK’s biggest housebuilders are sitting on 600,000 plots of land with planning permission...

 

It suits developers to maintain high house values, building on these 600,000 sites that already have planning permission would work against that.

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There is also another factor that should also be taken into account when looking at house & land prices & that is the perceived amount of money available to families to be able to buy property & stimulate the property market.

Let's go back pre 1970s where the lady of the house rarely worked ,she was a housewife & a family lived off the earnings of the husband.Get into the seventies & eighties & another industrial revolution took place with married women getting part time jobs, which weren't available in previous years, "to get a bit more money" which started to bring about more wealth within families,better car,holiday abroad, & "we can afford a bigger house". The 70s also started to see a boom in wages & easy access to credit & when the 80s/90s/ came along second incomes were a big player in driving the housing market,so much so that it is virtually impossible to buy or rent property now without a second income to be able to support the monthly outgoings. Out in the workplace of today there are so many opportunities for women in the workplace to do well paid jobs of the modern era ,providing they want to work,that it is hardly surprising that property developers are tailoring their prices to get the most out of working families pockets.

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Home ownership has never been affordable to the majority of Plebs, especially at the lower end of the demand chain. Prior to WW2, relatively cheap rented accommodation was available to the great unwashed - they were called "slums"; I'm sure our local history buffs can produce photos. Then, assisted by the Luftwaffe demolition gang, a post-War housing crisis presented itself - just like it is now; with demand vastly exceeding supply. The solution ?  A massive housebuilding programme, led by Local Councils, with low rents and a responsible landlord.  These massive Council Estates are still with us today; unfortunately, thanks to Maggie, around 20% was taken out of the rental sector by right to buy; later to be compounded by Brown forcing Councils to off load to Housing Associations.  The lower end housing that is being built to buy, is tiny in comparison to the past (little boxes), and a high number of "apartments" (flats) -  but not cheap, to buy or rent; so clearly not "affordable".  Result: with demand continually outstripping supply, and developers deliberately on a go slow to keep prices high,  were back to a pre-war scenario. So the solution is a no brainer:  it was done in the post war period, it could be done again. All that's required is the political will, unfortunately, the Tories are ideologically incapable of doing it, as they are obsessed with "ownership" giving people a motive to conserve - hence voting Conservative.  The Lib/Labs have been so wrapped up in PC trivia for the past 20 or 30 years, that such fundementals as housing have fallen off their political agendas.   Another factor in the demand equation of course, is population increase (immigration) and demographic trends (more single folk & more elderly care requirements).  Which brings us back to the Green Belt argument: it's a no brainer to realise that on our small Island with an increasing population, more accommodation is required, so we either build out (into the Green Belt) producing an urban sprawl, or we build up with high rise developments on existing brown field sites.

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No doubt at all, that there are "empty properties" being left empty; but problems arise from legal constraints in tracing ownership or acquiring such properties through CPOs. Still, a good point, which again begs the question as to why our politicians can't bring in requisite legislation to put such properties to use by LAs. The only "evidence" I have, is the numerous "experts" that have appeared on TV and no doubt any enquiry to a Planning Dept, for numbers of planning permissions not taken up, would give you the scale of the go slow. As others have said, we have a problem of "land banking", where planning permission radically increase the value of land, thus tempting speculators to hold out for increasing values.

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