What was it?
Westminster Politics 2024-2029
- Thread starter Pexbo
- Start date
What was it?
While I understand we need housing, the idea to give private companies a free for all pass to build where they want with zero caveats isn't the best move.
Even with the current state, home builders normally start with "We'll build schools, shop and parks here" two years later, it's been replaced with more homes and nothing for the local people.
And '20 percent of these homes will be affordable' followed buy 'actually we didn't make any of those affordable, soz' upon completion.
Those committees are a nightmare but the planning officers themselves are no better.
None of it matters anyway. There could be no planning rules whatsoever, there still aren't the men or materials to get anywhere near the targets and not enough financing available to pay for it all.
I understand how people not in the industry can come to these conclusions but the reality is far far different. That is not about giving developers a rubber stamp to do what they want. I do this for a living (god knows why sometimes!) and the planning process is increasingly long and full of uncertainty. Imagine spending tens / hundreds of thousands of pounds and 2+ years on an application that is on a site allocated for housing and it still getting rejected by a committee of laymen despite all the statutory consultees not objecting and the planning officer recommending approval.
It is a ridiculous outcome. I've seen three of these cases in my local area in the last 6 months which has seen 400 new homes go in the bin. Again, these are sites that have been allocated for housing by the local authority after years and years of due diligence. The only reason these sites shouldn't be delivered is because they may be unviable for a developer, all the due diligence should be established in the plan making process and the principal of development should be set in stone at plan adoption.
The problem is the general public have zero idea of how a plan led planning system works. Developers and landowners have one or two opportunities a decade to submit candidate sites to the local authorities development plan review. It is the local authority that judges the submitted sites and allocates them in their adopted plan. On average it is taking circa 5 years to get these local plans done in my patch, so that is 5 years from site identification to allocation and then 2 - 3 years for full planning permission (if you're lucky) and then another 3 years to build out a site of say 150 units. A decade basically to get 150 homes built and 8 of those 10 years your cashflow is negative. It is utter madness, the pros of allocated / policy compliant sites, which this tweet references, not having to go to committee massively outweigh the cons. It needs to be reiterated that the local council is itself allocating these sites for housing and then their own committee is rejecting the principle of the development.
I've worked for major PLC developers and now at a non profit registered provider. The problems are the same despite the reason both entities building homes being different. Viability is incredibly tight and the work to get a site from land to delivery is at times overwhelming, anything to ease the risk would be appreciated. Don't get me wrong though, this doesn't justify some of the build quality issues that we've seen in the past.
Your last sentence, I've genuinely never seen this happen in my time in industry, not saying it hasn't but its not something we sit down and think about doing as a standard.
What a bunch of snowflakes. Cancel culture and political correctness gone mad, wokies offended at everything.
Those committees are full of dinosaurs. The delays they cause cost millions of pounds every year.
Big builders are not an issue for the committee, they have teams of people to make sure planning goes through and brown envelopes here and there. Its the small builders, or the everyday person building a house extension which Karen doesn't like because it makes his house better than hers. So she gets a councillor to take it to committee and waste everyone's time. And if the committee half sees her way then a 36 week delay is on the cards waiting for Planning Inspectoriate to make a decision. That's money, time and livelihood wasted.
I've been on 3 of them and they are such a waste of time, the councillors all vote but they rarely have a valid argument and they rarely change their mind regardless of rules guidelines or regulation and despite planning telling them this is ok. Planners should decide because they know the law, the regulation and guidelines for the area, dinosaur councillors have no idea so should have no authority.
Great read thanks.
How long do you think it takes on average to build say 200 houses, after planning permission? (Three years?)
I live in a new build - have for 3 years, still waiting for the shops to be built. I think it's happened on a couple of developments round here.
With the negative cash flow also, is that common and why is that? Materials, resources or overheads? All?
Also, sorry for all the questions.... do they use location heavily in home building?. Say house in south east = 400k vs house in hull = 270k - yet materials and resources cost the same (ish). Is the difference in land cost also a driving factor?
Again sorry for all the questions, I prefer to get the facts not just something off twitter.
Good god. This man has no shame.
How quickly they can be built and how quickly they will be built are different things. A 200 house development could be done in a year but sites are taking 2 or 3 years plus as they stop and start according to resource constraints, sales etc. Worryingly a few are starting to get cancelled before a spade hits the ground.
To give you an idea of what's tied up a local farmer here sold off almost all his fields to a major builder. Hundreds of acres in prime London commuter belt. Aside from a minor mid point review the next submission for the council development plan is in 2034. It will be years after that before you see a house on that land.
My in laws are in the middle tier building building a couple dozen houses here and there. Planning laws, much of it what's being raised in that article, have all but squeezed that bracket of builder out of the market. The old man took early retirement and the son is downsizing and moving more towards renovation work. Soon it will only be corporations building identikit homes.
Remember, there were no women involved in World War One or Two.
He's your quintessential old twat of a man. That neighbour that pisses everyone off because he's a loudmouth cnut with zero filter.
Really depends on the site, your typical site that needs a decent amount of groundworks, utility diversions etc, probably 3 - 4 month lead in before you start pulling foundations and then a volume builder would typically do 50 odd units a year but that could be ramped up to 80 odd if needs be, so anywhere from 3 - 4 years on average I'd say. I worked on a site that was 3500 homes over two plots, that one site could quite easily see someone spend their whole working life on.
Re cashflow - Yes it is pretty much industry standard as take off costs are so high. Negative cashflow in the sense that you've got no income on a scheme really until you are a year or so into the build. Construction is basically all payment in arrears, its why so many SMEs go bust. Promoting a candidate site, once you factor in legal, consultancy fees, land agreements etc you could easily be 150k out of pocket, that's not factoring in any company overheads, then your planning application and professional fees could be another 100k and take 2 + years. Then you've got a year or so of construction cost which will be in the millions so you need to be selling at a strong rate off plan to start seeing revenue. Materials cost and labour are also very high. With recent requirements for surface water attenuation, biodiversity net gain, building regs, things only get more expensive. There are so many costs that joe public don't know about: commuted sums for road adoption, overhead line diversions, abnormal foundation solutions, concrete capping layers, topsoil import, pumping station, attenuation basin, offsite highways improvements, s106 contributions. You could go on and on and on.
In terms of shops etc, as you can imagine, developers don't want to be building these unless they are forced to through detailed planning permission. Typically you would phase out shops etc in the phasing plan so that you could get some sales in to tide over cashflow. As such, the commercial elements have been approved on the basis that they will be built in accordance with a planning approved phasing plan, typically on a later phase of build than the initial tranche of homes. Also, you would typically sell or lease the commercial units, not many commercial operators i.e. co-op for example would willingly take a commercial unit without enough footfall on site hence you'd want a critical mass of homes in place so the shop is viable from day 1.
Yes location is everything really, the first thing you would do to understand a site viability is work our the average pound per square foot sales revenue achievable in the location based on open market comparable, this gives you your gross development value (GDV). Then you take your gross margin and cost from the GDV and it gives you a residual land valuation. Normally a higher GDV = higher land value but site abnormal costs really drive the land value too. Materials cost is pretty standard across the board but the price of labour, especially for specialist products or in more rural areas, labour costs shoot up. The south east market is really a law unto itself though, the demand for housing, lack of policy compliant land and the affluence obviously drive land prices through the roof!
No worries regarding the questions!
I'm sure Lee would've been running through the battlefield, draped in the union flag, like the hero he is and not cowering in a corner shitting himself.
Back in the day we'd have sent him there permanently!
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What a fecking joke.
Reeves refuses to say if assisted dying would be free at point of use for patients using law if it passes
Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, has refused to say whether the government would be willing to make assisted dying free at the point of use for any terminally ill person wanting to take advantage of the legislation.Last month MPs voted to give the private member’s terminally ill adults (end of life) bill a second reading. But the legislation does not explain who would cover the costs, including time spent by doctors and judges, and the medication needed for someone to end their life.
In an interview with Matt Chorley on Radio 5 Live, Reeves said she was “not convinced” that the bill was going to lead to “higher costs on the public purse”.
But when Chorley said that some costs were inevitable, and asked for details of how those would be funded, Reeves repeated sidestepped those questions. Reeves voted in favour of the bill. But she stressed that the government was neutral, and she said that the bill was still going through the Commons.
Asked directly if, as chancellor, she was willing to fund an assisted dying scheme using taxpayers’ money, Reeves replied:
Asked if people wanting to take advantage of the legislation might have to pay for the assisted dying process themselves, she replied:
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It would be very darkly ironic if assisted dying of all things was privatised.
Good news. The whole sector is a huge drag on UK plc. It needs aggressive intervention and that's never going to come from within.
Argentina is a great example of the benefits that can come from slashing wasteful public spending. For the first time in decades their economy looks to be heading in the right direction off the back of near 30% cuts.
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expensive folders
They should be able to make the 5% savings target pretty easily by not shopping in exclusive stationers. Problem solved.
They should be able to make the 5% savings target pretty easily by not shopping in exclusive stationers. Problem solved.
Which sector. Social care or education?
Build enough houses and affordability will sort itself out.
But until that happens, do you propose just letting them get on with reneging on their promises?
But it won't because the value of houses will fall and there will be millions of people with negative equity, what do you think happens then?
If supply matches demand, and you build the right mix of houses eg starter homes, flats, family homes, bigger homes and smaller homes, so people can move up and down, then I don't know why you have to set these % targets for affordability. Build what people want, stop constraining supply, quit setting arbitrary targets for types of houses and subsiding high prices and let a proper housing market sort it out, not this target ridden subsidised, supply constrained mess that we have now. And if it turns out the market doesn't build enough for low income people, build council houses. But stop with the gimmicks and just build.
Re negative equity may or may not be a problem, but the actual problem we have right now is a lack of all types of house and enormous financial pressures on renters and recent mortgage buyers. How about we prioritise their needs?
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I don't disgree but negative equity will be an issue, the cost of property is currently set by the lack of supply, that pushes up the price, increase the supply and the cost goes down, existing houses become less valuable and millions of people will have mortgages that are more than the value of their house, rock and a hard place, either homeowners suffer the hit or government mitigates it - TBH I can't see either doing that so the circle will continue
You get negative equity when there is more supply than demand. I don't think that is likely to be a problem, there is enormous suppressed demand.
It's happened in my lifetime - early 90's, it doesn't take much to tip the balance
Seems like you're contradicting your own point. For houses to be affordable, they need to be cheaper than they currently are. But you're proposing that they build millions more - so many everyone can afford one - yet somehow prices for people who already have a mortgage will remain stable? It's absolute nonsense.
The only way to please both homeowners, people who want to buy homes but cannot currently afford to, and people who are happy to live in rented accommodation is to build homes specifically targeted at those demographics - subsidised and unavailable to landlords. So that would be social housing owned by the government to replace those lost in the last 40 years as well as affordable starter homes. All this would help with the problem of the young people who are not in work because it would give them something realistic to aspire towards rather than a hopeless pipe-dream of rent, debt and more debt without an end in sight.
The state of this cnut, he hates scrutiny of any sort.
If you read above in this thread, all the info in there. It's takes years to build 400 house this is not including planing. Labour will be out in 4/5.
But we shouldn't worry there is plenty of housing.
Stop The Boats...
Some weeks ago I posted on here my view that one of the ways to tackle this was to stop the access to the means of transport that the people smugglers were using. Especially the outboard motors.
The response I was getting for saying that was at best highly critical.
I wrote ro my new MP asking why this was not being investigated and the suppliers of the outboard motors prosecuted, such that the people smugglers were not able to provide the boats.
He has written back confirming that this is indeed being done. The outboard motors are coming into Europe via Turkey and the UK government is working with them to shut down the supply of this key piece of equipment.
Some weeks ago I posted on here my view that one of the ways to tackle this was to stop the access to the means of transport that the people smugglers were using. Especially the outboard motors.
The response I was getting for saying that was at best highly critical.
I wrote ro my new MP asking why this was not being investigated and the suppliers of the outboard motors prosecuted, such that the people smugglers were not able to provide the boats.
He has written back confirming that this is indeed being done. The outboard motors are coming into Europe via Turkey and the UK government is working with them to shut down the supply of this key piece of equipment.
Sounds like a great use of government time and money, nothing else needs sorting out after all
Stopping the boats won't do a damn thing, legal immigration is so high that its impossible to build, house or even support the family's coming to England.
Horrible to say this, but we are cooked as the youth would say.
Say that to the mothers and fathers who's children have drowned trying to get to England on these lethal rubber boats with their underpowered motors.