Decisione prevista sullo sviluppo di 4.115 case

Hopefully some more NIMBY tears to come, it’s always a fun sight.

“The Elms Park Consortium said the scheme includes more than 1,000 affordable homes, a modern business park, three schools and improvements to offsite cycling routes, extensive green infrastructure and a new transport hub with buses into Cheltenham and Tewkesbury.

It said a new sports hub including tennis courts and an all-weather pitch, a new community centre and a new doctor’s surgery would be built”

You can guarantee that once all the homes are built the developer will say there is no money left to build any of this.

If the houses were approved in 2016 and built in the following years 2017-2018 then they’d have been so much more affordable than they will be now, many houses have nearly doubled in price since then

This sounds very similar to [Sherford](https://www.plymouthchronicle.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Sherford-Country-Park.-Credit-Barrett-Photographers-3-1068×400.jpg) next to Plymouth. Sherford will have 5500 homes when finished along with schools, shops and doctors etc. It’s a 20 year project but it’s well underway with over 1000 homes occupied.

It’ll house 12,000 people when it’s finished and cover 1200 acres of countryside and farmland.

I live in Cheltenham. The other amenities have to be built it cannot just be houses. The infrastructure already cannot handle the current capacity. The local supermarkets in that area already have overflowing car parks that cause gridlock in the surrounding areas. A single track road that comes off a motorway they are going to build this next too already cannot sustain the traffic.

Some ways to help fix the housing crisis – most of which have the side impact of breaking the stranglehold of big developers:

– automatic permissions for certain pre-approved designs. Zoning for development where no permissions are required

– remove the powers of many of the statutory consultees who eg block housing due to nutrients or take months to respond to mandatory questions

– councils to free up land they own for development, sun-divide plot and let groups build individual sections (including small house builders and self build). Already done by some

– review all areas of “greenbelt” and drastically reduce. Eg all former industrial, all next to stations automatically removed.

– remove councillor role in planning permissions

– someone to go through planning and design rules books with a red pen and delete whole sections including restrictions on installing air con, restrictions making windows smaller or requiring bars above waist height, restriction on needing two staircases but multiple vantage points on midrise buildings, etc. We have a number of restrictions that are misconceived, they are hated by architects for lowering quality and buildability

– proper replacement for the NHBC policies, which are not up to scratch

– funds for councils to commission large numbers of new supported and assisted living housing, including eg accessible units, bungalows and downsizing properties

– review and consider ending most of the help to buy and affordable housing type programmes, many of which are extremely expensive for little overall benefit

– government underwriting of large housing schemes, eg guarantees to purchase units at certain reduced rates if delivered by X date if builder fails to sell. So developers are encouraged to produce without financing problems should they fail to find private buyers

– encouragement of mass build to rent schemes with corporate landlords, while discouraging the small mom and pop show landlords. Gradual move towards professionalised landlordism with higher standards.

– mass investment in cheaper renewal power, rather than focus on individual retrofitting. We are spending so much on saving eg £150 a year on an individual property when we can instead produce that much energy in a green way each year for cheaper

– automatic right for all properties to add a 1 story mansard roof

– drastically increase guidance on acceptable density and height in cities. Remove requirements to fit in with character of area, we have a housing crisis and new development shouldn’t be low rise in central London because existing properties are

– streamlined self-build process with automatic rights and requirements on eg national grid to assist.

– serious government sponsorship of construction skills training. Stop talking about how great apprenticeships are, the best ones are way oversubscribed, you need to fund more.

– review of mortgaging to allow for pre-build down payments. Drastically loosen mortgage affordability requirements. While someone losing their home is very sad, protecting one person at the cost of dozens of others not being able to buy is too risk adverse.

– serious government intervention in home insurance market and management companies. It’s a Wild West and costs have skyrocketed post Grenfell, it’s destroyed public confidence in apartments.

– review of minimum space standards for flats in cities. Part of the reason why one bed flats/studios are not buildable at a reasonable cost is that the minimum size is too big to be affordable for most (many times that of Japan, France, USA, etc). Many people would rather live alone in a smaller central property than house share, this should be permitted. These only exist (at a premium) in old buildings.