Sidelights on housing in Britain

In two parts … one here, t’other at the new N.O. ... both come from the TDS article by Alan Bunce. The writer of the article is described thus:

Alan Bunce is the Editor of regional property website Thames Tap. This article was first published on the U.K. Property Forums website. You can gauge the tone of that site by going there.

The tone seems, to me, to be in the same vein as, say, the Taxpayers’ Alliance. If then, mild-mannered publications take this tone, quite at odds with the extremism shown by gummint on both sides of the aisle over the decades, we do get to the question of how on earth anyone of this quality of understanding of a nation’s needs were firstly parachuted in, how they were even voted in, and how one lot can form govt with less than 20% of the vote.

Quickly skipping over that elephant in the room which, if one mentions it, the stasi come for you and you're in the slammer, missy or matey, we can cast our gaze more widely at, say, ASLEF and ask how the hell did what just happened … happen?

There’s something rotten in the state of Britain … but we knew that. Anyway, to today's quote:

Nowadays everyone wants brownfield land built on and I’ve little doubt they’ll soon want Grey Belt land built on too. Once that’s all gone, they’ll need to think hard about another colour with negative connotations.

While these policies will likely get houses built, the Government’s emboldened status, backed by its huge majority, is being reflected in the approach of developers and their representatives.
Take a look at the July 9 meeting of Thurrock Council’s planning committee and note the tone of the applicants in each of two proposed, major housing developments.

These two three-minute speeches can be seen in the webcast here starting at 29m 23s and 1h 16m 58s.

Rather than try to persuade the committee, representatives from Mulberry Strategic Land and Grasslands cared little what the councillors thought and basically challenged the committee to refuse their schemes. Their basic theme was ‘the Government is on our side’.

As it happens both were refused and committee chair Cllr Michael Fletcher (a Labour member) ended up calling for more respect from applicants. But my money is on the developer at any subsequent appeal.

That's a turn up, innit ... a writer more for council than 'development' and yet the question of barracuda developers is almost as crucial in 2024 as that of the elephant in the room as alluded to above.

I mean, look at the architectural state of London just now ... look at the quality of new buildings ... I stop short of using the word shoddy as we don't need the stasi on our doorstep, do we?