BBC News this morning
Heard on BBC News today, worrying:
Increasing the amount of developed land by a third would address the housing shortage, according to Planning Minister Nick Boles.
He told BBC Newsnight building on another 2-3% of the land in England - bringing the total to about 12% - would "solve the housing problem."
Mr Boles said open land would be built on in exchange for commitments to defend greenbelt spaces.
He called for "beautiful" housing that was sensitive to its local area.
In his first interview about his portfolio since he entered government, Mr Boles has reopened the debate over how much more housing Britain needs and where.
Describing current housebuilding as "ugly rubbish", he argued that improved design might persuade local communities currently opposed to more development to support further building.
"The built environment can be more beautiful than nature and we shouldn't obsess about the fact that the only landscapes that are beautiful are open - sometimes buildings are better," he said.
To this end, the minister says that new housing will not be on the greenbelt, but he does say that open land will be targeted.
Comments
What orifice is this man talking through....
According to the 'Migration Watch' think-tank, 200 houses a day, that's 73,000 a year are needed purely as a result of (official) immigration!
The 'official' figures go on to suggest that 36% of new households over the next 25 years will come from the same cause.
We do need a more effective managed migration through a host of changes if we are to better manage our housing, NHS, and DSS priorities . These are just a start and certainly not an exhaustive list. The UN Convention as amended by the 1967 Protocol is well out of date; this was convened before cheap air travel and needs revision for all signatory countries if borders are to become more effective. It had been too easy for undeserving migrants, (who spoil it for the deserving) unaccompanied minors, adults also falsely claiming to be minors, career criminals and gangs to arrive on false documentation and tear up anything relating to their origins in order to exploit loopholes with taxpayer support and to falsely claim to have come from unrelated war torn countries to gain lucrative asylum housing rights and international protection. Similarly when all appeals were exhausted instead of picking these off the streets they have been allowed to disappear to set up families and establish a right to remain under the HRA Right to Family Life etc. We also stopped for years counting migrants out of this country by way of embarkation cards some time ago and that was also a big mistake. I could go on about the mistakes and refusal of certain politicians over decades to address the hot potatoe that failures of managed migration has become but I won't as I am retired. One thing however is for sure, no one knows the true extent of illegal migration over recent years, least of all politicians, and what we hear is but the tip of the iceberg.
Plus, our government still act like we are a major power, able to give big sums of money to help less financially stable countries, and is being asked to contribute more to these countries in the E.U yet we support many families left in their own countries by our generous social system.
Also, we will continue to give huge sums of money to India until 2015 yet India doesn't want it. They have prospered in recent years by so many Uk firms using their personnel services whilst we have declined.
I have friends who come from different countries so this is not a racist attack. We have just too many people in this country, hardly any manufacturing firms that have not been sold to other countries; less farms able to earn a decent living resulting in less farms, producing less food, making us more venerable to other countries demands. Not only that, most of our energy suppliers are foreign owned.
We have really lost the plot!
Well we could start with the 'official' estimate of suitable 'brownfield' land available for 1.5 million new homes - 400,000 of them in London, where the demand is the greatest.
Empty houses next, another 'official' estimate puts this at 750,000. Here in Devon we apparently have 16,000.
Perhaps, many of the second homes and holiday homes would come back on the market if there were a tax on any house unoccupied for a long time, or, say more than a month a year, that would be fun to administer!
Also, the number of people now resident in UK that were born abroad has really 'rocketed' since the last Census 10 years ago.
Both putting pressure on 'Housing'.
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