How to stop massive house building proposal?

[PaulB]

Right you good people, do any of you know ways or strategies to add weight to the campaign to prevent a huge house building plan from going ahead?

A prominent local campaigner, who sits in the House of Lords, is against the plan and has been vociferous in asking for support to help in the fight.

Basically, there's a huge, well-known building company who want to build 211 homes adjacent to my presently very quiet house and it will use our road as the only access and exit for this massive new estate. This will cause loads more noise and disruption while the build goes ahead and then much more traffic driving past my house and fighting for the narrow exit onto the main road.

This is in a town with more empty properties than any other borough in the country and where a block of ten homes have been half built and left in a disgraceful state for five years causing a blight on that part of town. So why, in these economically depressed times, does this company want to build 211 houses? I know the government have removed nearly all restrictions on building on green-field and brown-field sites so it virtually gives the builders a green light but does anyone know of ways to best campaign against this?

 

[ColinJ]

Channel 4 did an interesting series on the subject at the end of last year and organised a campaign. See The Great Property Scandal.

One of my sisters lives in Towcester and there are advanced plans to increase the size of the town from its current size of 8,000-odd to 20,000 by 2020! This is by building huge estates on the fields close to her house.

 

[Red Light]

Right you good people, do any of you know ways or strategies to add weight to the campaign to prevent a huge house building plan from going ahead?

Find asbestos/anthrax/nasty chemical contamination on the land.

 

[ColinJ]

Right you good people, do any of you know ways or strategies to add weight to the campaign to prevent a huge house building plan from going ahead?

Persuade David Cameron to buy the house next door to yours?

 

[vernon]

Find asbestos/anthrax/nasty chemical contamination on the land.

That won't work. The land can be decontaminated. Look at the decontamination and redevelopment the the land now occupied by the Olympic venues.

 

[Red Light]

That won't work. The land can be decontaminated. Look at the decontamination and redevelopment the the land now occupied by the Olympic venues.

Yebbut it suddenly becomes a lot less attractive to builders out for a quick buck. Look how long the Olympic site languished unused before the Government stepped in and cleaned it up for the Olympics. It was a tongue in cheek suggestion anyway.

 

[Archie_tect]

Speak to the planners and find out what the classification of the existing land is... 'white land', green belt, outside/within the settlement boundary?
Who is the landowner... is it a farmer or have they been bought out by a developer seeking to increase land value by getting planning on agricultural land- have the housebuilder bought under an option subject to planning or bought outright... have they proposed social housing or some other Section 106 'improvements' [eg work to offset the impact of giving planning by paying for off-site obligations... eg Highway improvements/ play facilities/ sports'/school improvements].

If a House of Lords member is fighting it then you can be fairly confident that any political pressure that the housebuilders can wring from the political lobbying side will be countered just as much, though they would never admit it.

 

[DiddlyDodds]

Seems just another "Not in our backyard" fight, the goverment have comitments to build new houses so it will happen at some point

 

[Archie_tect]

Not always DD... developers will always approach landowners where they think they can turn agricultural land into housing land by acquiring planning permission on the outskirts of settlements because they make ridiculous amounts of profit compared to buying brownfield land within towns or cities which may be more appropriate and nearer to jobs/ facilities/ services/ schools/shops etc. Land within settlements is sold at market value so has inherent increased costs plus may have 'abnormal' costs to make safe or useable which reduces developers' profits.... Profit is all they care about. Developers will always try and build on nice green fields because the last houses on the edge of towns and cities tend sell for more money... ie more profit.

Getting the picture yet?

 

[mark st1]

Unfortunatly like dodds says it will happen i have to say my own opinion only is building these developments creates jobs in the current climate in the building industry the more developments that get turned down the more chance there is of alot of building companies building matterial suppliers etc going under. I know its crap but there is allways a bigger picture that what inconviences some people does keep other people off the dole and draining from the state.

 

[ColinJ]

Seems just another "Not in our backyard" fight, the goverment have comitments to build new houses so it will happen at some point

As mentioned above - they could find half the housing they needed by just bringing empty properties into use.

It's building on green fields that really upsets people. I don't think anybody would object to derelict factories being pulled down and replaced with housing.

As you will know, many of the old mills round here have been renovated and now provide hundreds of apartments. That's the kind of thing that should be done before green belt areas are sacrificed. I prefer 'Green and pleasant land' to 'Formerly green, unpleasant land'!

I'd also like to see more financial incentives for people to share housing - for example, doing away with the council tax discount for single adult occupancy. Too many people these days (yes, like me! ) are living alone in buildings that could comfortably house 2 or 3 adults.

 

[Brains]

Find asbestos/anthrax/nasty chemical contamination on the land.

"Find" a vary rare plant/insect/animal on the land ?
Try to get the land declared an SSI ?
What was the previous use of the land ? Any chance of a plague pit, Roman ruins, medieval strip farming, etc ?

On the serious level, what can you do about access ? Near my parents house in Cornwall the local council bought up a disused quarry with the intention of filling it with rubbish. However the access road was found not be owned by the council, the local residents then bought it, and then divided it up into about 1000 different lease holds so that any compulsory purchase order would be very very difficult. End result is the project was abandoned.

Access may be the key, if you can do things like stop the road being widened or improved, or introduce a very low bridge of some sort, speed humps, gates. What about utilities access, water sewage, electricity, communications, can these be blocked ? .Start looking at old maps to see rights of way that may be re-introduced and so on.

Democracy can also work for you : The quarry resulted in my father becoming a local independent councillor, he and several others also elected at the same time simply voted against almost everything until the local council realised that if they wanted to get on they had to cancel the project. He stood for 3 terms.

As an aside Japanese knot weed is very easy to introduce, very difficult to eradicate and people will not get mortgages on houses where it is within 25m .......

 

[DiddlyDodds]

As mentioned above - they could find half the housing they needed by just bringing empty properties into use.

It's building on green fields that really upsets people. I don't think anybody would object to derelict factories being pulled down and replaced with housing.
.

I know what you’re saying Colin, but we supply and i have worked in the building industry for nearly 30 years and know the margins they are working on, and with the current pressures on companies to keep their head above water, to add the cost of demolishing a factory and cleaning the place up before they start, is the difference of making the project viable or not.


Many people don’t want apartments they want the house , with garden and garage , so to sell in this depression means building what will sell.

 

[ColinJ]

I know what you’re saying Colin, but we supply and i have worked in the building industry for nearly 30 years and know the margins they are working on, and with the current pressures on companies to keep their head above water, to add the cost of demolishing a factory and cleaning the place up before they start, is the difference of making the project viable or not.

Well, I think that a lot of the money kindly handed over by the government to the banks would have been better spent paying building companies to clean up old factory sites so that they were fit to build housing on! The Olympics showed what could be done if the will was there.

This is only a small country and it is the countryside between the cities and towns that makes it worth living in. If they keep building all over it, then sooner or later, the UK will end up like Los Angeles - one huge ugly sprawl!

 

[Red Light]

As an aside Japanese knot weed is very easy to introduce, very difficult to eradicate and people will not get mortgages on houses where it is within 25m .......

And it would be highly irresponsible to introduce it and if you live near it you will regret it for the rest of your time there.