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Latest Budget Raises Spectre Of The Ghost Of Truss Budget Past
Business confidence has slipped to its lowest level since the aftermath Liz Truss mini-budget in Autumn 2022. 63% of businesses say tax, including national...
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We’re Not NIMBYs – The People Want House Building
New research has revealed that 90% of UK adults believe the UK needs more housing and 68% think it is needed within 5 miles of their home, so it is wrong to call us a nation of NIMBYs.
More revealing is the type of new housing people want to see built – the large housing estates which the Government seems to be focusing on are the least popular option, even if they come complete with their own facilities such as a school, GP, shop and a pub.
What people really want is summarised by small is beautiful. Individual new houses on infill plots in/adjacent to existing towns/villages are the most popular option across all demographics and regions of the UK, closely followed by smaller developments of 3-10 houses in/adjacent to most settlements.
Make it affordable
64% of UK adults think that new housing should be a mixture of affordable/social housing and homes sold at market rates. Young adults are unsurprisingly the keenest to see a higher proportion of affordable/social housing.
Michael Holmes, the content director of Homebuilding & Renovating, says: “People object strongly to the imposition of large housing estates with their identikit homes designed to maximise the profits of the large developers. Instead, they want small developments of individual homes which typically have higher quality architecture and help communities to grow organically.
“If every larger village in England found space for five new homes a year, it would result in an additional 30,000-50,000 new homes, increasing the level of new house completions in the UK by 20% over the current build-rate.”
New life
Holmes adds: “As well as delivering much-needed new housing, it would help breathe new life into village schools, pubs and shops at a barely discernible growth rate easily absorbed into existing communities and the environment. Such incremental development in/around towns could increase the number of new homes by at least another 50,000 and deliver the sort of new housing the public clearly wants with the volumes the Labour Government has identified we need.”
Webbs Meadow
Webbs Meadow is a multi-award winning development which had 13 new homes in phase 1 on the edge of Kington village in Herefordshire. All have now been built to high architectural and environmental standards and a phase 2 of 4 more plots has recently been released.
Kinsey Hern, the local farmer who owned the land and had the vision for the development, said, “I wanted our rural community to benefit from the building of attractive, individual new houses and for the village to become economically viable so it could support a pub and new community centre.”
www.webbsmeadows.co.uk
Howton Field
Teignbridge Council in Devon has been a trailblazer for small developments suitable for people wanting to build their own forever home. Howton Field is its latest scheme with 15 new homes on the edge of Newton Abbot, 3 of which will be affordable terraced watertight shells for people to fit out themselves. The other 12 homes are being sold as self-build plots starting from £120,000.
www.belfield-developments.co.uk/projects/howton-field
Picture: Webbs Meadow.
Article written by Cathryn Ellis
18th October 2024