Energy Prices

[Protheroe]

I'm afraid the land banking issue is a convenient and lazy excuse for the failure of the planning system to provide houses where people want to live. Take the recent Black Country Plan for example - conducted entirely according to the guidelines set by government it recommended judicious green belt release in several sites. Cue every single local politician suddenly clutching their pearls over scrubby fields everywhere. It's pathetic and Andy Street is by far the worst culprit locally.

Skills shortages is something I completely agree with, though the take up and tax treatment of modular housing could help immensely.

To get to net zero we first need to get dirty in order to produce the necessary infrastructure. That is a simple fact.

[Ossian]

Around Stourbridge the most vociferous protests against encroachment onto nondescript patches of dock and nettle are coming from those living in houses recently built on precisely such sites. The Bell Meadow/Green Meadow/Redlake Drive developments being festooned with campaign banners is just one example.

[Protheroe]

Around Stourbridge the most vociferous protests against encroachment onto nondescript patches of dock and nettle are coming from those living in houses recently built on precisely such sites. The Bell Meadow/Green Meadow/Redlake Drive developments being festooned with campaign banners is just one example.

I couldn't agree more. I live about 1/2 mile from the triangular site on Worcester Lane bounded by the road and railway. As a judicious green belt release it ticks all the boxes; the lack of self awareness of those living on the former fields over the road is breathtaking.

[Borin' Baggie]

The lazy excuse here is to blame planning regulations for the housing shortage. I repeat, the rate of dwellings being granted planning permission is double the rate of houses being built. How could planning the major constraint on new housing when the houses being granted planning permission aren't being built?

As for land banking, last time I looked at the figures it was 600,000 plots in 2015 were being land banked. That's not an insignificant number of houses, and given the rate of houses being built is well below the number of houses being granted planning permission it's very likely gone up in the subsequent 7 years. And that 600,000 doesn't include option agreements which were roughly another 500,000 plots in 2015. The owners of that land do not have any incentive to build houses on them as soon as possible, that is a major problem.

As for skills shortages, flat-pack houses would still be subject to them. It's not just bricklayers we're short on. They might allay some of the backlog but not anywhere near enough to the extent we need.

With regards to net zero, we're well behind where we would have been had all the coalition energy policy been kept instead of cut back over the last 7 years. It's going to be a very long time until gas for heating is phased out fully but home insulation drastically reduces that need and whilst Labour and the Lib Dems have policy on that the Tories - despite being in government - do not. There's a big picture that the Tories are the only party seem to be dropping the ball on.

[Ted Maul]

I couldn't agree more. I live about 1/2 mile from the triangular site on Worcester Lane bounded by the road and railway. As a judicious green belt release it ticks all the boxes; the lack of self awareness of those living on the former fields over the road is breathtaking.

Is your the house on the Hagley Road that always used to have the massive Tory banner on the side of it come election time?

[Protheroe]

I couldn't agree more. I live about 1/2 mile from the triangular site on Worcester Lane bounded by the road and railway. As a judicious green belt release it ticks all the boxes; the lack of self awareness of those living on the former fields over the road is breathtaking.

Is your the house on the Hagley Road that always used to have the massive Tory banner on the side of it come election time?

Nope, mine is the one with the mural of Dear Margaret on the gable end.

[Protheroe]

The lazy excuse here is to blame planning regulations for the housing shortage. I repeat, the rate of dwellings being granted planning permission is double the rate of houses being built. How could planning the major constraint on new housing when the houses being granted planning permission aren't being built?

As for land banking, last time I looked at the figures it was 600,000 plots in 2015 were being land banked. That's not an insignificant number of houses, and given the rate of houses being built is well below the number of houses being granted planning permission it's very likely gone up in the subsequent 7 years. And that 600,000 doesn't include option agreements which were roughly another 500,000 plots in 2015. The owners of that land do not have any incentive to build houses on them as soon as possible, that is a major problem.

As for skills shortages, flat-pack houses would still be subject to them. It's not just bricklayers we're short on. They might allay some of the backlog but not anywhere near enough to the extent we need.

With regards to net zero, we're well behind where we would have been had all the coalition energy policy been kept instead of cut back over the last 7 years. It's going to be a very long time until gas for heating is phased out fully but home insulation drastically reduces that need and whilst Labour and the Lib Dems have policy on that the Tories - despite being in government - do not. There's a big picture that the Tories are the only party seem to be dropping the ball on.

It's a comforting lie to believe that a developer would deliberately build less to maintain prices, or choose to collude with other developers to do so. Housing is a commodity like anything else - what do providers of commodities do when their product is scarce and demand is high? They don't hold back production do they? Why on Earth would they? If we built 200,000 homes a year or more it wouldn't make a dent in house price growth for years whilst household formation continues apace.

As it is 600,000 is a tiny number, less than two and a bit years of the supply we actually need - and are those consented sites in areas where people want to live or rabbit hutches in shitty secondary towns like Dudley and Stoke where the planning system directs them?

As for option agreements, you simply don't understand how development works. I suspect there are more like 5 million plots optioned up rather than 500,000. Why? The planning system should give a degree of policy certainty. As I said above (and you ignored) the Black Country plan reflected adopted policy - then every green belt allocation is torn into by the very politicians who adopted the policy. That's why so much is optioned up - because planning is just one big fucking lottery you have to spread your bets.

The cost and complexity of the planning system crowds out smaller developers too (unlike other countries) - why would a small developer risk his entire livelihood and possibly his home on pursuing a 4 or 5 plot development that may only get consent after 10 years and countless legal battles? They won't.  Hence power is concentrated in the hands of larger developers building lowest common denominator houses made of kleenex and spit on the most ridiculously priced land - land that's ridiculously priced because allocations and development are throttled by the planning system.

I worked in this idiotic system for 15 years up to the financial crisis. I had planners under pressure from politicians trying to put hours of use restrictions on a site literally under the M6 at Bromford due to perceived noise. I had planners simply unable to accept that an out of town business park needed 4 car parking spaces per 1000 sq ft to get built. "Policy" told them it didn't, and so policy trumps reality. I had planners preferring shops in town centres to remain vacant rather than becoming another estate agent. I had planners insisting that sites would only get B2 industrial consent because policy told them the employment opportunities they offered were "better" than those in a B8 warehouse despite there being no demand for B2 and no measure of what constituted a "good" job. For me this meant delay after delay, cost after cost, perfectly developable sites that either took a decade to get a realistic consent on or never did. When I was trying for an office to residential conversion in Coleshill a planner actually wrote to me stating that there was "Zero housing need" in Coleshill - a town next to the the M6 / M42 / M6 Toll / NEC / Birmingham Business Park / Airport.

Landbanking is a fatuous concept made up by those with no understanding of how useless our planning system is. Don't even get me on to the myopic vegan cyclists who make up a large part of the local authority planning set. Blaming developers for the state of housing in this country is like blaming BP for the energy crisis - and thinking a windfall tax is in any way a solution.

[Borin' Baggie]

You're not addressing the big point that I raised (if you want to get into ignoring things), the rate of new dwellings being granted planning permission is over double the rate of new houses being built. Even with an idiotic planning system, the planning system is not acting as the block on getting new houses being built. Relaxing planning permission will not address that as that is not the constraint on building new houses, if it were the rate wouldn't be double houses actually being built. Instead of fixating on the land banking point, think about the planning permission statistics. The statistics don't lie, and the Tories are the only party out of the three that refuse to address that. If you want to look at the Lib Dem manifestos the issue over skills shortages constraining building rates has been brought up since 2015, that's three separate manifestos. The government literally conducted a review, skills came up as the key barrier - not planning as the statistics point out - and not only have the Tories chosen to ignore it they've opted to exasperate the issue for some asinine reason.

As for a windfall tax, do you have anything better to raise tax revenues in the immediate term to temper out the cost of living crisis? I don't, and it's not like it's going to affect BP or anyone elses investments as per the head of BP - their investment strategy is unaffected and they're more than welcome to reduce profits by investing more should they choose to do. Could also do with a VAT cut on energy and in general, but despite both the Lib Dems and Labour proposing this the Tories are saying no - it's a modest at best outcome but it's something and it isn't as though the Treasury are struggling what with their tax receipts going up thanks to the effects of inflation.

[TTM2]

“Flat pack” houses, be they timber frame or any of the other modular builds, are a complete folly. People are getting 30 year mortgages on wooden boxes that will struggle to last that long. They’re thrown up.

It’s been the busiest 12 months I’ve ever seen in house building, everyone is working beyond capacity therefore the cost of materials and wages have risen off the scale and there’s your vital ingredient of inflation - too much money seeking too little service.

[Protheroe]

You're not addressing the big point that I raised (if you want to get into ignoring things), the rate of new dwellings being granted planning permission is over double the rate of new houses being built. Even with an idiotic planning system, the planning system is not acting as the block on getting new houses being built. Relaxing planning permission will not address that as that is not the constraint on building new houses, if it were the rate wouldn't be double houses actually being built. Instead of fixating on the land banking point, think about the planning permission statistics. The statistics don't lie, and the Tories are the only party out of the three that refuse to address that. If you want to look at the Lib Dem manifestos the issue over skills shortages constraining building rates has been brought up since 2015, that's three separate manifestos. The government literally conducted a review, skills came up as the key barrier - not planning as the statistics point out - and not only have the Tories chosen to ignore it they've opted to exasperate the issue for some asinine reason.

As for a windfall tax, do you have anything better to raise tax revenues in the immediate term to temper out the cost of living crisis? I don't, and it's not like it's going to affect BP or anyone elses investments as per the head of BP - their investment strategy is unaffected and they're more than welcome to reduce profits by investing more should they choose to do. Could also do with a VAT cut on energy and in general, but despite both the Lib Dems and Labour proposing this the Tories are saying no - it's a modest at best outcome but it's something and it isn't as though the Treasury are struggling what with their tax receipts going up thanks to the effects of inflation.

The government is as good at telling itself comfortable lies as you are. Looking at the raw numbers is ridiculous if you ignore where and what the consents actually are. 

The market demands family houses in places where people actually want to live. The planning system provides flats in town centres. There could be millions of consents granted, but it doesn't change the fact that demand is a brake on the development of homes that people don't want to buy - but the planning system creates in abundance. And you call it landbanking? Wow.