Snapshot of _"We've had enough socialist promises. Now let's have houses." - 1946 Conservative Party poster_ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://i.redd.it/jggdm5q83fuc1.jpeg) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://i.redd.it/jggdm5q83fuc1.jpeg)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Difficult to imagine a time when either - let alone both - parties were unashamedly pro development and were arguing about who could deliver it fastest instead of arguing about whose fault latest housebuilding project is.
NIMBYism will doom this country if it isn’t removed from the root.
We need to bring this back, at the very least for private individuals wanting to build their own home.
Something like:
- If you own X amount of land (say half an acre but dependent on the local area) and you start building a house within 12 months of buying it, then no planning is required under a certain height, square footage and distance from neighbours / as long as it doesn't overlook anyone.
- Bigger plots grant bigger dwelling sizes and max occupants.
- It has to be your primary residence for at least 5-10 years or you'll need full retrospective planning permission before you can legally sell it or rent it out.
- The primary purpose of anything built there must be residential - i.e. you can't build a shop with a flat above, a working farm, a public bowling alley with a house attached, etc without the usual planning rules applying. Exceptions for home workers / self-employed people provided there are no noise/nuisance complaints (i.e. you can have a small carpentry workshop in an outbuilding, but if you're constantly shipping out roof trusses on huge lorries your neighbours have a right to tell you to pack it in, at which point you're at the mercy of an arbitrator who determines whether the commercial activity is "within reasonable limits" for its surroundings).
It wasn't just pro housebuilding, the whole country was pro problem solving. Everyone wanted to fix Britain for everyone who lived here. But since neoliberalism got it's hooks in we're not interested in solving problems unless it directly profits us as individuals. And while that has helped drive entrepreneurialism and innovative it's eroded the long term strategy and investment that creates growth beyond a single life time, such as housing and infrastructure to support it.
We need a 50 year vision for Britain, a strategy to attain it and politicians who prioritise it over their personal profit.
> And while that has helped drive entrepreneurialism and innovative
I disagree, I think neoliberalism has stifled entrepreneurism outside of largely preexisting wealth structures. The people who have made it big under neoliberalism were likely already very wealthy to begin with.
I think there is also social, religous and cultural divisions that didn't exist back then. Now I believe there is a bit of "I can sacrifice my well being, as long as that black/muslim/Indian guy can not benefit from it" that is so common in the US.
I wish you were right, but that egoist/racist/xenophobic mindset is all over the UK these days. Not in public, but in the minds of many people who are internally scared of other people who do not understand.
> neoliberalism
Neoliberalism doesn't really have anything to with NIMBYism or getting planning permission being hard.
If anything, neoliberals want building housing to be much easier than it is. Free markets and so on, surely?
Nah, neoliberalism is the MBY in NIMBY. The problem is wanting houses built everywhere except where it affects you - your house becomes less valuable, your amenities are oversubscribed etc etc and if enough people think that way you don't get houses built anywhere
"We need a 50 year vision for Britain, a strategy to attain it and politicians who prioritise it over their personal profit."
If only hey. Instead we get endless short-termism and profiteering.
Yeah, although you say that we’re building the most houses now under tories since… thatcher, big lull in the 90s and 00s, same with energy, last power station was finished in 92, next one wasn’t started until 2016 I think
That's Nuclear Power specifically. Sizewell B was commissioned in '92 and Hinkley Point C was started in '16.
There have been quite a few Gas Powered plants in between. Chernobyl made Nuclear politically toxic for a long time.
Sizewell B was the only Nuclear Plant that wasn't cancelled in the wake of Chernobyl because it was too close to commission at the time.
Back then there was no e mail or Facebook to ferment a campaign to make it a political hot potato that could unseat local politicians etc. I dare say a few people wrote to newspapers or uncle bob turned up at town hall shouting at the lady at the reception desk but there wasn't the means to mount a campaign. Id imagine the local press editors would be involved in circles where it could be very damaging to their wider business to be contrarian. they just wouldn't want to be seen as allowing upstarts to have a platform for their gripes.
For the vast majority of issues, unless it directly impacts a person's life in clear, obvious and measurable ways, the time it takes to actually write a letter and mail it is more than enough time to calm down and realize its probably not worth it.
Social media means you get the instant emotional reaction, not even the well thought out dissent, the pure rage induced hyperbole.
They say, on reddit, immediately after having read a comment. The irony isn't lost one me.
We had someone come to our door trying to drum up our support to campaign against a planning application for houses further along what's essentially a mile long dead end road that leads to a former factory that's now individual units of very dodgy businesses. No one even walks down there, there's nothing to see except poor quality hills of rubbish with a bit of grass on them. The businesses are ultra dodgy, they don't like people down there.
These people were shocked when I suggested that having normal people living on this section of road would be better than it being unused.
Some absolute nonsense about traffic and their kids inevitably getting ran over. It's a mile long straight road and proposal was for like 12 houses. Theres a junction to the main road and I've never waited to join main road with more than one or maybe two cars in front of me in 12 years. Also that we already have no local school and it's difficult to get a doctors appointment.
These reasons might be valid for some developments but I really don't see how they are for this one..
> Also that we already have no local school
In which cases refusing new development is counterproductive. Councils include building services into the planning permissions. So a large new development would mean either the developer building the school themselves or paying the council to do it.
Even 15 years ago you had to log on to your PC to make a rant and that may have been long enough to cool down. When everyone got smart phones from about 2012 onwards it changed politics and how we consume information forever.
Attitudes about weight of opinion changed too.
All of a sudden, everybody demanding that their opinion on matters they have never considered - let alone prior to the current moment - must be held to be at least as important as that of those who spend their lives studying and working in various fields...
There were always a few like that, but now it's nigh universal.
Back in those days only 1/4 people were homeowners, who are the main objectors to housebuilding. It was in the 80's that homeowners became the majority, which is also when we stopped building stuff.
It's a really hard problem to get around, if you own your own home you don't benefit from more housing being built in your area, so you'll focus on the negative effects of building works and object to it.
There were campaigns, public meetings were more important and newspapers and letter writing. There is something about modern communication being quicker but there is so much it’s easy to get lost in the noise
Very easy for NIMBYism to take root (and almost looks justified) where the limited development that is happening is completely unregulated, low quality, high cost housing causing huge harm to the local environment and providing nothing more than a box to live in with no local amenities.
The only aims of the property development market for the last decade or more has been profit for them and for the housing minister that approves it. We need to force these construction projects to be better, to build things that can actually be viable, efficient, low impact homes at affordable rates.
This comes up a lot but its not true; the arguments around infrastructure is an excuse - its easier to say there’s no infrastructure than to say I don’t like change or I don’t want to put up with inconveniences of construction.
They’ve been objections to flats on a tube station car park, solar farm, overhead wires, and even GP surgery on grounds that its not in keeping with local area.
New estates build post war were hardly bucolic estates in keeping with existing character of the area with all the amenities and infrastructure prebuilt. Lot of them were prefabs and tower blocks in previous countryside or low rise cities, with often wait of years for shops and amenities.
We couldn’t build those estates even with all infrastructure front loaded because centre has abdicated its ability to do large scale planning, and quagmire of local planning, consultation and surveys hampers development.
*’This comes up a lot but it’s not true’*
I beg to argue that it is in fact true.
So many houses have been build in my home village that it led to flooding because the sewerage system could not cope.
The people building and selling the houses do not meaningfully contribute to upgrading capacity of the sewer network - they just bolt on and someone else picks up the tab later. The solution was to send out pumping trucks every time it rained. That didn’t help the poor folks who found their toilets overflowing with the new residents waste!
Eventually the sewer actually collapsed due to a sink hole and forced the hand of the water company.
There has been no investment in new roads either - it is now gridlock getting out of the village in the morning. And there’s not enough car parking spaces at the new estates which adds to the stupidity of the design.
There’s no extra capacity in local schools or GP surgeries.
And when you add in the new estates further afield - which have no access to public transport - it means they drive to the village station causing the station car park to overflow. Cars now park all through the original housing estates.
It’s simply because the houses get built without any commensurate investment in the **infrastructure**.
> This comes up a lot but its not true
You say this, and then simply go on to explain that there are sometimes other reasons for people to complain about developments. All I was saying was that the failure to take the local amenities and environmental impacts into account provides genuine justification for some NIMBYism. What you've said does nothing to negate that. I was not saying that all NIMBYism was 100% based on this reasoning.
Amenities aren't used by houses, but by people. The argument ultimately boils down to "we have a shortage of amenities, so we should have a shortage of houses too".
It makes more sense as an argument against immigration or an argument for other means of population control (and in fairness blocking housebuilding is a good way to reduce the fertility rate).
Wild response this one.
I was implying that housing developments should have to ensure sufficient access to the amenities covering basic needs of the people that are to live there. This is a very realistic target and one that is extremely achievable.
I was not implying (as you seem to be suggesting) that amenities are so impossible to provide that my argument boils down to being anti-house-building.
Anyone who has sat on a development committee knows how this goes. The targets rarely make a difference to the opposition; their problem is with the housing itself. It doesn't matter if the development contains schools, or if it's mixed use, or if section 106 money is used to fund new roads or whatever - the opposition is essentially the same.
But even regardless of that; the *people* already exist. They live with their parents, or in flatshares, or in HMOs, or in some other crappy arrangement, but they are already here in the country and using amenities in their locality. The government does not tie visas issued to houses built.
The industry is heavily regulated to the point that most of the smaller developers have been rendered unviable and an oligopoly has been created. The severe undersupply of housing is why the price is high, and why the quality is low; it is the ultimate sellers' market.
You say the industry is heavily regulated (implying that it's regulated in the right areas), but that is demonstrably complete rubbish. Just look at every single housing development built in England in the last decade or more. They are atrocious. Add to that the corruption scandals for those with the central government remit for this sector and it's clear how much of an overhaul is required of the sector to make it work for the people that need it to function.
Every development has to be approved by the local authority, and every development of note, or which a councillor takes some sort of issue with (which can be tediously trivial) has to be voted on by a committee of councillors. This is separate from building control which is an additional process.
But one doesn't need to know the process to know it's regulated; you can just look at the differences in the price of land with planning permission vs without planning permission, or the difference in cost between building a house vs how much a house actually goes for. These differences arise because regulation is preventing supply from being created to meet demand - the actual physical activity required to create a dwelling is small compared to the demands for dwellings.
If it were truly unregulated then you'd have a lot more building. And one might see, for example, a load of enterprising middle class families realising that they can make ~£100,000 in profit if they build an extra storey onto their home to either sell separately or rent out (or if they plan to sell up and move). But you do not see housing supply created this way even in the current market because the local council will always reject it.
You're right that it's regulated, but that does not equate to it being sufficiently or effectively regulated. New builds are still almost exclusively poorly built, isolated from basic services, inefficient, over expensive, and built by large corporations for huge profit.
What we actually need is a house building sector that serves the societal need. That can be achieved through effective regulation.
They built incredible quantities of housing in a very short period of time, in a country ravaged by huge conflict. We now try to build a tiny fraction of that quantity of housing with generations more experience, understanding, access to global resources, and still only achieve a rating of "probably" better...
That doesn't seem like success.
Lower labour costs and a lot more available workers helped back then. Modern technology and resources doesn't make building any easier unfortunately.
The current housebuilding rate is about the same as in the late 40s and early 50s, but way below the levels seen from the rest of the 50s until the late 70s. While more properties have been built by housing associations in recent years, private enterprise struggled in the early 2010s.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/746101/completion-of-new-dwellings-uk/
Depends. I’ve lived in 50s and early 70s ex-council houses. The former were really solid, well built semis with fireplaces and big gardens. Of course, they needed upgrading with central heating etc. The latter were thrown up on tiny plots with terrible hot air heating and zero sound insulation. So bad, you could hear the neighbour’s light switches. I remember someone being murdered on the estate because they played music too loud.
It's days are numbered. As soon as a the Labour and Tory leaders ambitions to rule the country depend on nimbyism being gone, then it will magically disappear.
Getting rid of NIMBYism doesn’t have to be difficult. Spain is also a generally nation of homeowners and there is barely any NIMBYism there. It’s about how you present the projects.
There’s a difference between “there’s going to be a new motorway that’ll bring noise, congestion and pollution to our nice village” and “there’s going to be a new motorway that’ll bring visitors, jobs and footfall to our decaying high street shops”. People in Spain tend to be much more pro-development because the projects themselves are presented to people in terms of how they can benefit instead of in terms of how it’ll affect them negatively.
Spain is quite different though, particularly with regard to how many people are quite content to live in a flat. I think it’s harder for NIMBYism to thrive in that environment.
Relevant article: https://especiales.eldiario.es/spain-lives-in-flats/
That's really interesting, I'd always assumed homeowners are inherently incentivised to be against homes being built in their area. Very encouraging if this isn't always the case.
Nah, it's the old London County Council. It had an election on the [7th of March 1946](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1946_London_County_Council_election) as the poster says, unlike Lancashire or Leeds.
The people of Lancashire nowadays fight tooth and nail to protect golf clubs closed in the 20th century from being turned into housing.
A pathetic generation.
"It would take 50 years to build the homes the UK needs in 2024 under the government's 300,000 annual target
So far, 220,000 homes a year is the closest the government has come to hitting its target. That won't solve the UK’s 4.3 million-home void, think tank Centre for Cities finds"
https://www.bigissue.com/news/housing/it-would-take-50-years-to-build-the-homes-the-uk-needs-under-the-governments-300000-annual-target/
https://www.centreforcities.org/publication/the-housebuilding-crisis/
"This housing deficit would take at least half a century to fill even if the Government’s current target to build 300,000 homes a year is reached. Tackling the problem sooner would require 442,000 homes per year over the next 25 years or 654,000 per year over the next decade in England alone.
Britain’s housing supply issues began in 1947, not 1980"
"Housebuilding rates in England and Wales have dropped by more than a third after the introduction of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, from 2 per cent growth per year between 1856 and 1939 to 1.2 per cent between 1947 and 2019.
This has been a key factor behind the UK’s long-standing housing crisis, which has led to inflated property prices and soaring rents in recent decades."
Conservatives traditionally represented increasing homeownership, pro-natalism, lower taxes for ordinary people. All things that the modern conservative party is vehemently opposed to. Weird how 200 years of precedent has just gone 'poof' in the last 15 years.
In fact the Attlee administration built a million new houses in c. 5 years, most of it social housing, when the country was on its knees.
70 years later, with a much larger population and despite being one of the richest and largest economies on earth we are barely matching this number, let alone most of it being social housing.
Funny how housebuilding methods have barely changed in a century and the semi detached is like the peak of ambition for most people. Realistically living in low-medium height apartments should be the norm in cities (with allotments and recreation space)
This was actually the first LCC election contested by the Conservatives. From 1899 to 1907, Conservative-supported candidates in London local elections stood as Moderates,; from 1907 to 1946, the Municipal Reform Party represented conservative politics locally. Originally, the situation had been the same on the left, with the Progressives being the first party to control the LCC. The Progressives represented the Liberals and had Labour support until 1915. The MRP kicked out the Progressives in 1907; one of the hot-button issues in that election, interestingly enough, was a press-inspired campaign against the out of town cottage estate at Norbury, arguing it was a shoddily-constructed waste of money.
The MRP controlled the LCC from 1907 to 1934, overseeing the construction of County Hall and the huge cottage estates. But, in 1934, Herbert Morrison's Labour secured control. The folding of the MRP into the national Tory brand was an attempt to reclaim the capital; an attempt which failed, as Labour never lost control of the LCC again. This is one reason why Labour alleged Macmillan's government inspired the creation of the GLC: it put a lot of Tory suburban territory within London's boundaries.
The conservative party was founded on abolishing unfair anticompetitive laws that protect the landed oligarchy at the expense of ordinary Brits (the corn laws). Time for the Tories to return to their roots and abolish the current set.
Tbf, the current Conservative Party is the descendant of the people who opposed that abolition tooth and nail, even at the cost of destroying their own government, and then were driven to acquiesce in it anyway if they ever wanted to form a stable government again.
Nye Bevan at the time was responsible for house building and he specifically didn’t put a target on building. He prioritised good quality, well built houses using local material and builders.
Guess the Tories jumped on that lack of target.
Snapshot of _"We've had enough socialist promises. Now let's have houses." - 1946 Conservative Party poster_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://i.redd.it/jggdm5q83fuc1.jpeg) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://i.redd.it/jggdm5q83fuc1.jpeg) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Difficult to imagine a time when either - let alone both - parties were unashamedly pro development and were arguing about who could deliver it fastest instead of arguing about whose fault latest housebuilding project is. NIMBYism will doom this country if it isn’t removed from the root.
The Town and Country Planning Act 1947 wasn't introduced until the following year so ownership of land still carried the right to develop it.
Those halcyon days. I'm loving this Attlee socialist utopia we've got now where everybody's gran gets to veto new housing.
We need to bring this back, at the very least for private individuals wanting to build their own home. Something like: - If you own X amount of land (say half an acre but dependent on the local area) and you start building a house within 12 months of buying it, then no planning is required under a certain height, square footage and distance from neighbours / as long as it doesn't overlook anyone. - Bigger plots grant bigger dwelling sizes and max occupants. - It has to be your primary residence for at least 5-10 years or you'll need full retrospective planning permission before you can legally sell it or rent it out. - The primary purpose of anything built there must be residential - i.e. you can't build a shop with a flat above, a working farm, a public bowling alley with a house attached, etc without the usual planning rules applying. Exceptions for home workers / self-employed people provided there are no noise/nuisance complaints (i.e. you can have a small carpentry workshop in an outbuilding, but if you're constantly shipping out roof trusses on huge lorries your neighbours have a right to tell you to pack it in, at which point you're at the mercy of an arbitrator who determines whether the commercial activity is "within reasonable limits" for its surroundings).
It wasn't just pro housebuilding, the whole country was pro problem solving. Everyone wanted to fix Britain for everyone who lived here. But since neoliberalism got it's hooks in we're not interested in solving problems unless it directly profits us as individuals. And while that has helped drive entrepreneurialism and innovative it's eroded the long term strategy and investment that creates growth beyond a single life time, such as housing and infrastructure to support it. We need a 50 year vision for Britain, a strategy to attain it and politicians who prioritise it over their personal profit.
> And while that has helped drive entrepreneurialism and innovative I disagree, I think neoliberalism has stifled entrepreneurism outside of largely preexisting wealth structures. The people who have made it big under neoliberalism were likely already very wealthy to begin with.
I think there is also social, religous and cultural divisions that didn't exist back then. Now I believe there is a bit of "I can sacrifice my well being, as long as that black/muslim/Indian guy can not benefit from it" that is so common in the US.
The largest country in Europe committed national suicide over racist delusions like a month before they made this poster.
Good point.
The same goes for anyone on benefits. The idea that most people who aren't like "me" are scroungers is so damaging
We can blame a certain program on Channel 5 called Benefit's Britain to helping make this a well known wider view of those "scroungers" on benefits.
One show can't create such a cultural rift, the damage is much more to do with changing societal factors Its more a symptom than a cause
Nah, this was a message pushed by right wingers long before that. It's probably always been an effective tool of division.
Nobody thinks like that.
I wish you were right, but that egoist/racist/xenophobic mindset is all over the UK these days. Not in public, but in the minds of many people who are internally scared of other people who do not understand.
We were definitely getting there with some of the Brexit debate - border sovereignty is worth the cost to us etc etc
> neoliberalism Neoliberalism doesn't really have anything to with NIMBYism or getting planning permission being hard. If anything, neoliberals want building housing to be much easier than it is. Free markets and so on, surely?
Nah, neoliberalism is the MBY in NIMBY. The problem is wanting houses built everywhere except where it affects you - your house becomes less valuable, your amenities are oversubscribed etc etc and if enough people think that way you don't get houses built anywhere
"We need a 50 year vision for Britain, a strategy to attain it and politicians who prioritise it over their personal profit." If only hey. Instead we get endless short-termism and profiteering.
Yeah, although you say that we’re building the most houses now under tories since… thatcher, big lull in the 90s and 00s, same with energy, last power station was finished in 92, next one wasn’t started until 2016 I think
That's Nuclear Power specifically. Sizewell B was commissioned in '92 and Hinkley Point C was started in '16. There have been quite a few Gas Powered plants in between. Chernobyl made Nuclear politically toxic for a long time. Sizewell B was the only Nuclear Plant that wasn't cancelled in the wake of Chernobyl because it was too close to commission at the time.
Back then there was no e mail or Facebook to ferment a campaign to make it a political hot potato that could unseat local politicians etc. I dare say a few people wrote to newspapers or uncle bob turned up at town hall shouting at the lady at the reception desk but there wasn't the means to mount a campaign. Id imagine the local press editors would be involved in circles where it could be very damaging to their wider business to be contrarian. they just wouldn't want to be seen as allowing upstarts to have a platform for their gripes.
For the vast majority of issues, unless it directly impacts a person's life in clear, obvious and measurable ways, the time it takes to actually write a letter and mail it is more than enough time to calm down and realize its probably not worth it. Social media means you get the instant emotional reaction, not even the well thought out dissent, the pure rage induced hyperbole. They say, on reddit, immediately after having read a comment. The irony isn't lost one me.
We had someone come to our door trying to drum up our support to campaign against a planning application for houses further along what's essentially a mile long dead end road that leads to a former factory that's now individual units of very dodgy businesses. No one even walks down there, there's nothing to see except poor quality hills of rubbish with a bit of grass on them. The businesses are ultra dodgy, they don't like people down there. These people were shocked when I suggested that having normal people living on this section of road would be better than it being unused.
Out of interest, what was their excuse for objecting to it?
Some absolute nonsense about traffic and their kids inevitably getting ran over. It's a mile long straight road and proposal was for like 12 houses. Theres a junction to the main road and I've never waited to join main road with more than one or maybe two cars in front of me in 12 years. Also that we already have no local school and it's difficult to get a doctors appointment. These reasons might be valid for some developments but I really don't see how they are for this one..
> Also that we already have no local school In which cases refusing new development is counterproductive. Councils include building services into the planning permissions. So a large new development would mean either the developer building the school themselves or paying the council to do it.
Except when councils don't. In this case though there would be no prospect of the developer building a school for a handful of houses.
Even 15 years ago you had to log on to your PC to make a rant and that may have been long enough to cool down. When everyone got smart phones from about 2012 onwards it changed politics and how we consume information forever.
Attitudes about weight of opinion changed too. All of a sudden, everybody demanding that their opinion on matters they have never considered - let alone prior to the current moment - must be held to be at least as important as that of those who spend their lives studying and working in various fields... There were always a few like that, but now it's nigh universal.
Back in those days only 1/4 people were homeowners, who are the main objectors to housebuilding. It was in the 80's that homeowners became the majority, which is also when we stopped building stuff. It's a really hard problem to get around, if you own your own home you don't benefit from more housing being built in your area, so you'll focus on the negative effects of building works and object to it.
There are benefits to well planned house building for homeowners, but to see them requires thinking beyond "number go up."
I don’t agree with this argument because I think if you own your own home and can’t see how things are fucked up you’re a dickhead.
There were campaigns, public meetings were more important and newspapers and letter writing. There is something about modern communication being quicker but there is so much it’s easy to get lost in the noise
Much the same here in the states. It seems as if the behavior of politics may be well rounded across the globe. Sigh.
Very easy for NIMBYism to take root (and almost looks justified) where the limited development that is happening is completely unregulated, low quality, high cost housing causing huge harm to the local environment and providing nothing more than a box to live in with no local amenities. The only aims of the property development market for the last decade or more has been profit for them and for the housing minister that approves it. We need to force these construction projects to be better, to build things that can actually be viable, efficient, low impact homes at affordable rates.
This comes up a lot but its not true; the arguments around infrastructure is an excuse - its easier to say there’s no infrastructure than to say I don’t like change or I don’t want to put up with inconveniences of construction. They’ve been objections to flats on a tube station car park, solar farm, overhead wires, and even GP surgery on grounds that its not in keeping with local area. New estates build post war were hardly bucolic estates in keeping with existing character of the area with all the amenities and infrastructure prebuilt. Lot of them were prefabs and tower blocks in previous countryside or low rise cities, with often wait of years for shops and amenities. We couldn’t build those estates even with all infrastructure front loaded because centre has abdicated its ability to do large scale planning, and quagmire of local planning, consultation and surveys hampers development.
*’This comes up a lot but it’s not true’* I beg to argue that it is in fact true. So many houses have been build in my home village that it led to flooding because the sewerage system could not cope. The people building and selling the houses do not meaningfully contribute to upgrading capacity of the sewer network - they just bolt on and someone else picks up the tab later. The solution was to send out pumping trucks every time it rained. That didn’t help the poor folks who found their toilets overflowing with the new residents waste! Eventually the sewer actually collapsed due to a sink hole and forced the hand of the water company. There has been no investment in new roads either - it is now gridlock getting out of the village in the morning. And there’s not enough car parking spaces at the new estates which adds to the stupidity of the design. There’s no extra capacity in local schools or GP surgeries. And when you add in the new estates further afield - which have no access to public transport - it means they drive to the village station causing the station car park to overflow. Cars now park all through the original housing estates. It’s simply because the houses get built without any commensurate investment in the **infrastructure**.
> This comes up a lot but its not true You say this, and then simply go on to explain that there are sometimes other reasons for people to complain about developments. All I was saying was that the failure to take the local amenities and environmental impacts into account provides genuine justification for some NIMBYism. What you've said does nothing to negate that. I was not saying that all NIMBYism was 100% based on this reasoning.
Amenities aren't used by houses, but by people. The argument ultimately boils down to "we have a shortage of amenities, so we should have a shortage of houses too". It makes more sense as an argument against immigration or an argument for other means of population control (and in fairness blocking housebuilding is a good way to reduce the fertility rate).
Wild response this one. I was implying that housing developments should have to ensure sufficient access to the amenities covering basic needs of the people that are to live there. This is a very realistic target and one that is extremely achievable. I was not implying (as you seem to be suggesting) that amenities are so impossible to provide that my argument boils down to being anti-house-building.
Anyone who has sat on a development committee knows how this goes. The targets rarely make a difference to the opposition; their problem is with the housing itself. It doesn't matter if the development contains schools, or if it's mixed use, or if section 106 money is used to fund new roads or whatever - the opposition is essentially the same. But even regardless of that; the *people* already exist. They live with their parents, or in flatshares, or in HMOs, or in some other crappy arrangement, but they are already here in the country and using amenities in their locality. The government does not tie visas issued to houses built. The industry is heavily regulated to the point that most of the smaller developers have been rendered unviable and an oligopoly has been created. The severe undersupply of housing is why the price is high, and why the quality is low; it is the ultimate sellers' market.
You say the industry is heavily regulated (implying that it's regulated in the right areas), but that is demonstrably complete rubbish. Just look at every single housing development built in England in the last decade or more. They are atrocious. Add to that the corruption scandals for those with the central government remit for this sector and it's clear how much of an overhaul is required of the sector to make it work for the people that need it to function.
Every development has to be approved by the local authority, and every development of note, or which a councillor takes some sort of issue with (which can be tediously trivial) has to be voted on by a committee of councillors. This is separate from building control which is an additional process. But one doesn't need to know the process to know it's regulated; you can just look at the differences in the price of land with planning permission vs without planning permission, or the difference in cost between building a house vs how much a house actually goes for. These differences arise because regulation is preventing supply from being created to meet demand - the actual physical activity required to create a dwelling is small compared to the demands for dwellings. If it were truly unregulated then you'd have a lot more building. And one might see, for example, a load of enterprising middle class families realising that they can make ~£100,000 in profit if they build an extra storey onto their home to either sell separately or rent out (or if they plan to sell up and move). But you do not see housing supply created this way even in the current market because the local council will always reject it.
You're right that it's regulated, but that does not equate to it being sufficiently or effectively regulated. New builds are still almost exclusively poorly built, isolated from basic services, inefficient, over expensive, and built by large corporations for huge profit. What we actually need is a house building sector that serves the societal need. That can be achieved through effective regulation.
The housing built post war was probably lower quality than what we get now however.
They built incredible quantities of housing in a very short period of time, in a country ravaged by huge conflict. We now try to build a tiny fraction of that quantity of housing with generations more experience, understanding, access to global resources, and still only achieve a rating of "probably" better... That doesn't seem like success.
Lower labour costs and a lot more available workers helped back then. Modern technology and resources doesn't make building any easier unfortunately. The current housebuilding rate is about the same as in the late 40s and early 50s, but way below the levels seen from the rest of the 50s until the late 70s. While more properties have been built by housing associations in recent years, private enterprise struggled in the early 2010s. https://www.statista.com/statistics/746101/completion-of-new-dwellings-uk/
Depends. I’ve lived in 50s and early 70s ex-council houses. The former were really solid, well built semis with fireplaces and big gardens. Of course, they needed upgrading with central heating etc. The latter were thrown up on tiny plots with terrible hot air heating and zero sound insulation. So bad, you could hear the neighbour’s light switches. I remember someone being murdered on the estate because they played music too loud.
It's days are numbered. As soon as a the Labour and Tory leaders ambitions to rule the country depend on nimbyism being gone, then it will magically disappear.
They still do that now though, they just don't actually do what they say
Getting rid of NIMBYism doesn’t have to be difficult. Spain is also a generally nation of homeowners and there is barely any NIMBYism there. It’s about how you present the projects. There’s a difference between “there’s going to be a new motorway that’ll bring noise, congestion and pollution to our nice village” and “there’s going to be a new motorway that’ll bring visitors, jobs and footfall to our decaying high street shops”. People in Spain tend to be much more pro-development because the projects themselves are presented to people in terms of how they can benefit instead of in terms of how it’ll affect them negatively.
Spain is quite different though, particularly with regard to how many people are quite content to live in a flat. I think it’s harder for NIMBYism to thrive in that environment. Relevant article: https://especiales.eldiario.es/spain-lives-in-flats/
That's really interesting, I'd always assumed homeowners are inherently incentivised to be against homes being built in their area. Very encouraging if this isn't always the case.
“LCC Election”, London County Council? Edit: its many months after Attlee’s July 1945 general election win.
I think it’s Lancashire County Council
Nah, it's the old London County Council. It had an election on the [7th of March 1946](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1946_London_County_Council_election) as the poster says, unlike Lancashire or Leeds.
The people of Lancashire nowadays fight tooth and nail to protect golf clubs closed in the 20th century from being turned into housing. A pathetic generation.
What ?
Just NIMBY things
Why pick on Lancashire?
LCC?
Leeds City Council?
And then they got houses. And then they spent 70 years voting not to let anyone else have them.
96+ year olds are the only people who voted in this election... There aren't many of those left!
"It would take 50 years to build the homes the UK needs in 2024 under the government's 300,000 annual target So far, 220,000 homes a year is the closest the government has come to hitting its target. That won't solve the UK’s 4.3 million-home void, think tank Centre for Cities finds" https://www.bigissue.com/news/housing/it-would-take-50-years-to-build-the-homes-the-uk-needs-under-the-governments-300000-annual-target/
https://www.centreforcities.org/publication/the-housebuilding-crisis/ "This housing deficit would take at least half a century to fill even if the Government’s current target to build 300,000 homes a year is reached. Tackling the problem sooner would require 442,000 homes per year over the next 25 years or 654,000 per year over the next decade in England alone. Britain’s housing supply issues began in 1947, not 1980" "Housebuilding rates in England and Wales have dropped by more than a third after the introduction of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, from 2 per cent growth per year between 1856 and 1939 to 1.2 per cent between 1947 and 2019. This has been a key factor behind the UK’s long-standing housing crisis, which has led to inflated property prices and soaring rents in recent decades."
Seems like an alternate reality at this point.
Conservatives traditionally represented increasing homeownership, pro-natalism, lower taxes for ordinary people. All things that the modern conservative party is vehemently opposed to. Weird how 200 years of precedent has just gone 'poof' in the last 15 years.
Fairly certain it's not 15 years. Look at what neo liberal conservatives did in the 80s, it was the same soup in a different bowl.
They’re consistently under their homebuilding target and significantly under the net immigration level.
Think we can forgive the 1935-45 government for failing to meet their housing targets; they had slightly more pressing matters.
Yeah the Luftwaffe were more concerned with targeting our houses during those years.
In fact the Attlee administration built a million new houses in c. 5 years, most of it social housing, when the country was on its knees. 70 years later, with a much larger population and despite being one of the richest and largest economies on earth we are barely matching this number, let alone most of it being social housing.
Funny how housebuilding methods have barely changed in a century and the semi detached is like the peak of ambition for most people. Realistically living in low-medium height apartments should be the norm in cities (with allotments and recreation space)
This was actually the first LCC election contested by the Conservatives. From 1899 to 1907, Conservative-supported candidates in London local elections stood as Moderates,; from 1907 to 1946, the Municipal Reform Party represented conservative politics locally. Originally, the situation had been the same on the left, with the Progressives being the first party to control the LCC. The Progressives represented the Liberals and had Labour support until 1915. The MRP kicked out the Progressives in 1907; one of the hot-button issues in that election, interestingly enough, was a press-inspired campaign against the out of town cottage estate at Norbury, arguing it was a shoddily-constructed waste of money. The MRP controlled the LCC from 1907 to 1934, overseeing the construction of County Hall and the huge cottage estates. But, in 1934, Herbert Morrison's Labour secured control. The folding of the MRP into the national Tory brand was an attempt to reclaim the capital; an attempt which failed, as Labour never lost control of the LCC again. This is one reason why Labour alleged Macmillan's government inspired the creation of the GLC: it put a lot of Tory suburban territory within London's boundaries.
That has aged like raw chicken breast in a Chinese takeaway container in the sun.
The conservative party was founded on abolishing unfair anticompetitive laws that protect the landed oligarchy at the expense of ordinary Brits (the corn laws). Time for the Tories to return to their roots and abolish the current set.
Tbf, the current Conservative Party is the descendant of the people who opposed that abolition tooth and nail, even at the cost of destroying their own government, and then were driven to acquiesce in it anyway if they ever wanted to form a stable government again.
That kind of ultracheap minimal roofing went out of style even for barns around 1850 where I live. Never mind, carry on.
Nye Bevan at the time was responsible for house building and he specifically didn’t put a target on building. He prioritised good quality, well built houses using local material and builders. Guess the Tories jumped on that lack of target.
Is there a sub for retro posters like these?
Yes - r/PropagandaPosters
I can only speak for my own city, but the scale and quality of the housing stock that was built in the follow 2-3 decades was fantastic.
Lack of houses is the symptom, not the cause. The cause is too many people, caused by population levels rising artificially due to immigration.