Respond to ODPM's proposals for a Code for Sustainable Homes
Mark
mark at tlio.org.uk
Wed Feb 8 17:33:38 GMT 2006
Ref: www.odpm.gov.uk/index.asp?id=1162094
You are invited to comment on the Governments proposals for a Code for
Sustainable Homes.
Your views are particularly sought on the key proposals in Sections 1 and
2 and their potential impacts set out in the partial Regulatory Impact
Assessment (RIA) in Annex E. It should be noted that, although all these
proposals are being consulted on as part of a package of measures, they
are not mutually exclusive, i.e. one or more of them could be disregarded
or amended in the light of the consultation exercise.
How to respond
Comments are invited on any aspect of this consultation document. However,
to assist our analysis of responses we would appreciate it if you could
complete the response form below either electronically or in hard copy.
Please feel free to submit additional comments, evidence and/or supporting
documentation.
Responses can be returned by post or by e-mail. The deadline for receiving
responses to this consultation is 6 March 2006. All responses received
before the deadline will be considered.
Additional copies of this consultation document and this response form may
be downloaded from the ODPM website, www.odpm.gov.uk, or obtained as hard
copies from:
The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister
PO Box 236
Wetherby
West Yorkshire
LS23 7NB
Tel: 0870 1226 236
Fax: 0870 1226 237
E-mail: odpm at twoten.press.net
Please return your response to this consultation as soon as possible and
in any event no later than 6 March 2006. Please reply direct to the
contractors engaged in collation and initial analysis at:
By post: Code Review, CIRIA, 174-180 Old Street, London EC1V 9BP
Or by e-mail: csb at ciria.org
PROPOSALS FOR INTRODUCING A CODE FOR SUSTAINABLE HOMES - A CONSULTATION PAPER
Publication title: Proposals for Introducing a Code for Sustainable Homes
- A Consultation Paper
Audience: Housebuilders, consumers, green groups, house building
professionals.
Consultation period: 5 December 2005 to 6 March 2006
Product code: 05 BD 03535
Summary:
The Code for Sustainable Homes signals a new direction for building
standards. Wherever practicable we intend to develop and introduce a
system of sustainable building standards based on voluntary compliance.
ORDER:
This publication is available free of charge from ODPM Publications, PO
Box 236, Wetherby LS23 7NB. Tel: 0870 1226 236, Fax: 0870 1226 237,
Textphone: 0870 1207 405, Email: odpm at twoten.press.net. Please quote the
product code when ordering. Delivery will be 5 to 7 days from receipt of
order. A maximum quantity restriction may apply.
> From/By
> James Armstrong
> 22 Harveys Terrace,
> Dorchester DT1 ILE tel 01305 265510
>
>
> LOCAL WORKS - WITHOUT HOUSES FOR LOCAL WORKERS?
> THE SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES BILL
> [3306 complete. 900 last page]
>
> A proposed new Act of parliament promoting sustainable communities
> does not address the rural housing crisis. This is curious when
> housing is the biggest item in household expenditure. 'Farming',
> 'Food', 'Travel' and 'Traffic congestion' are prominently featured in
> the Bill. In contrast 'Social housing' is obscurely mentioned but
> neither defined nor expanded on, and grouped with 'Post-offices,
> Eating places and Open spaces', in paragraph 2 of schedule one.
>
> This Bill is an appeal to harness the genuine grievances of rural
> communities about centralised 'economic' driven policies from
> Whitehall inappropriate for local circumstances, aiming to direct
> the energy of the nimby brigade towards otherwise laudable goals like
> reducing traffic congestion, reducing food miles and reducing the
> monopoly of food supply by private or public agencies using
> centralised depot distribution systems whether supermarkets or
> suppliers of milk and meals for schoolchildren.
>
> THERE IS A HOUSING CRISIS
>
> The lack of houses available to people on low, average and even high
> incomes is a national problem and particularly acute in rural areas
> and arguably is the main cause of the decline of rural communities..
> How can communities thrive if people cannot afford to live there?
> Without people how can commerce thrive- and vice versa? Yet the
> campaign and the Bill is curiously unconcerned about the housing
> crisis.
>
> Rural housing is a divisive issue amongst those who have it who want
> the value to go up and those who need it who want prices to come down.
> There is tension between wealthy incomers and disadvantaged local
> people in unequal competition for the same houses. Landowners, owner
> farmers and property owners thrive from the scarcity of houses. When
> permission to develop is given, land jumps in value from £2,000 per
> acre to anything up to £1million per acre. The landowner pockets the
> windfall the house-buyer pays an inflated price and the house-needy
> goes un-housed.
>
> If land was widely owned the profits would be dispersed. If
> permission was freely available the scarcity and speculative value of
> land with permission would disappear.
>
> If houses were built by the self-build method this would reward
> local initiative, encourage sustainability and the community's
> economy would be stimulated by the local activity.
>
> There is potential controversy too from people who oppose any
> development especially from non appropriate building. Revealingly the
> campaign features as a bullet point, '162 green belt developments
> approved'. and glaringly omits the 'elephant in the sitting room' -
> house completions annually declining whilst housing demand annually
> increases. And house prices out of reach of average salary earners.
> We can only conclude that to avoid antagonising opposing interests
> the campaign takes the easy way out and omits mention of the problem.
>
> The Sustainable Communities Bill mistakenly believes that
> sustainability can be achieved without large-scale building of houses
> in rural areas, also associates development with despoliation. This
> is muddle-headed when the only housing mentioned in the campaign is
> 'social housing'.which is typically low specification houses. built to
> a budget, in mono designs, grouped in clearly defined schemes, not
> integrated with non-social houses, administered by a housing
> association for which occupants are admitted after means testing and
> not allowed to be sold on the open market. In other words only
> socially divisive social housing is promoted in a Bill promoting
> community.
>
> All communities are local. Houses are an existential requirement for
> living and so you cannot have a community without adequate housing,
> nor a thriving economy without a growing community . A Bill which
> perpetuates social division and does not address the acute rural
> housing crisis can neither achieve its aims nor hope to enjoy enjoy
> wide support.
>
> Central to an amended Bill should be measures to build houses in
> rural areas which people could occupy while living in an
> integrated community, houses within a price range appropriate to the
> local economy. We say this can be achieved by community supported
> self- or community-built housing as an alternative to inappropriate
> overpriced commercially built 'estates' of houses of a specification
> designed to appeal to affluent incomers. 'Social housing' stigmatises
> and is a superfluous stickingplaster solution. 'Social housing' is
> divisive, does not confront the mainstream crisis of high price, low
> availability and often intrusive design.
>
> To what kind of 'choice' does a 'social housing' policy aspire ? To
> this end Planning Permission should be directed to the house-needy
> would-be occupier not, as at present, to the well-housed and
> affluent land-owners who as a group have abused their monopoly of
> land to restrict the supply while illegally reaping monopoly rewards.
> An amended Sustainable Communities Bill would have the role of
> assessing local housing needs, planning local development, monitoring
> building and occupancy.
>
> J Armstrong Dorchester
> 3rd Feb
> 2006
> SELF- AND COMMUNITY- BUILT HOUSES MEET LOCAL NEEDS AND
> PROMOTE COMMUNITIES. LANDOWNERS AND BUILDERS NOW MONOPOLISE
> BUILDING LAND.
> Promoting Self Build and community build houses in locations styles
> and by people and on land approved and provided by the community is a
> solution.
> At present the provision of houses is handed over to commercial
> interests.
> The driving forces are the landowners (a restricted group) whose
> interest is to pocket the windfall gains received with planning
> permission of undeveloped land. Land prices rocket.the other
> beneficiaries are the Property developers whose interest is to
> maximise the profit by building at the lowest cost and selling at the
> maximum price. The result is standardised mono-designs, crammed on
> sites at the highest possible density. Houses are built of design,
> specification and price inappropriate to the locality because they are
> not tailored to the local need but to the most lucrative market.
> A scarce resource, building land with planning permission, is
> being used to make profit, not to meet needs. This scarce
> resource, land with p.p. or with potential planning permission, has
> been bought up long ago..This is where the name 'spec. builder' comes
> from. .All monopolies used against the public interest are illegal.
> The monopoly (land with p.p.) of an existential need (shelter-houses)
> usedagainst the public interest ( to raise prices ) is illegal, evil,
> unpardonable and unsupportable in a democracy- yet this is the result
> of the present planning regime.
> Self build is an entirely practical method of people building exactly
> the house to meet their specific need, at the highest specification
> and the lowest cost . The technology is widely available and the level
> of skill required no greater than that available to the average d-I-y
> enthusiast.
> The key fact is that the cost of the materials and labour for a high
> specification house is sometimes less and often very much less than
> half the asking price. If in the case of self build the labour cost
> is nil or next to nil then the cost is yet considerably lower and
> comes within the range of the least affluent of the community. In
> addition mortgages are available to help finance the self building
> process. Also the great advantage of self build is that building can
> progress as the income of the builder allows. On completion the house
> is a source of pride to the builder and the community and fosters
> initiative. Eco- friendly materials can be used . Labour/ and
> material/miles are typically reduced.
> Self build is an iconic example of local initiative for sustainable
> communities promoting local employment , use of local labour,
> materials etc. and allowing the community to influence the look of
> it's environment. It is perverse that self build is virtually squeezed
> out of the system. It is unacceptable that the ODPM Barker Report
> inadvertently or purposely entirely overlooked it. It is squeezed out
> because of the difficulty of finding land and the exploitatve price
> of land with planning permission. This in turn is caused by a
> deliberate campaign principally by two groups. Builders who want to
> profit by cornering the market for new houses at high prices The
> method used is to buy up land with p.p. and land with potential p.p.
> round every town and village in the country. Thus a country wide
> virtual monopoly has been achieved The ODPM Barker Report lists the
> landholdings of the giant builders. Inspection of the registers in
> the planning department of the county offices reveals the local
> monopoly of applications by a few entities. Second. The giant
> landowners want to maintain their windfall gains from releasing
> land for building. The method is to dribble the land onto the
> market, Restricting the supply of land puts up the price. This
> reaches obscene levels as at present when a backlog of housing demand
> builds up against an ever increasing peak of prices for the limited
> supply of houses available House builders join in the campaign by
> restricting the number of houses built. National statistics show an
> annual decline in the number of houses built, Barker suggests the
> annual shortfall is in tens of thousands and the cumulative shortfall
> perhaps half a million.
> The Planning Regime is not blameless. It lends itself to
> exploitation by those who control the availability of land. This was
> foreseen by the sponsors in 1947, but has only reached crisis point as
> builders' land acquisition policies have matured so that they have
> amassed land-banks over the years.
> A demonstration of this is that now the giant building contractors
> make more profit from buying and selling land than they do from
> house- building..
> THE NEED FOR HOUSING LAND IS EXPLOITED BY MONOPOLY LANDOWNERS
> In this context it is worth looking at a historical precedent - the
> Government's handling of the sudden demand for land in the nineteenth
> Century.
> When a national railway network was proposed arrangements were
> necessary to see that land was available. The Government foresaw that
> this was an opportunity for unscrupulous landowners to
> Hold out against the needs of the railway companies which had a
> public service dimension.. HMG intervened and passed the Regulation
> of Railways Act 1844. Among the provisions were the possibility of
> compulsory purchase of land. Also the proviso that HMG could call in
> the operation for public ownership after the railway companies had
> operated commercially for 21 years. (a little noted precedent for
> 'nationalisation' although never implemented) Clearly HMG
> anticipated that speculators would exploit their monopoly of transport
> against the public interest. To that end many subsequent railway Acts
> limited freight charges. Of course abuses happened and in some
> cases Railway promoters solicited funds from the public with no
> intention of ever building a railway. A peculiarity of land is that
> it lends itself to monopoly exploitation. All land is 'local' he
> who owns it owns a monopoly of that land, so it is peculiarly
> susceptible to exploitation Would it be surprising if speculators
> have exploited the T &C P Act?
> They have done so and it is time to amend it.
> THE PLANNING REGIME REQUIRES RADICAL CHANGE
> Planning permission is now granted to the land owner. It should be
> changed and granted to the would-be house occupier and preference
> given to the self or community builder /occupier.
> The inspiration for the Town and Country Planning Act of 1947 was
> for central Government to step in and secure for the people adequate
> houses and to preclude unscrupulous people from exploiting their
> need .
> The Act has failed in this. It should either be withdrawn completely
> allowing people in housing need to build anywhere they want- housing
> being more critical than ogling the landscape in a utilitarian
> society.
> Or, a new Act should be introduced meeting the needs of the homeless
> not the pockets of the wealthy and the share prices of Banks,
> Building Societies and Builders in the city .
> Planning permission for house-building should be granted to the house-
> needy and not to the landowner who is already well housed.
> This needs supervision at a local level- here the proposed Local
> Works communities have a role. In deciding where houses should be
> built, how many, of what design and by whom. They can give preference
> to sustainable building for sustainable communities by encouraging
> local families to undertake building the houses they require.
> In the present bizarre and unsatisfactory situation the planning
> regime instead of promoting the building of houses with the interests
> of the house needy in mind, it rewards landowners with unearned and
> unheard riches, landowners either hereditary or in their guise as
> land-banking building corporations whose interest is restricting the
> supply of new houses, driving up their prices and catering for the
> most affluent speculators in houses to the detriment of both those in
> greatest need and the beauty of the countryside and the character of
> our villages and towns. Planning Permission Punishes the Poor.
> 'SOCIAL HOUSING' IS 'PAST IT'. SUPER SELF-BUILD HOUSING IS JUST GOOD
> ENOUGH
> Within the range of products displayed by such builders are included
> purposely non-designed houses whose role is to show off the
> desirability of the up-market 'estates'(sic). Easily recognisable
> non-designs of four apartments to the block turn up in myriads in
> every town and County in the country. Another role is to build a
> 'social house' which profitably attracts Housing Corporation funds -
> presented by the developer as a standard design sold at 'cost' to
> contrast the additional design features of the non-standard house as
> justifying the enormously inflated (and speculative) price demanded of
> the public.
> 'Social houses' then both offer a sop to the conscience of local and
> central government otherwise apparently helpless before the
> machinations of the builders. The house-needy are stigmatised by their
> post-code . To the advantage of the speculative builder the otherwise
> often poorly appointed and unremarkable standard show house is set-
> off to its advantage. This is a definition of social housing you
> will not find in the Barker Report. 'Social Housing' extracted from
> developers is a puncture repair solution to a defective sticking-
> plaster. Council houses were built in thousands in the 1950's. Now
> HMG funding has been withdrawn .
> The alternative is better houses and savings by building houses by
> the Community-build method - so great that those unable to wholly
> finance their own house can be part financed by the others benefiting
> from the new regime, and part by the labour the would-be occupier
> contributes to the community build project.
> THE TOWN & COUNTRY PLANNING ACTS NEED TOTAL REVISION AND REDIRECTION
> The purpose of introducing in 1947 the Town and Country Planning Act,
> which controls where houses are built by issuing permits to build,
> was to compensate landowners with £300million for their development
> rights taken away when formerly they benefited from the increase
> in value as agricultural land was acquired when needed for housing
> development. The war destruction, the resumption after the hiatus in
> building and the demob of a million servicemen stimulated this
> central government initiative.
>
> Providing 'land fit for heroes' in 1947, would inevitably be an
> expensive, £m300 , sticking plaster, without confronting the Powerful.
> It was designed to cover the wound left by the missing land on which
> to build the urgently needed houses, land torn away from cottagers,
> small farmers and squatters in the previous century under the
> Enclosure Acts. The 1947 Act took for granted that private agencies
> would otherwise exploit people's needs. Central to the current housing
> problem is land. Again and again the Barker Report states this. It
> is the scarcity of land with planning permission- not of land in
> absolute terms which is the root cause of the housing crisis. There
> is no shortage of land in a territory with 60million acres -
> sufficient for Puck to circle the globe with a ribbon of British land
> four miles wide (and return in forty minutes.)
> The recipients of planning permission should be the house-needy not
> the landowner. There is no alternative way to make housing provision
> match people's needs and means. This will at a stroke destroy
> windfall gains, introduce an alternative to buying a house, replace
> speculative land value with lower existing -use value, and
> significantly and crucially reduce the cost of providing new houses.
> It will also free tenant farmers from ruin. If it reduces the income
> of the predatory rich few, they are a tiny privileged well-housed
> selfish coterie satiated with past undeserved gains and it will
> increase the felicity and happiness of the many, the long suffering
> badly housed and the young house-needy. The 1947 Act has proved a
> disastrous license to exploit people's needs. Associated with the
> Proposed New Act is a reserved compulsory purchase power to bring
> forward land required for manifest public need. Providing land for
> houses requires these powers more than do roads, railways & defence.
> Why defend an inequitable society?
> Such an Act , by reducing the price of land from speculative/ monopoly
> -to commercial- levels will make it possible at any future date to
> de-privatise land so that its use reverts to the public whose
> existence and needs give it value and taking it from the status of a
> commodity open to speculation to that of a utility and a national
> resource not a private treasure hoard.. The public interest and
> dependence on land , shown by the amount of public taxes required to
> control its use, buy it for houses, roads and airports and subsidise
> it for farming , suggests the time has come to prevent it's
> exploitation against the public interest. Winston Churchill
> castigated the landowners' monopoly as 'the worst of all monopolies'
> to the House of Commons in 1909 and advocated ending it. Churchill
> and Lloyd George were sidetracked by local trouble in Sarajevo.
> THE LANDOWNERS COUP THE STATE WITHIN THE STATE
> There is no polite way of saying that a small group of wealthy,
> powerful and politically entrenched people, the traditional land
> lords , the N.F.U., and builder/developers-the ariviste landowners
> with giant land banks, maliciously spread a campaign of misinformation
> to protect their ill gained profits amounting to £billions annually.
> They inflate the cost of the largest item in household expenditure-
> housing, and via mortgages they influence the amount of consumer
> spending - which regulates the economy. They have more control than
> the Exchequer ! The myth is that there is a shortage of land, that
> the green belt is in danger, that the countryside will be concreted-
> over if the required houses are built, that development is spoliation
> and that they are custodians and guardians of something called '
> heritage..' There are infinite variations of this theme. Land
> arrangements are no more ancient than the Tudor pillagers and lordly
> enclosers of the 1800's
> This group long ago captured political power in Parliament and now
> concentrate on manipulating their monopoly of landownership (see
> Kevin Cahill's book, ' Who Owns Britain?') in our arrested democracy.
> This coup was achieved by promoting advantageous laws shifting the
> burden of tax from Land tax to Income tax, now to Council tax. This is
> done through securing massive state subsidies to agriculture, and
> increased land values through both EU grants and by manipulating the
> Planning Laws in their favour.
> The CAP Regime now replaces the Corn laws. Exploiting housing need is
> the latest scam. Plus ca change
> Exercising a monopoly (on land with p.p.) against the public interest
> is illegal. Although (so far) it escapes the prosecution of the
> Competition Commission this is not a reason to preserve misdirected
> Planning regime and the private taxation system dependent on it which
> operate in exactly the opposite fashion to which it was intended
> and is an affront to open democracy. The truth is that there is
> plenty of land, that houses of appropriate design complement the
> landscape as John Constable showed, that it is the developers'
> ghastly commercial non-designs in which the minimum architectural
> input and maximum environmental damage is involved which are
> inappropriate and attract valid nimby resentment. Their universal
> product sits ill at ease with vernacular designed houses ,
> themselves a well-loved feature of the British landscape.
> Exploiting vulnerable people is a vicious and illegal abuse of the
> monopoly of land, wealth and privilege. Changing the planning regime
> and promoting self and community build housing with the help of an
> amended Sustainable Communities Bill can right this pernicious abuse
> which will be changed because democracy cannot survive entrenched
> injustice. 900words James Armstrong, 3rd Feb 2006
> james36armstrong at hotmail.com
>
>
>
>
>
> Features Editor
>
> Planning Magazine.
>
>
>
>
>
> Dear Sir,
> 4th Feb 2006
>
> I enclose an article of 792 words, ' Local Works- without houses for
> local workers?'
> On the subject of the Sustainable Commuities Bill For consideration
> for your publication 'Planning'.
>
> A further 900 word article 'The £300million sticking plaster' , the
> 1947 T & C P Act '
> goes on to trace the original intention of the present planning
> regime and suggest radical changes.
> The message is :
> "A scarce resource, building land with planning permission, is being
> used to make profit, not to meet needs.
> This scarce resource, land with p.p. or with potential planning
> permission, has been bought up long ago..
> This is where the name 'spec. builder' comes from. .
> Monopolies used against the public interest are illegal under UK and
> EU law..
> The monopoly (land with p.p.) of an existential need (shelter-houses)
> used against the public interest ( to raise prices ) is illegal, evil,
> unpardonable and unsupportable in a democracy- yet this is the
> result of the present planning regime. "
>
> You will have seen that Messrs Sainsbury have appealed to the
> Competition Commission against the monopoly of out of town sites for
> supermarkets. Last year I followed the same thinking and asked CC to
> consider the monopoly of building land.
>
> I made a submission to the Barker Report and have found glaring
> oversights in the method and findings.
>
>
> Yours faithfully,
>
>
> James Armstrong
> 22 Harveys Terrace,
> Dorchester DT1 ILE tel 01305 265510
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> The Editor,
>
> The Guardian
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Dear Sir, AN ILLEGAL HOUSING SCAM.
> 4th Feb 2006
>
>
>
>
>
>
> I enclose for your consideration an article of 792 words, ' Local
> Works- without houses for local workers?'
> On the subject of the Sustainable Commuities Bill For consideration
> for your publication.
>
> A further 900 word article 'The £300million sticking plaster' , the
> 1947 T & C P Act '
> goes on to trace the original intention of the present planning
> regime and suggest radical changes.
>
>
> Alternatively the article can be printed complete at 3306 words.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Yours faithfully,
>
>
> James Armstrong
> 22 Harveys Terrace,
> Dorchester DT1 ILE tel 01305 265510
>
>
>
> LOCAL WORKS - WITHOUT HOUSES FOR LOCAL WORKERS?
> 792words (I page)
> THE SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES BILL 3306 complete. 900 last page
> A proposed new Act of parliament promoting sustainable communities
> does not address the rural housing crisis. This is curious when
> housing is the biggest item in household expenditure.' Farming' , Food
> '
> And 'Travel' and 'Traffic congestion' are prominently featured in
> the Bill. In contrast 'Social housing' is obscurely mentioned but
> neither defined nor expanded on, and grouped with Post-offices,
> Eating places and Open spaces, in paragraph 2 of schedule one.
> This Bill is an appeal to harness the genuine grievances of
> rural communities about centralised 'economic' driven policies from
> Whitehall inappropriate for local circumstances, aiming to direct
> the energy of the nimby brigade towards otherwise laudable goals like
> reducing traffic congestion, reducing food miles and reducing the
> monopoly of food supply by private or public agencies using
> centralised depot distribution systems whether supermarkets or
> suppliers of milk and meals for schoolchildren.
> THERE IS A HOUSING CRISIS
> The lack of houses available to people on low, average and
> even high incomes is a national problem and particularly acute in
> rural areas and arguably is the main cause of the decline of rural
> communities.. How can communities thrive if people cannot afford to
> live there? Without people how can commerce thrive- and vice versa?
> Yet the campaign and the Bill is curiously unconcerned about the
> housing crisis.
> Rural housing is a divisive issue amongst those who have it
> who want the value to go up and those who need it who want prices to
> come down.. There is tension between wealthy incomers and
> disadvantaged local people in unequal competition for the same
> houses. Landowners , owner farmers and property owners thrive from
> the scarcity of houses. When permission to develop is given, land
> jumps in value from £2,000 per acre to £1million per acre. The
> landowner pockets the windfall the house-buyer pays an inflated
> price and the house-needy goes un-housed. If land was widely owned
> the profits would be dispersed. If permission was freely available
> the scarcity and speculative value of land with permission would
> disappear. If houses were built by the self-build method this would
> reward local initiative, encourage sustainability and the
> community's economy would be stimulated by the local activity.
> There is potential controversy too from people who oppose any
> development especially from non appropriate building. Revealingly the
> campaign features as a bullet point, '162 green belt developments
> approved'. and glaringly omits the 'elephant in the sitting room' -
> house completions annually declining whilst housing demand annually
> increases. And house prices out of reach of average salary earners.
> We can only conclude that to avoid antagonising opposing interests
> the campaign takes the easy way out and omits mention of the problem.
> The Sustainable Communities Bill mistakenly believes that
> sustainability can be achieved without
> large-scale building of houses in rural areas, also associates
> development with despoliation.This is muddle-headed when the only
> housing mentioned in the campaign is 'social housing'.which is
> typically low specification houses. built to a budget, in mono
> designs, grouped in clearly defined schemes, not integrated with
> non-social houses, administered by a housing association for which
> occupants are admitted after means testing and not allowed to be sold
> on the open market. In other words only socially divisive social
> housing is promoted in a Bill promoting community. All
> communities are local. Houses are an existential requirement for
> living and so you cannot have a community without adequate housing,
> nor a thriving economy without a growing community . A Bill which
> perpetuates social division and does not address the acute rural
> housing crisis can neither achieve its aims nor hope to enjoy enjoy
> wide support.
> Central to an amended Bill should be measures to build houses
> in rural areas which people could occupy while living in an
> integrated community, houses within a price range appropriate to the
> local economy. We say this can be achieved by community supported
> self- or community-built housing as an alternative to inappropriate
> overpriced commercially built 'estates' of houses of a specification
> designed to appeal to affluent incomers.. 'Social housing '
> stigmatises and is a superfluous stickingplaster solution . 'Social
> housing' is divisive, does not confront the mainstream crisis of high
> price, low availability and often intrusive design. To what kind of
> 'choice' does a 'social housing' policy aspire ? To this end
> Planning Permission should be directed to the house-needy would-be
> occupier not, as at present, to the well-housed and affluent land-
> owners who as a group have abused their monopoly of land to restrict
> the supply while illegally reaping monopoly rewards. An amended
> Sustainable Communities Bill would have the role of assessing local
> housing needs, planning local development, monitoring building and
> occupancy.
> J Armstrong Dorchester
> 3rd Feb
> 2006
> SELF- AND COMMUNITY- BUILT HOUSES MEET LOCAL NEEDS AND
> PROMOTE COMMUNITIES. LANDOWNERS AND BUILDERS NOW MONOPOLISE
> BUILDING LAND.
> Promoting Self Build and community build houses in locations styles
> and by people and on land approved and provided by the community is a
> solution.
> At present the provision of houses is handed over to commercial
> interests.
> The driving forces are the landowners (a restricted group) whose
> interest is to pocket the windfall gains received with planning
> permission of undeveloped land. Land prices rocket.the other
> beneficiaries are the Property developers whose interest is to
> maximise the profit by building at the lowest cost and selling at the
> maximum price. The result is standardised mono-designs, crammed on
> sites at the highest possible density. Houses are built of design,
> specification and price inappropriate to the locality because they are
> not tailored to the local need but to the most lucrative market.
> A scarce resource, building land with planning permission, is
> being used to make profit, not to meet needs. This scarce
> resource, land with p.p. or with potential planning permission, has
> been bought up long ago..This is where the name 'spec. builder' comes
> from. .All monopolies used against the public interest are illegal.
> The monopoly (land with p.p.) of an existential need (shelter-houses)
> usedagainst the public interest ( to raise prices ) is illegal, evil,
> unpardonable and unsupportable in a democracy- yet this is the result
> of the present planning regime.
> Self build is an entirely practical method of people building exactly
> the house to meet their specific need, at the highest specification
> and the lowest cost . The technology is widely available and the level
> of skill required no greater than that available to the average d-I-y
> enthusiast.
> The key fact is that the cost of the materials and labour for a high
> specification house is sometimes less and often very much less than
> half the asking price. If in the case of self build the labour cost
> is nil or next to nil then the cost is yet considerably lower and
> comes within the range of the least affluent of the community. In
> addition mortgages are available to help finance the self building
> process. Also the great advantage of self build is that building can
> progress as the income of the builder allows. On completion the house
> is a source of pride to the builder and the community and fosters
> initiative. Eco- friendly materials can be used . Labour/ and
> material/miles are typically reduced.
> Self build is an iconic example of local initiative for sustainable
> communities promoting local employment , use of local labour,
> materials etc. and allowing the community to influence the look of
> it's environment. It is perverse that self build is virtually squeezed
> out of the system. It is unacceptable that the ODPM Barker Report
> inadvertently or purposely entirely overlooked it. It is squeezed out
> because of the difficulty of finding land and the exploitatve price
> of land with planning permission. This in turn is caused by a
> deliberate campaign principally by two groups. Builders who want to
> profit by cornering the market for new houses at high prices The
> method used is to buy up land with p.p. and land with potential p.p.
> round every town and village in the country. Thus a country wide
> virtual monopoly has been achieved The ODPM Barker Report lists the
> landholdings of the giant builders. Inspection of the registers in
> the planning department of the county offices reveals the local
> monopoly of applications by a few entities. Second. The giant
> landowners want to maintain their windfall gains from releasing
> land for building. The method is to dribble the land onto the
> market, Restricting the supply of land puts up the price. This
> reaches obscene levels as at present when a backlog of housing demand
> builds up against an ever increasing peak of prices for the limited
> supply of houses available House builders join in the campaign by
> restricting the number of houses built. National statistics show an
> annual decline in the number of houses built, Barker suggests the
> annual shortfall is in tens of thousands and the cumulative shortfall
> perhaps half a million.
> The Planning Regime is not blameless. It lends itself to
> exploitation by those who control the availability of land. This was
> foreseen by the sponsors in 1947, but has only reached crisis point as
> builders' land acquisition policies have matured so that they have
> amassed land-banks over the years.
> A demonstration of this is that now the giant building contractors
> make more profit from buying and selling land than they do from
> house- building..
> THE NEED FOR HOUSING LAND IS EXPLOITED BY MONOPOLY LANDOWNERS
> In this context it is worth looking at a historical precedent - the
> Government's handling of the sudden demand for land in the nineteenth
> Century.
> When a national railway network was proposed arrangements were
> necessary to see that land was available. The Government foresaw that
> this was an opportunity for unscrupulous landowners to
> Hold out against the needs of the railway companies which had a
> public service dimension.. HMG intervened and passed the Regulation
> of Railways Act 1844. Among the provisions were the possibility of
> compulsory purchase of land. Also the proviso that HMG could call in
> the operation for public ownership after the railway companies had
> operated commercially for 21 years. (a little noted precedent for
> 'nationalisation' although never implemented) Clearly HMG
> anticipated that speculators would exploit their monopoly of transport
> against the public interest. To that end many subsequent railway Acts
> limited freight charges. Of course abuses happened and in some
> cases Railway promoters solicited funds from the public with no
> intention of ever building a railway. A peculiarity of land is that
> it lends itself to monopoly exploitation. All land is 'local' he
> who owns it owns a monopoly of that land, so it is peculiarly
> susceptible to exploitation Would it be surprising if speculators
> have exploited the T &C P Act?
> They have done so and it is time to amend it.
> THE PLANNING REGIME REQUIRES RADICAL CHANGE
> Planning permission is now granted to the land owner. It should be
> changed and granted to the would-be house occupier and preference
> given to the self or community builder /occupier.
> The inspiration for the Town and Country Planning Act of 1947 was
> for central Government to step in and secure for the people adequate
> houses and to preclude unscrupulous people from exploiting their
> need .
> The Act has failed in this. It should either be withdrawn completely
> allowing people in housing need to build anywhere they want- housing
> being more critical than ogling the landscape in a utilitarian
> society.
> Or, a new Act should be introduced meeting the needs of the homeless
> not the pockets of the wealthy and the share prices of Banks,
> Building Societies and Builders in the city .
> Planning permission for house-building should be granted to the house-
> needy and not to the landowner who is already well housed.
> This needs supervision at a local level- here the proposed Local
> Works communities have a role. In deciding where houses should be
> built, how many, of what design and by whom. They can give preference
> to sustainable building for sustainable communities by encouraging
> local families to undertake building the houses they require.
> In the present bizarre and unsatisfactory situation the planning
> regime instead of promoting the building of houses with the interests
> of the house needy in mind, it rewards landowners with unearned and
> unheard riches, landowners either hereditary or in their guise as
> land-banking building corporations whose interest is restricting the
> supply of new houses, driving up their prices and catering for the
> most affluent speculators in houses to the detriment of both those in
> greatest need and the beauty of the countryside and the character of
> our villages and towns. Planning Permission Punishes the Poor.
> 'SOCIAL HOUSING' IS 'PAST IT'. SUPER SELF-BUILD HOUSING IS JUST GOOD
> ENOUGH
> Within the range of products displayed by such builders are included
> purposely non-designed houses whose role is to show off the
> desirability of the up-market 'estates'(sic). Easily recognisable
> non-designs of four apartments to the block turn up in myriads in
> every town and County in the country. Another role is to build a
> 'social house' which profitably attracts Housing Corporation funds -
> presented by the developer as a standard design sold at 'cost' to
> contrast the additional design features of the non-standard house as
> justifying the enormously inflated (and speculative) price demanded of
> the public.
> 'Social houses' then both offer a sop to the conscience of local and
> central government otherwise apparently helpless before the
> machinations of the builders. The house-needy are stigmatised by their
> post-code . To the advantage of the speculative builder the otherwise
> often poorly appointed and unremarkable standard show house is set-
> off to its advantage. This is a definition of social housing you
> will not find in the Barker Report. 'Social Housing' extracted from
> developers is a puncture repair solution to a defective sticking-
> plaster. Council houses were built in thousands in the 1950's. Now
> HMG funding has been withdrawn .
> The alternative is better houses and savings by building houses by
> the Community-build method - so great that those unable to wholly
> finance their own house can be part financed by the others benefiting
> from the new regime, and part by the labour the would-be occupier
> contributes to the community build project.
> THE TOWN & COUNTRY PLANNING ACTS NEED TOTAL REVISION AND REDIRECTION
> The purpose of introducing in 1947 the Town and Country Planning Act,
> which controls where houses are built by issuing permits to build,
> was to compensate landowners with £300million for their development
> rights taken away when formerly they benefited from the increase
> in value as agricultural land was acquired when needed for housing
> development. The war destruction, the resumption after the hiatus in
> building and the demob of a million servicemen stimulated this
> central government initiative.
>
> Providing 'land fit for heroes' in 1947, would inevitably be an
> expensive, £m300 , sticking plaster, without confronting the Powerful.
> It was designed to cover the wound left by the missing land on which
> to build the urgently needed houses, land torn away from cottagers,
> small farmers and squatters in the previous century under the
> Enclosure Acts. The 1947 Act took for granted that private agencies
> would otherwise exploit people's needs. Central to the current housing
> problem is land. Again and again the Barker Report states this. It
> is the scarcity of land with planning permission- not of land in
> absolute terms which is the root cause of the housing crisis. There
> is no shortage of land in a territory with 60million acres -
> sufficient for Puck to circle the globe with a ribbon of British land
> four miles wide (and return in forty minutes.)
> The recipients of planning permission should be the house-needy not
> the landowner. There is no alternative way to make housing provision
> match people's needs and means. This will at a stroke destroy
> windfall gains, introduce an alternative to buying a house, replace
> speculative land value with lower existing -use value, and
> significantly and crucially reduce the cost of providing new houses.
> It will also free tenant farmers from ruin. If it reduces the income
> of the predatory rich few, they are a tiny privileged well-housed
> selfish coterie satiated with past undeserved gains and it will
> increase the felicity and happiness of the many, the long suffering
> badly housed and the young house-needy. The 1947 Act has proved a
> disastrous license to exploit people's needs. Associated with the
> Proposed New Act is a reserved compulsory purchase power to bring
> forward land required for manifest public need. Providing land for
> houses requires these powers more than do roads, railways & defence.
> Why defend an inequitable society?
> Such an Act , by reducing the price of land from speculative/ monopoly
> -to commercial- levels will make it possible at any future date to
> de-privatise land so that its use reverts to the public whose
> existence and needs give it value and taking it from the status of a
> commodity open to speculation to that of a utility and a national
> resource not a private treasure hoard.. The public interest and
> dependence on land , shown by the amount of public taxes required to
> control its use, buy it for houses, roads and airports and subsidise
> it for farming , suggests the time has come to prevent it's
> exploitation against the public interest. Winston Churchill
> castigated the landowners' monopoly as 'the worst of all monopolies'
> to the House of Commons in 1909 and advocated ending it. Churchill
> and Lloyd George were sidetracked by local trouble in Sarajevo.
> THE LANDOWNERS COUP THE STATE WITHIN THE STATE
> There is no polite way of saying that a small group of wealthy,
> powerful and politically entrenched people, the traditional land
> lords , the N.F.U., and builder/developers-the ariviste landowners
> with giant land banks, maliciously spread a campaign of misinformation
> to protect their ill gained profits amounting to £billions annually.
> They inflate the cost of the largest item in household expenditure-
> housing, and via mortgages they influence the amount of consumer
> spending - which regulates the economy. They have more control than
> the Exchequer ! The myth is that there is a shortage of land, that
> the green belt is in danger, that the countryside will be concreted-
> over if the required houses are built, that development is spoliation
> and that they are custodians and guardians of something called '
> heritage..' There are infinite variations of this theme. Land
> arrangements are no more ancient than the Tudor pillagers and lordly
> enclosers of the 1800's
> This group long ago captured political power in Parliament and now
> concentrate on manipulating their monopoly of landownership (see
> Kevin Cahill's book, ' Who Owns Britain?') in our arrested democracy.
> This coup was achieved by promoting advantageous laws shifting the
> burden of tax from Land tax to Income tax, now to Council tax. This is
> done through securing massive state subsidies to agriculture, and
> increased land values through both EU grants and by manipulating the
> Planning Laws in their favour.
> The CAP Regime now replaces the Corn laws. Exploiting housing need is
> the latest scam. Plus ca change
> Exercising a monopoly (on land with p.p.) against the public interest
> is illegal. Although (so far) it escapes the prosecution of the
> Competition Commission this is not a reason to preserve misdirected
> Planning regime and the private taxation system dependent on it which
> operate in exactly the opposite fashion to which it was intended
> and is an affront to open democracy. The truth is that there is
> plenty of land, that houses of appropriate design complement the
> landscape as John Constable showed, that it is the developers'
> ghastly commercial non-designs in which the minimum architectural
> input and maximum environmental damage is involved which are
> inappropriate and attract valid nimby resentment. Their universal
> product sits ill at ease with vernacular designed houses ,
> themselves a well-loved feature of the British landscape.
> Exploiting vulnerable people is a vicious and illegal abuse of the
> monopoly of land, wealth and privilege. Changing the planning regime
> and promoting self and community build housing with the help of an
> amended Sustainable Communities Bill can right this pernicious abuse
> which will be changed because democracy cannot survive entrenched
> injustice. 900words James Armstrong, 3rd Feb 2006
> james36armstrong at hotmail.com
>
>
>
>
>
> Features Editor
>
> Planning Magazine.
>
>
>
>
>
> Dear Sir,
> 4th Feb 2006
>
> I enclose an article of 792 words, ' Local Works- without houses for
> local workers?'
> On the subject of the Sustainable Commuities Bill For consideration
> for your publication 'Planning'.
>
> A further 900 word article 'The £300million sticking plaster' , the
> 1947 T & C P Act '
> goes on to trace the original intention of the present planning
> regime and suggest radical changes.
> The message is :
> "A scarce resource, building land with planning permission, is being
> used to make profit, not to meet needs.
> This scarce resource, land with p.p. or with potential planning
> permission, has been bought up long ago..
> This is where the name 'spec. builder' comes from. .
> Monopolies used against the public interest are illegal under UK and
> EU law..
> The monopoly (land with p.p.) of an existential need (shelter-houses)
> used against the public interest ( to raise prices ) is illegal, evil,
> unpardonable and unsupportable in a democracy- yet this is the
> result of the present planning regime. "
>
> You will have seen that Messrs Sainsbury have appealed to the
> Competition Commission against the monopoly of out of town sites for
> supermarkets. Last year I followed the same thinking and asked CC to
> consider the monopoly of building land.
>
> I made a submission to the Barker Report and have found glaring
> oversights in the method and findings.
>
>
> Yours faithfully,
>
>
> James Armstrong
> 22 Harveys Terrace,
> Dorchester DT1 ILE tel 01305 265510
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Diggers350 - an e-mail discussion/information-share list for campaigners
> involved with THE LAND IS OURS landrights network (based in the UK ..web
> ref. www.thelandisours.org). The list was originally concerned with the
> 350th anniversary of The Diggers (& still is concerned with their
> history). The Diggers appeared at the end of the English Civil war with a
> mission to make the earth 'a common treasury for all'. In the spring of
> 1999 there were celebrations to remember the Diggers vision and their
> contribution. Find out more about the Diggers and see illustrations at:
> http://www.bilderberg.org/diggers.htm
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