by Ashley Mote
Get Out of The Way
The fast way to renewed growth is not more houses.
The banks are sitting on their hands building up reserves. They are also now risk-averse. Developers are sitting on many thousands of acres of land already granted planning permission. Tens of thousands of brown-field sites lay undeveloped.
Potential house-buyers can’t get mortgages. According to the Empty Houses website, and based on information available from local authorities, over 700,000 houses in the UK are empty. Almost half have been empty for more than six months.
The indigenous population of the UK is falling, with our reproduction rate down to 1.6 children per woman instead of the 2.1 needed to maintain our population.
Yet now, despite all these undeniable facts, our Prime Minister wants to relax planning rules to encourage new houses on green field sites near towns and villages with inadequate infrastructure to cope. Worse, he’s enraging his core rural support at the same time. Or did I miss something?
Cameron’s dithering, indecisive, dyslectic government claims its purpose is to kick-start the economy.
Surely it doesn’t take an Einstein to realise there are a score of more relevant, more immediate and more effective alternatives.
Cameron should stop dithering and slash government spending to the bone – and do it now. He should stop being indecisive and cut all taxation to the bone, too. He should stop being afraid of the EU and repeal all employment law which constrains businesses from employing or sacking people, including health and safety law based on EU directives.
He should tell the EU to get lost. If they don’t like it – tough!
In a nutshell, given the necessary strength of will, Cameron can and should release the pent-up commercial energy and enterprise in Britain and provide a political and economic climate in which entrepreneurs can thrive, compete, expand and enjoy the fruits of their efforts.
Then – having created that climate – Cameron and his government should get out of the way. Politicians and civil servants do not create wealth.
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I agree with the idea of cutting taxes and government spending – and regulations (and getting out of the E.U. so that we can get rid of reguations).
Of course saying one want to radically cut government spending is a lot less difficult than actually doing it.
On “Planning” I have yet to see any evidence that the Town and Country Planning Acts actually protected British towns and cities.
Such works as “The Sack of Bath” and “England a Eulogy” suggest they did not.
As for rural development – a big developer can always appeal against a “no” from a local council (and appeals are almost always upheld). Planning law is more about hitting small people over the head than it is about stopping big developments (for once my enemies on the “libertarian left” should actually like something I have said)..
What would limit the eating up of green fields and so on is a firm policy (in advance) against “adoption”.
Few developers are really interested in the long term maintanence of roads and sewers and so on (we are not talking about the Dukes of Westminister or other long term developers).
There is a tacit assumption among those who buy the houses that govenrment (local as well as central) that government will come along (eventually) and “adopt” the development – providing road maintainence and everything else.
If it was made clear (in advance) that government (local and central) was not ((not ever) going to do this – then few people would be interested in buying the houses.
And, therefore, the would not be built.
Of course long term developments (with the private builder providing and maintaining roads and so on) would still happen.
But most modern (post World War II) developments are basically – plop a housing estate on some fields, sell the houses, and then run away.,
And that sort of developement could not happen without the expectation (on the part of the house buyers) that government would “adopt” the development.