Date published: 2005/09/18
The BBC says:
A wave of house building across England will do little to help those in greatest housing need, a charity says.
The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) warned government plans would cripple efforts to regenerate rundown urban areas and scar the countryside.
Campaigners are due to meet in London to try to persuade the government to reconsider proposals which include plans for 1.1m more homes by 2020.
...
The government hopes to address problems such as first-time buyers being priced out of the housing market, especially in the South East.The CPRE argues that the plans will mean developers are given land for building in areas of high house prices, with the aim that an increase in supply will bring down the price.
But this would trigger a wave of house building on "greenfield" sites and in the most attractive towns and villages, it argues.
Meanwhile, it believes, areas which tend to have low prices, such as run-down parts of towns which are crying out for regeneration, will be ignored.
The CPRE says the plans would undermine years of progress in the re-use of urban "brownfield" land.
The proposals aim to bring in recommendations for changes to the planning system made in a housing supply review by Kate Barker, of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee.
Neil Sinden, director of policy at CPRE, called for the government to listen to "widespread public concern".
"Parts of the country desperately need more affordable housing but, as Kate Barker herself pointed out, a huge wave of house building for sale wouldn't even dent that problem," he said.
"Yet it would threaten the future health of our towns and cities and wreck the countryside."
The charity is urging communities and individuals to speak out against the plans.
...
The ODPM says because of changes such as an increase in average housing density, it can now build 1.1m homes on less land than the previous government set out for 900,000 homes.
More self-serving propaganda from the CPRE. Heck, why should the workers expect to live in a green and pleasant surrounding like those people who already live in rural areas? Let them live in high-density slums in the cities, where they belong. Currently people living in rural areas are massively subsidised by people living in urban areas and one way to redress the balance slightly is to increase the number of people living in rural areas. Needless to say the priviliged rural elite do not like this. And that the ODPM is bragging about increasing the density of housing by 20% shows how dreadful the housing situation has become in Britain. Imagine bragging that the workers are being given even less space than they used to have. Who needs the Tory Party when you have New Labour?
_________________________________________________________
All material not included from other sources is copyright cambridge2000.com.
For further information or questions email: info [at] cambridge2000 [dot] com
(replace "[at]" with "@" and "[dot]" with ".").