Date published: 2006/05/17
The BBC says:
A big increase in subsidised housing to stop low-earners being priced out of rural areas in England is being called for by a government-backed group.
A report by the Affordable Rural Housing Commission says at least 11,000 new homes a year must be built.
It suggests a new tax on second homes and more restrictions on the right to buy council houses in rural areas.
Without such action, rural communities will be reduced to retirement towns and "dormitories" for the wealthy, it adds.
The commission has also emphasised the obligation on national park authorities to play their part in building affordable homes, as well as the involvement of planners and rural communities themselves.
Commission chair Elinor Goodman said: "We recommend that 11,000 affordable homes need to be built. That's equivalent to around six new houses a year in each rural ward in England.
"Villages and country towns must be allowed to evolve in the way they did in the past - they can't just be preserved in aspic.
"Most can probably absorb some more houses, as long as they are in scale and character and maintain the identity of individual communities."
She said the issue of second homes was not a major problem across the country, but was a real concern in some areas where there was a disproportionately high number.
Professor Martin Shucksmith, also of the commission, told BBC News that commuters buying up property is the main difficulty.
But other groups, such as people retiring to the countryside, are causing concerns.
This is not just a problem for rural areas, it is a problem almost anywhere that is attractive. Cambridge, for example, has loads of London commuters, and most of the new housing in town is aimed at them rather than at locals. And they push up house prices for everybody, so that many locals are forced to live in the nearby villages rather than in Cambridge itself (so displacing people there). There are several fundamental problems here. London commuters are being subsidised by the rest of the country (since allegedly commuting 50 or 100 miles to work on a train is "sustainable" so deserves a whacking great goverment subsidy in order to sustain it) so commuters live further from London than they should. And almost all housebuilding in England is under the control of developers, who are not interested in "organic" growth but just want to dump as many houses in a plot as they can possibly get away with (a policy encouraged by urban planners, who love high density rubbish housing). And that in turn means that the propertied classes have an easy case to argue that their entrenched interests should have priority over any development (and these people run the country and include the members of the Affordable Rural Housing Commission).
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