Daily Archives: 5 Jun 2023

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5 Jun 2023

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Planning applications validated by EDDC for week beginning 22 May

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5 Jun 2023

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Comment on our love affair with property prices.

…..Even though it’s been said before, it’s worth repeating that the UK is a country wrongly convinced that inflation-busting increases in house prices are a good thing. They are not. The flip side to over-investment in bricks and mortar is under-investment in other more productive uses of capital. The regular booms in the economy driven by consumers extracting and spending equity from the rising value of their homes are invariably followed by busts.

Those who benefit from rising prices tend to be better off people in older age groups. Those who lose out tend to be two over-lapping categories: renters and the young. Anybody under 35 who is saving up for a deposit on a flat will be glad of a drop in house prices.

Housing is likely to be a central issue at the next general election, with the two main parties each backing a different side. The Conservatives – who have all but dropped housebuilding targets – are lining up behind existing owner-occupiers. Labour has said it would impose targets and be prepared to build on parts of the green belt. It is also drawing up plans that would force landowners to sell plots of land for less than their potential market price in an attempt to stop land hoarding and so increase the supply of new homes.

Even if Labour actually goes ahead with its plan, it looks certain to be challenged in the courts. Currently, if a council wants to compulsory purchase a piece of farmland for housing development it has to pay a “hope” value. That’s the value not of the farmland but of the value of the farmland adjusted for planning permission, which is substantially higher.

What is certain is that Labour’s approach makes more sense than the government’s. The current levels of housebuilding are incompatible with a rising population, and increasing the supply of homes requires reform of the planning system.

The politics are also interesting. Onward, a right of centre thinktank, produced a report last week in which it said the current crop of 25- to 40-year-olds was the first not to become more rightwing as it grew older, and housing is one reason for this.

Current Conservative housing policy will help those in their 50s and 60s who have already benefited from house-price inflation rather than those in their 20s and 30s struggling to get on the housing ladder. If Labour has concluded this is dumb economics and dumb politics, it is right on both counts.

Larry Elliott www.theguardian.com (Extract)

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Holiday lets nearly negate supply of new homes in tourist areas, study shows

Here is the problem summarised, it doesn’t affect Whitehall  (but it could affect marginal seats) – Owl:

Nationwide, newly registered second homes and tourist lets have a negligible effect on housing supply, accounting for just 26,000 properties compared with the 682,000 new homes added to England’s housing stock from 2019-22. But the effect they do have is highly concentrated, with 80% of the increase in second homes and holiday lets happening in just 25 local authorities.

Robert Booth www.theguardian.com 

The supply of new homes in some tourist hotspots is being almost completely negated by the rise of second homes and holiday lets, analysis has revealed.

In the Copeland area of the Lake District, which includes the beauty spot of Scafell Pike, there were 426 new homes created in the last three years. Over the same period, 407 existing homes were converted to commercial holiday lets or second homes.

Along part of the north Devon coast, including the Hartland peninsula – which featured in the Game of Thrones spin-off House of the Dragon – the number of new homes that have become second homes or commercial holiday lets was equivalent to almost two thirds of the new supply of regular housing between 2019 and 2022.

Generation Rent, the campaign group behind the research, said the figures meant that since the start of the Covid pandemic, housing planners had been almost “running to stand still” in the most desirable coastal areas and rural beauty spots.

Dan Wilson Craw, the acting director of Generation Rent, said: “The unregulated and undertaxed holiday let sector is out of control. It has taken homes away from locals who grew up in holiday hotspots and people who want to work in the tourist industries, making these areas unsustainable.

“A large part of the solution to high rents is more house building, but locals won’t see the benefits of this if houses continue to leak into the holiday homes sector.”

The figures come as a government consultation into whether holiday lets should require planning consent closes. The measure was proposed by Michael Gove, the secretary of state for levelling up, housing and communities. Housing campaigners believe such rules would reduce the number of family homes converted for tourism.

Announcing the consultation, Gove said: “In too many communities, we have seen local people pushed out of cherished towns, cities and villages by huge numbers of short-term lets. I’m determined that we ensure that more people have access to local homes at affordable prices, and that we prioritise families desperate to rent or buy a home of their own close to where they work.”

Nationwide, newly registered second homes and tourist lets have a negligible effect on housing supply, accounting for just 26,000 properties compared with the 682,000 new homes added to England’s housing stock from 2019-22. But the effect they do have is highly concentrated, with 80% of the increase in second homes and holiday lets happening in just 25 local authorities.

In the South Lakeland area of Cumbria, which includes Kendal and Windermere, the number of new holiday lets and second homes was equivalent to 63% of the new housing created. In Scarborough and Richmondshire, both in North Yorkshire, it was 56% and 49% respectively; and in north Norfolk, it was 42%.

The worst-affected London borough was Southwark, where more than 4,000 new homes were added to the stock, but more than 2,400 were lost to the second homes sector.

Cornwall, where 8% of homes are second homes or holiday lets, fared slightly better in recent years, with the growth in holiday homes equivalent to 27% of new stock.

Some campaigners are concerned measures to regulate holiday lets will have limited effect unless parallel rules around second home ownership are also introduced.

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Latest redactions from No. 10

www.theguardian.com

“The tories ignored all the warnings even before the pandemic began. They ignored the warnings of Operation Cygnus in 2016 – hence no P.P.E. or preparation within hospitals for a major pandemic. Johnson couldn’t be bothered to attend COBRA meetings. No temperature checks at ports and airports as people arrived from countries with high infection rates. Plans for quarantine and infection control non existent. Sporting events allowed to go ahead including allowing football fans from Spain to come into the country. Then we had eat out to help out which boosted infection rates followed by the tier system allowing people from areas with high infection rates to travel into low infection rates and spreading infection. Money wasted on ‘Nightingale Hospitals’ with out the staffing to cope with any patients. Then of course the Test and Trace fiasco. We already know that the whole thing was mishandled and ill judged and a highly expensive enquiry will tell us what we already know in high highfalutin legal terms. The members of the cabinet from 2016 onwards are responsible for thousands of deaths and permanent illness. Words fail me.“

Comment from Bytser

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New service to help VCSE groups in East Devon due to start

A new overarching service to provide support for voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) groups and organisations in East Devon will soon start to take shape.

Adam Manning www.midweekherald.co.uk

Commissioned by East Devon District Council (EDDC), with funding from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities), this important work for the VCSE sector starts this summer and will be facilitated by independent charity, Devon Communities Together which has a long-established reputation for working closely with rural communities and the groups and organisations that support them.

The new service will be designed in close collaboration with East Devon’s VCSE sector to provide better connections across VCSE groups and organisations in the district. It will encourage joint approaches to tackling important local issues which it is anticipated will include topics such as health and social care, social isolation and loneliness, fund raising, community resilience, transport, inequalities and climate change. Local VCSE groups and organisations will decide what’s important.

It will also work on new ways of working on and influencing East Devon-wide policy and service development.

This newly commissioned work demonstrates EDDC’s commitment to the VCSE sector, which it greatly values for the impact it makes on the lives of residents.

Councillor Dan Ledger, EDDC’s portfolio holder for sustainable homes and communities, said: “Through this contract, the Council is looking forward to making new connections, supporting VCSE organisations and working with them to identify sustainable plans, including refreshing local grant schemes”

Nicola Gurr, chair of trustees of Devon Communities Together said: “I am really excited that Devon Communities Together and East Devon District Council have this opportunity to work together on such a great project. The wealth of knowledge available from all parties will be instrumental in providing even more support across the VCSE sector in East Devon.”

In coming weeks, the Devon Communities Together team will be contacting VCSE organisations across East Devon to make sure they have an opportunity to fully engage in this exciting new work.

For more information contact Devon Communities Together on 01392 248919.