Glory Be! There's Plenty Of Land For Housing Says Friends Of The Earth
Well, isn't that good news?
The current high price of housing in Britain has a very simple cause. No one’s allowed to build the housing Britons want to live in anywhere Britons wish to live. Therefore that archaic endowment of what does exist as and where becomes very expensive.
The cause of this is that we nationalised planning of land use back in 1947. I may have mentioned this before - the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 and successors is the root of this evil. Haute bourgeois prodnoses decided that the proles should not be allowed to live in the traditionally desired des res with a front and back garden. That would just mean more suburbs stretching off over the fields the HBs liked to look out over. Not that the HBs owned those rolling acres but they did control the legal system and so were able to steal decent housing from everyone else.
Tossers and where’s that multiperson gallows we all need then?
The actual argument used is that we’re a small island, heavily populated (which makes that drive for unlimited immigration a tad suspect) and there’s just no room for more housing. Therefore any planning permission that is granted has minimum density requirements imposed. Last I saw was that it’s 30 dwellings per hectare. This is why new housing is all rabbit hutches - and it’s also why Britain has the smallest new builds in Europe, at 76 m2. True, my last flat at 250 m2 (not, note, in Britain) was possibly a little excessive but still - 76 is absurd.
30 dwellings per hectare allows 330 m2 for the house, garden, roads going through and everything. My current (again, not in Britain) lawn is larger than that, let alone the house, outbuildings, flower beds and so on at a price less than a flat in London. That’s why Britons are being forced to live in these shacks.
So, you know, bugger the haute bourgeoisie and blow up, proper blow up kablooie, the TCPA 1947.
However, that shortage of land does resonate with people - which is why the argument is used. So, what can we do to point out that this is incorrect? There’s plenty of land we could - should - be using for housing so let’s get on with it?
Enter Friends of the Earth:
England could produce 13 times more renewable energy than it does now, while using less than 3% of its land, analysis has found.
Onshore wind and solar projects could provide enough electricity to power all the households in England two and a half times over, the research by Exeter University, commissioned by Friends of the Earth (FoE), suggested.
Currently, about 17 gigawatt hours of electricity comes from homegrown renewables on land. But there is potential for 130 GWh to come from solar panels, and 96GWh from onshore wind.
These figures are reached by only taking into account the most suitable sites, excluding national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty, higher grade agricultural land and heritage sites.
Excellent. Except we do need to know something more. The whole urban area - that’s everything, roads, houses, High Streets, factories, the lot - is some 10% of the country. Housing, including gardens, is more like 2 to 3% of the land area of the country.
So, FoE has just proven that we’ve double the amount of land available than we’re already using. And that’s with “figures reached by only taking into account the most suitable sites, excluding national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty, higher grade agricultural land and heritage sites.”
Which is absolutely excellent, isn’t it?
So, blow up the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 and successors, proper blow up and kablooie, double the area of the country under housing and we can all have that des res with front and back. At a price Britons can afford in places Britons want to live.
Why wouldn't we do that now we know we can? Sure, means we’ve got to murder the haute bourgeoisie but who doesn’t want to do that anyway?
I often think that we could cost planning restrictions using an LVT.
If there was a citizen's dividend funded by title taxes then people may be incentivised to think about the cost, and also NIMBYs would have to pay extra.