George Osbourne today announcing £11.5 billion of cuts mainly focused on your local Government while also forcing through parliament
a Bill which authorises preparatory expenditure on a railway (HS2 - London's Train or the Private Sectors 1st Class Charter) without specifying further detail of the route and a limit on expenditure.
How austere is that?
Your local services are being cut to pay for a vanity project for London.
For the detail: http://www.dodsmonitoring.com/downloads/Bills2013/High_Speed_Rail_(Preparations)_Bill.pdf
STOP PRESS a day after writing this the predicted expenditure on HS2 jumped by £10 billion (again!). Good austerity measures! Strange that it is almost how much your local government are losing....
26 June 2013
25 June 2013
Myth Busting on Housing Supply - Мит пући због стамбене понуде
Yet another bit of fun and games from the development sector, oh it's so difficult for them in the times of global recession.
The UK Government has been very keen to inform us how inefficient local authorities are and how their planning bureaucracy has made life oh so difficult for developers.
In the press this week we learnt that actually local authorities have been progressing planning applications for housing, but the developers have then not developed the land!!
Behind this is quite a naughty game developers are playing with our greenbelts.
We are constantly told by political parties who are lobbied by the developers that there is a shortage of housing supply so we MUST build more. Government have as a consequence of this mis-information deregulated the planning process to the point of a rubber stamp exercise as the presumption to develop now holds sway. Thus more applications are expected from the development sector and some are developed, the rest are 'land banked' as assets, because the local authority rubber stamp places a real financial premium on that land. While the land is banked it is locked from other (perhaps better uses) and becomes under-utilised, neglected and unmanaged. Nevertheless the development companies still have a piece of land to develop or sell on with inflated prices. Land becomes an over-inflated asset for the company shareholders to speculate on. This artificially high value is also viewed as an asset by accountants thereby enabling developers to look in better business shape than they are. Land values in the accounting systems should be valued on their present state (ie underused/derelict) rather than on the speculative value of land holding development hope-value.
The land remains locked, feeding the myth that land supply is too low for the alleged housing needs of the country, the more scarce land becomes the higher value it has and this in turn perpetuates the myth that there is not enough land to build on. This then leads developers to say land supply is short and it's all the local authorities fault while they sit on hectares of land creating a future enhanced value for their shareholders.
Ludicrous. All housing applications should be put on immediate hold while Government assesses the extent of land banking by development companies.
How will you feel when the developer comes to a green belt like yours and says it is our moral duty (see previous blogs) to allow housing to ruin our green inheritance? How much will it annoy you that when they will rail road through their planning application with scant regard for local choice and democracy that they then sit on the land for 10 years as a grossly inflated asset, blighting the land but speculating on its falsified hope-value?
Not so good I suspect.
By the way, in my blog Localism and the Developer (below) the council voted through the proposals that were so vehemently opposed by local people. The local paper even held a vote and 82% voted against the proposals, yet the council approved the proposal, even having the impertinence and arrogance to say that they saw the papers poll as unrepresentative! They probably saw the march as unrepresentative too and all those objection letters. Councillors failed their duty to serve the people who voted them in to power. Developers continue to own local democracy, not you or I. It is most vexatious!
The UK Government has been very keen to inform us how inefficient local authorities are and how their planning bureaucracy has made life oh so difficult for developers.
In the press this week we learnt that actually local authorities have been progressing planning applications for housing, but the developers have then not developed the land!!
Behind this is quite a naughty game developers are playing with our greenbelts.
We are constantly told by political parties who are lobbied by the developers that there is a shortage of housing supply so we MUST build more. Government have as a consequence of this mis-information deregulated the planning process to the point of a rubber stamp exercise as the presumption to develop now holds sway. Thus more applications are expected from the development sector and some are developed, the rest are 'land banked' as assets, because the local authority rubber stamp places a real financial premium on that land. While the land is banked it is locked from other (perhaps better uses) and becomes under-utilised, neglected and unmanaged. Nevertheless the development companies still have a piece of land to develop or sell on with inflated prices. Land becomes an over-inflated asset for the company shareholders to speculate on. This artificially high value is also viewed as an asset by accountants thereby enabling developers to look in better business shape than they are. Land values in the accounting systems should be valued on their present state (ie underused/derelict) rather than on the speculative value of land holding development hope-value.
The land remains locked, feeding the myth that land supply is too low for the alleged housing needs of the country, the more scarce land becomes the higher value it has and this in turn perpetuates the myth that there is not enough land to build on. This then leads developers to say land supply is short and it's all the local authorities fault while they sit on hectares of land creating a future enhanced value for their shareholders.
Ludicrous. All housing applications should be put on immediate hold while Government assesses the extent of land banking by development companies.
Highly technical MS Visio flow chart of what the rascals are up to.
Not so good I suspect.
By the way, in my blog Localism and the Developer (below) the council voted through the proposals that were so vehemently opposed by local people. The local paper even held a vote and 82% voted against the proposals, yet the council approved the proposal, even having the impertinence and arrogance to say that they saw the papers poll as unrepresentative! They probably saw the march as unrepresentative too and all those objection letters. Councillors failed their duty to serve the people who voted them in to power. Developers continue to own local democracy, not you or I. It is most vexatious!
14 June 2013
Have we sold our souls? Consevation (dis)credits. Да ли смо продали наше душе? Цонсеватион (не) кредита
Apologies for the lack of posts. Moved house again and consequently busy, and before you ask I didn't buy one on a desecrated greenfield site, I bought a recycled shop that's a 150 years old that used to be a cobblers and corsitiers. We are recycling in the housing market. Builders are renovating some parts of the house, so in mid recession we support local business and the local economy.
Since the 21st April I have been keen to blog, for there is sinister news afoot from the world of 'development'.
It now seems we danced with the devil.
Furthermore there seems to have been zero consideration to domestic food security and land supply under this proposal.
Indeed the rows have started already, I dare anyone to logically put a value to Nightingale habitat who works in the development sector or indeed the environment sector. The Kent Wildlife Trust have one heck of a job on their hands in attempting to credit the conservation value of Lodge Hill (see http://www.kentwildlifetrust.org.uk/what-we-do/planning/lodge-hill). More here too: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/mar/29/nightingales-lodge-hill-mod-site. The ignorance of non-environmentalists knows no bounds, the council says it can move Nightingales to any new woodland created out of the Conservation Con Credits, however that new woodland will be too young to provide the correct habitat and how do you tell a small brained avian that it needs to redirect the post!
Sadly I think we have lost, the Environment sector did engage the devil and this is our payback. Fools we have been, conned by Con' Credits.
It's so sad, but I hope this at least leaves you smiling and warm (unusually - thanks to the Daily Mail, it's not often you'll read me write those words!):
Also I wonder what percentage brokers will take from this scam.
I bet developers won't be bothered to find mitigation sites and the money sits in the interest accounts of the brokers and Government.
It is not good, not good at all.
Since the 21st April I have been keen to blog, for there is sinister news afoot from the world of 'development'.
On that Sunday the Times published a story entitled 'Developers can pay to rip up nature'. For many years the environment sector has striven with tenacity and intellect to demonstrate to Government and others that nature has an economic value whether that be an inferred value or a direct functional value. In the past we have used this argument to justify funding for the delivery of environmental work. The Newlands Project strongly demonstrated that non-environmentalists can see that the green environment can assist in development and economics. The North West Regional Development Agency would not have spent £50 million with the Forestry Commission and Community Forests without a realisation that the environment had a role to play in inward investment and image of a region.
The devil, in the guise of the UK Government, is now heading for an interpretation of these values as an environmental offset for development. The direction now seems to be that any development could happen so long as a developer puts money aside for 'conservation credit' - a thorough juxtaposition if ever there was one! The proposals for the biodiversity off-setting suggests habitats can be disemboweled from locations and established on farm land elsewhere. I am sure the farmers who lose production as a consequence will be falling over themselves to give land away from food production to conservation....
Some conservation groups are now desperately back tracking by saying it is difficult to put meaningful values on conservation assets, yet we have used this to fund environment work in the past! The problem lies in the fact that we have waltzed with Beelzebub and now we pay. It is however just another ruse for Government and Developers to avoid planning and sustainable development issues. As said before little boxes for us to live in must be built at all costs, apparently.
So how will this con-trick work, well Government reckon they can assign generic values to meadows, woodlands and the like so, according to the Times, a meadow maybe worth £10,000/ha and a woodland £40,000ha and a developer will have to quantify how much of these habitats they will destroy and make a payment to the laughably named Environment Bank as the leading broker in this scam. I am looking forward to seeing how these valuations take place. A scrub woodland on the edge of London must have a different value from and Ancient Woodland Site on the HS2 route of destruction. Who will assess this, who will agree, will the developers negotiate it downwards to a low value in any case?
Indeed the rows have started already, I dare anyone to logically put a value to Nightingale habitat who works in the development sector or indeed the environment sector. The Kent Wildlife Trust have one heck of a job on their hands in attempting to credit the conservation value of Lodge Hill (see http://www.kentwildlifetrust.org.uk/what-we-do/planning/lodge-hill). More here too: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/mar/29/nightingales-lodge-hill-mod-site. The ignorance of non-environmentalists knows no bounds, the council says it can move Nightingales to any new woodland created out of the Conservation Con Credits, however that new woodland will be too young to provide the correct habitat and how do you tell a small brained avian that it needs to redirect the post!
Sadly I think we have lost, the Environment sector did engage the devil and this is our payback. Fools we have been, conned by Con' Credits.
It's so sad, but I hope this at least leaves you smiling and warm (unusually - thanks to the Daily Mail, it's not often you'll read me write those words!):
Also reference: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2331847/Houses-better-green-fields-Ministers-explosive-claim-unveils-new-plans-concrete-countryside.html
STOP PRESS
It seems DEFRA will consult on these proposals from 18th July. I also hear that the drive will be about making the planning process quicker (ie to favour developers) and that developers will only have to mitigate for loss associated directly with their development, the inference being there will be loss of habitat from historical misuse of natural resources, therefore one can assume a previously damaged ancient woodland will not be treated as such even though it may still be a wood....one to think about - will developers target damaged conservation assets for new build? The scheme is also likely to be national, ie it assumes loss of woodland in Aberdeen may be compensated for by habitat work in Penzance!
As I have seen Marc Naura write Conservation Credits are morally wrong, in that it suggests damaging ecology and habitats is fine as long as you do something (anything) good elsewhere! As Marc rightly says this will lead developers to show scant if any regard for ecology.
Also I wonder what percentage brokers will take from this scam.
I bet developers won't be bothered to find mitigation sites and the money sits in the interest accounts of the brokers and Government.
It is not good, not good at all.
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