[Politics] Are Labour going to turn this country around?

[Weststander]

It's worse than simply having no strategic planning. Governments of all colours made plans not to allow housebuilding. It bugs me that Reeves said that in order to facilitate housebuilding, they would employ 30,000 more planning officers. This is bunkum - planning officers' primary effect is to stop houses being built, not to encourage them.

House prices rise because there aren't enough houses for the people that want them. (And also because such a lot of people have more money and can afford them.) If there are 50 houses for sale in the town and 100 people who want them and can afford to buy them, then they will start to outbid each other and prices would rise. If there were 100 houses for sale and 100 people to buy them, then prices wouldn't rise.

I reckon what they need to do is build some modern prefabs. Cheap and cheerful, mass produced, built off-site and assembled on the spot. It's the quickest way to provide more accommodation for the rapidly increasing population, while not affecting existing houses so badly that negative equity becomes epidemic. I dare say there would have to be complications like maximum shelf life or contributions to replacing them, short leaseholds, perhaps primarily to be used for social housing (ie. housing benefit), something like that. But we must have more houses.

George Clarke suggested something similar, wasn’t a factory with proper apprenticeships set up on Teeside? The Germans do this, with posh homes up to Passive House standard.

 

[Jim in the West]

Infrastructure was mentioned above.

Our population has increased by an unprecedented 9m since 1997. The politicians of all colours decided that was fine, but then let down the next gens on housing.

There are always reasons to oppose housing, urban and urban fringe, there’s a ‘cottage’ industry of retired and ‘working’ from home people sitting pretty who pride themselves in neighbourhood groups as being very switched on in the means to oppose/delay housing proposals. Often with an arrogant “Why don’t they just build more flats in city centres?”.

Starmer/Reeves (they say) are the first people who’ve come along with care for the housing have-nots.

I probably qualify as one of those retired folk, "sitting pretty" (albeit I spend at least 40 hours a week on voluntary stuff, so I don't have huge amounts of spare time). For my sins, I'm a Parish Councillor in our village, and have had to teach myself a lot about planning law over the past 5 years, simply because our village is at risk of being swamped by new housing. As a Parish Council we have opposed three major housing developments in recent years. We're not the decision-maker at the end of the day (in our case, it's Somerset Council). But what we say DOES have some relevance, provided it makes sense from a planning law perspective. No matter how "switched on" we might be, at the end of the day any decision taken by the planning authority will be taken on the basis of the law. And in reality Parish Councils (and even large unitary authorities) simply don't have the resources to spend on fancy lawyers, unlike housing developers. In our village, all our work to oppose housing developments is undertaken by unpaid parish councillors who are definitely NOT planning experts. A few years ago I spoke at an appeal where the developer was trying to build 29 houses in the grounds of a Grade 2* listed building, abutting the conservation area, opposite our village school. It was a ridiculously inappropriate place for new houses. They had a team of planning experts (including a barrister) to present their case. For the local community, it was just me! An unpaid volunteer whose only "expertise" was the result of many hours of reading about planning law. And this is happening everywhere! So called nimby-ism is generally just an effort to uphold the law, and prevent complete housing anarchy in the countryside, with zero resources (compared to large developers with very deep pockets). In the case I just referred to, the developrs appeal was defeated - simply because their proposals were not in accordance with planning law.

To be clear, I don't oppose more house-building....but it has to be in the right place. And cities or large towns are generally the best place. They have the infrastructure (we don't even have a decent bus service in our village, let alone access to trains. The GP surgery is at breaking point. The roads are already clogged with traffic).

So - if we want more houses, first of all change the law! Don't blame this so-called cottage industry of retired people. End of rant!!

 

[Weststander]

I probably qualify as one of those retired folk, "sitting pretty" (albeit I spend at least 40 hours a week on voluntary stuff, so I don't have huge amounts of spare time). For my sins, I'm a Parish Councillor in our village, and have had to teach myself a lot about planning law over the past 5 years, simply because our village is at risk of being swamped by new housing. As a Parish Council we have opposed three major housing developments in recent years. We're not the decision-maker at the end of the day (in our case, it's Somerset Council). But what we say DOES have some relevance, provided it makes sense from a planning law perspective. No matter how "switched on" we might be, at the end of the day any decision taken by the planning authority will be taken on the basis of the law. And in reality Parish Councils (and even large unitary authorities) simply don't have the resources to spend on fancy lawyers, unlike housing developers. In our village, all our work to oppose housing developments is undertaken by unpaid parish councillors who are definitely NOT planning experts. A few years ago I spoke at an appeal where the developer was trying to build 29 houses in the grounds of a Grade 2* listed building, abutting the conservation area, opposite our village school. It was a ridiculously inappropriate place for new houses. They had a team of planning experts (including a barrister) to present their case. For the local community, it was just me! An unpaid volunteer whose only "expertise" was the result of many hours of reading about planning law. And this is happening everywhere! So called nimby-ism is generally just an effort to uphold the law, and prevent complete housing anarchy in the countryside, with zero resources (compared to large developers with very deep pockets). In the case I just referred to, the developrs appeal was defeated - simply because their proposals were not in accordance with planning law.

To be clear, I don't oppose more house-building....but it has to be in the right place. And cities or large towns are generally the best place. They have the infrastructure (we don't even have a decent bus service in our village, let alone access to trains. The GP surgery is at breaking point. The roads are already clogged with traffic).

So - if we want more houses, first of all change the law! Don't blame this so-called cottage industry of retired people. End of rant!!

Planning committees (elected folk with a view) do vote applications down, against the assessment of the law by planning officers. I’ve literally seen this with BHCC, Ringmer, aired live on a stream. At which point developers / landowners spend on an appeal.

Filling in the bits by railway lines and old factories/offices has been happening apace for 10 plus years. The 9m increase and growing 660k a year cannot be met by that. MK, Crawley, Hatfield, Wokingham took countryside, as did the vast expansion of Burgess Hill and Eastbourne. Now residents with a freehold, substantial equity and a garden in these places say no more.

 

[Kinky Gerbil]

The standard article is written by a gb news reporter. He mentions the report mentioning Rochdale missing the organised group report mentioning Rochdale 22 times..he is being selective

Maggie Oliver mentions 'that part of the inquiry'. It would be better to discuss the whole 7 years and 400 days of evidence

I have no issue with a new public inquiry of there is new evidence not presented/considered previously that details scenarios, methods or failings not already identified and had recommendations made.

Also if it helps convict more people and remove those who didn't address this or do their jobs correctly from their roles.

But inquiries take time, cost money, can cause more pain for the victims and they risk delaying the recommendations already made.

You seem to be in the mindset that you can not bring in the recommendations made and also investigate further into the failings?

The request from Oldham was done so after the victims asked for it to be looked into

There is more to be done still.

In July last year the council voted to ask the government to conduct an inquiry into non-recent child sexual exploitation in Oldham or, should the government turn down that request, as previous governments already had, to conduct our own further independent inquiry.

We did this at the request of local survivors who felt that what our previous review into social care practice lacked was an opportunity for them to have their voices heard, their individual experiences looked at.#

Oldham council leader: 'Grooming gang survivors are the only voices that matter' - LabourList

The ‘grooming gangs’ scandal is one of the darkest moments in Britain’s recent history. In 2022 a national…

labourlist.org

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

You seem to be in the mindset that you can not bring in the recommendations made and also investigate further into the failings?

The request from Oldham was done so after the victims asked for it to be looked into

There is more to be done still.

In July last year the council voted to ask the government to conduct an inquiry into non-recent child sexual exploitation in Oldham or, should the government turn down that request, as previous governments already had, to conduct our own further independent inquiry.

We did this at the request of local survivors who felt that what our previous review into social care practice lacked was an opportunity for them to have their voices heard, their individual experiences looked at.#

Oldham council leader: 'Grooming gang survivors are the only voices that matter' - LabourList

The ‘grooming gangs’ scandal is one of the darkest moments in Britain’s recent history. In 2022 a national…

labourlist.org

My understanding was that Badenough opposed Labour's new legislation to respond to the recommendations of the inquiry and instead argued for a new inquiry.

This may have wrong-footed labour into giving the impression they opposed a new inquiry. What they were trying to say was that it was wrong for Badenough to opposed Labour's bill on the spurious grounds that we shouldn't do anything until there had been another inquiry.

Starmer came across as quite angry about this. Understandably so. The tories created the last inquiry then ignored the findings. The absolute cheek of Badenough, attempting to prevent any new laws and blaming Labour for not dealing with a problem they have sat on for 15 years is possibly the worst bit of political shitehousery I ever remember. Actually facilitating child abuse in the process.

 

[Kinky Gerbil]

My understanding was that Badenough opposed Labour's new legislation to respond to the recommendations of the inquiry and instead argued for a new inquiry.

This may have wrong-footed labour into giving the impression they opposed a new inquiry. What they were trying to say was that it was wrong for Badenough to opposed Labour's bill on the spurious grounds that we shouldn't do anything until there had been another inquiry.

Starmer came across as quite angry about this. Understandably so. The tories created the last inquiry then ignored the findings. The absolute cheek of Badenough, attempting to prevent any new laws and blaming Labour for not dealing with a problem they have sat on for 15 years is possibly the worst bit of political shitehousery I ever remember. Actually facilitating child abuse in the process.

Tories have been complete ****s over this, not a shock, I don't know why this is sitting in the Labour thread tbh

 

[LamieRobertson]

Tories have been complete ****s over this, not a shock, I don't know why this is sitting in the Labour thread tbh

It’s a ‘deflective’ tactic ..Tories worse…makes Labour look good

 

[e77]

Labour have a massive communication problem but if you look at what Starmer has done since getting the Labour Party leadership, he gets the heavy lifting done early. In the meantime the Conservatives under Badenoch only seem capable of jumping on whatever bandwagon Elon Musk brings up on X and still can't get over the fact they had 14 years to do most of the things they are now compiaining Labour haven't done in six months.

Of course the bigger question that no one seems to be asking is if anyone can sort it out.