Conservative housing plans fall flat
Too few councils have plans to meet the unprecedented housing demand, the government will say. [Image: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images].
It seems that, having screwed all they can get out of us with the ‘right to buy’ initiative of the 1980s onwards, the Tories now intend to focus on making the rental market as nightmarish as possible.
So councils will be told to build many thousands more dwellings, in the form of faceless high-rise blocks, with no funding provided for the purpose.
Meanwhile, the Tories would like to build many thousands more houses – to buy – on Green Belt land. The prices of these houses would remain sky-high, of course.
Plus, as this Twitter user says:
No land tax, rent controls, social housing or plan for rough sleeping, it's useless. As usual, Tories represent landlords #housingwhitepaper https://t.co/qLiDtNFcxv
— Tweets by Sue (@marthasydenham) February 7, 2017
Councils will be ordered to build thousands more homes, with an emphasis on high-rise blocks and city-centre developments, as part of the government’s housing strategy.
New centralised standards will be set for local councils to project their future housing needs, with the expectation that the plans will be reviewed every five years. The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) did not respond to requests for information on how cash-strapped councils would finance the projections to meet the new standards.
Introducing the housing white paper to be released on Tuesday, the communities secretary, Sajid Javid, confirmed the government’s key shift away from primarily trying to help people buy homes, saying he accepted many were able only to rent.
Source: Councils to be told to build thousands more new homes | Society | The Guardian
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High rise blocks were a bad idea even in their day. Awful to look at and awful to live in, bad in terms of amenity, social interaction, energy conservation. Those proposing the measure should be made to go and live in one themselves and see how they get on.
Tower blocks built on the cheap? Ronan Point?
I totally agree with you. The Conservatives will have planned this deliberately as they don’t believe ordinary people – slaves in their eyes – deserve anywhere decent to live. In fact, from their recent behaviour, they don’t seem to believe people need anywhere to live, not even the streets.
Yup. Just like stacked chicken cages. It’s all the Tories think the underlings deserve.
Watch this space I see our local Councils want to shut down the parks and playgrounds and public spaces in the name of preserving their own top heavy overpaid staff. So what happens when parks and gardens become rundown and knackered the councils see privatisation or most likely, like the NHS, an opportunity to flog it all off probably for building on or in the case of current greedy builders an opportunity to cash pile valuable land .