Building in the UK: Why It Feels Like Mission Impossible?
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- čas přidán 21. 04. 2024
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In the #UK, trying to build anything new automatically becomes a huge headache. Most projects end up being abandoned or sit for years waiting for the green light. And, of course, that has serious economic and social consequences. In this video we tell you about one of the major causes that are punishing the British #economy.
British attitude is anything more than 50 years old needs to be preserved and protected forever. Soon every building in London will be Grade 1 or 2 listed.
Because ‘we used to be an empire’. Anything to cling on to the nostalgia.
99% of what gets built in Britain is total dogshit, both aesthetically and in terms of quality. It’s totally dominated by a few massive companies (Taylor Wimpey, Persimon, Baratt) that have no interest in architecture, urban planning, or what it’s actually like to live in or near one of these developments, so it’s no wonder people don’t want this crap built near them. Empower architects and smaller developers to build better stuff (of which there are numerous examples), and there’d be less resistance IMO.
In portugal 80% of the housing building and investors, are mebers of the 2 main parties, so they control scarcity, controling the political local power, to be able to profit more, controling how much and who can build new homes, and both sides blame the other side.
I wisch i could get a shitty low quality house in the netherlands. The problem is that people in politics and administrations levels from local to european are living in Nice houses themselves and say to younger generations f#@k you because of mission gasses from building. Of we can loose a million cows maybe we can build blabla. But people need a home. But sending riversand for concrete to china to build an extra 100 million homes that will never be inhabited that is no problem
I'm a engineer in Finland whose speciality is fixing weld flaws and construction flaws via welded structures. The quality issue is so bad, that I'm trying move to another industry. And housing construction is exploding atm. Low quality shite apartments (mostly 21 m2 studios for rental by investors) meant to maximise rental income, turns out there is not endless demand for these. Especially with the absurdly high rents they are demanding to cover their leveraged loans.
Same in Belgium.
There's also very close ties beteween politics and the construction sector. For large companies rules don't always apply. It's a extremely corrupt.
a big part of this is the local control/input. Building an aesthetically pleasing structure requires a single unified vision (ie putting one person in charge and telling ppl with suggestions to shove it) not to mention many iconic beloved structures were initially hated.
You want better buildings make it easier to tear down the bad ones and replace them with denser units.
The issue boils down to, as with many other issues, that most active voters are older citizens with property, who are incentivised to prevent the construction of new property at all costs. Those without property are usually younger and vote much less, resulting in the government having no incentive to build new properties, as that would only anger people with properties who are actually bothered to vote. Simply, if younger generations do not become more active in local and national politics, NOTHING WILL CHANGE.
Why is older population bothered by new builds? Cause then their properties would get less money for it? Thanks for explaining
The problem is that there are far more people over 60 (24.4%) than under 25 (29.1% but the majority of under 25's are under 18 so can't vote)
Wow, you've just described Spain.
Maybe instead of blaming old people we can stop importing 500000 people a year!
@@crow22zero I think so. At least in Spain, many elderly people bought real estate assets back in the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties at reasonable prices, before the 2000-2008 housing bubble that increased the price of real estate by some 300 %. Those elderly people own two or three apartments, maybe a commercial office or two, and the less offer there is, the more their real estate assets are worth. They've been voting for the same political parties for some forty years. Of course, there are millions of elderly people who only own one home or even rent the place where they live. Not the case of my landlady...
My friend who had promised his dad that he would build a house on a plot of land he left him in the 80's that had planning permission nearly went to the wall with the County Council refusing to allow him to connect water, gas, electric etc.. After many solicitors fee's and back and forth in court he won his case but it nearly bankrupted him
Sounds about right!👌🏻
As a UK bricklayer, I can tell you exactly what the issues are and they can be broken down to 3 secs:
1. Profit. Building conglomerates are aiming for 30-45% of price as a baseline. Site managers are pushing beyond regulation to secure their unnecessary top down target bonuses.
2. Unsustainable building practices. For example. The site I'm currently on has 95 houses on it. Every house has a chimney, now you see these chimneys are solid from the ground up and are literally fully aesthetic, they aren't even retro fitable. Add that to unnecessary decorative bs like chamfered plinth bricks. They hold no benefit whatsoever and cost around £11 per brick.
3. Red tape. Too many country bumkins are refusing to see their fields turn into houses as if they only have a right to live there, compile that with a 750000 net migration last year and you will have nothing constructed.
Then take into account the unjustified and almost unreachable regulations from the NHBC as well and you have a concoction of failure.
UK construction is an embarrassment at the moment and it's purely because of walking clipboards who try to stand out instead of just following the pale.
No parties plan to change any red tape that actually gets us building faster so arguing along party lines will change nothing whatsoever.
@Binzdogger, very interesting! Specially point 1, I have my doubts, and I am glad you are confirming it! Funny no one ever mentions it...
@@pensarfeo we have a scoring system by the NHBC that goes from 1 to 6. 1 to 3 is a fail. 4-6 is a pass. More 6s a site manager can show his investors, the bigger his bonus gets, we've been fighting with one who's forcing us to redo work scores at 5s so he can get a 6 on his sheet, time is money and that money goes on the building price tag at the end, plus the extra cost of his bonuses.
@@BinzdoggerSorry - that makes no sense. How can they have a bonus for low costs if you can just put the price up at the end?
Agreed with you on 2 of these three points. I just can't imagine anything worse then a country full of new builds house sites and no countryside. The answer isn't new build plots, it's high density housing in cities, with great infrastructure and innovative green spaces / eco elements.
It's not a new problem. New builds are so attractive because they are insulated and you don't need to spend a fortunate on gas in winter. It's crazy how badly insulated British houses are...
3:06 The population hasn't "grown steadily", a 10 million increase is absolutely huge in 20 years, before that it was about 2 million per two decades.
One problem in the south East is that we dont build very much high density housing in useful locations and instead like to chuck loads of expansive low density developments out into the countryside away from larger towns/cities and public transport stops.
Greenbelting (often done unofficially) is part of the problem, its actually more harmful to the environment to build further out from a city than right next to it, but there are more people living on the outskirts of cities to make objections than there are in the countryside.
High density housing solves some problems but creates others.
High density works better with rental property than with owner occupier property because of the common amenities in tall buildings that cannot be owned by the occupiers and so remain a long term cost to the owners. This runs contrary to the modern disdain to leasehold properties in that owners prefer to have outright ownership.
Then you also have the Grenfell Tower fire effect, where people are more concerned for their safety in high rise towers.
Public transport can be a problem, but it becomes a greater problem in the narrow streets of old town centres than in the wider streets of new town builds. The new towns were largely very succesful, as far as they went; and in many ways were far better for everyone than simply trying to increase population densities in ever more overcrowded city centres, New towns are an alternative to either green belt expansion or building up ever higher in old city centres that were never originally designed for modern high density living.
@@Hfil66 There's a good compromise on that, a very British one: Town houses. Streets full of terraces housing, built narrow but tall. Then the owner gets the much-desired security of a freehold, and it still achieves a decent population density.
@@vylbird8014 Most houses are two storey, with bungalows tending to be limited to people with mobility issues. There are already some three storey private homes, but they are about as rare as bungalows, so the two about cancel each other out.
Making more houses three storey would at most only increase housing density by 50% (possibly creating more problems for people with mobility issues, and generally being less child friendly for young children who may not yet be able to deal easily with stairs).
You can maybe save a bit more space by moving from typical two storey semi-detached to all terraced housing (and terraced housing also being typically more fuel efficient), but none of this is going to make massive differences.
Reducing garden sizes (which is a modern trend anyway) will also increase density a little.
@@Hfil6650% is an enormous improvement 😂
My town has been continously building houses since WW2....
Which town
Asking for a friend
I've been a builder over 40 years they are building more homes now than they ever have the real problem is investors are buying these homes pricing our children out of ever being able to buy a house 😎👍
@@kevinhayes7830 Well thats something blindingly obvious the government needs to stop
@@kevinhayes7830 I am on the side that prefers older housing, I'm 31 & prefer houses built before I was born
I think a large part of the problem is that councils only seem interested in taking short cuts to meet quotas. There's no construction because the only way you can get permission to build is to be rich enough to build 300 houses on a wildflower meadow.
For example: my mother has a triple fronted ugly concrete garage. She wants to replace it with an annexe that she could rent out. First it was declined for being too similar to the buildings around it and it might distort the perception of history. The second planned was declined for not being in keeping enough. The third plan was declined because they would have to cut down trees. They didn't have to cut any trees down. The council had obviously declined without even reading the application.
Next door, they can't help Barretts homes enough to dump a souless housing estate of identical houses on a beautiful bit of farmland.
So, I'm going to save Britain. Increase the red tape for a company wanting to build more than 50 houses in one location. SLASH it for people wanting to build their own houses. Give incentives to banks to buy to offer mortgages to people wanting to buy land and build a home. Rather than one firm employing a small handful of subpar builders we now have thousands of smaller firms competing, higher employment and more variety of architecture.
This doesn't help the cities but more people will want to leave the cities as working remotely becomes more popular. This will help encourage them which also brings down the demand and therefore prices of urban housing.
Your solution has one glaring downside. It solves the problem. Meaning the developer big shots, also known as party donors, lose their privileged position and the nimby voters see less rise in their property values.
Basingstoke has been building new estates continuously for the last 15 years. But they haven't improved the amenities and road infrastructure for them. There are several estates with absolutely no local shops.
Should please the 15 minute city paranoid.
It is not only U.K. Canada is facing this problem as well .This is Global problem ! - We are living in Unstable Times ; politically ,economically etc.
Yeah, seems like it. I feel fortunate because last year I was able to buy a nice 3 bedroom home in North Carolina from 3 years working as a restaurant manager.
@@CorbinCCraigToday many young working people In Canada have a hard time to buy a home😞 . I'm 69 my generation did not know this problem .
Canada has the same problem....over regulations with endless hurdles multiplied by hordes of nimbys compounded by decades of the industry abandoning many types of projects to avoid low profit endeavors.
Zoning laws, low level corruption ( or lobbying if you want )in municipalities, government afraid of bad press by environmental issues....we really really really did everything we could to culminate.
What they really need are a lot more sewage treatment plants .
Yes, and in addition to a number of other things such as more or bigger reservoirs!
It's called over regulation and environmental protections that make it too costly and time consuming to build.
If permits and inspections get dragged out for months or years. Why would anyone think it wouldn't cause a problem in building new homes and buildings?
Anytime you let the government over regulate an industry, it chokes that industry from competitiveness.
It’d be nice if enough people finally agreed on this very obvious cause and all the costs it actually inflicts on society so that way we can finally figure out the best way to peel it back enough to allow the industry to flourish with all the demand out there without going to far and just creating a different issue.
Unfortunately this involves politics so even if this issue is addressed it’s just going to be solved by creating an issue that is as bad or worse then the current 1.
Silly environmentalists. concerned about the wellbeing of the planet. pfft. they act like it's the only planet we have
I've been a property developer for 20 years now.
This was an excellent video and very accurate to the problems we face.
The problem is and always has been the local authorities.
Since PD rights were established and their powers removed, building work has flourished, if those PD rights are extended to home building then I can only assume the same result will be produced. This has alot to do with speed and certainty that a house will be approved and built.
Secondly, the planning departments are adversarial to the developer. Thirdly they are extremely inefficient. If they reformed it and spread their workload out to private town and country planners (just like the current set up with building regulations for example) they would get through applications faster and in turn more homes would be built.
A lot of the problem is the old Estate Agents adage "Location, location, location" there are whole towns and cities with streets of empty buildings as everyone wants to live in the South East because of the availability of well paying jobs. We don't need to wreck the countryside by building over it we need the Government to do more to encourage companies to set up in these other places, people need to live in areas where there are jobs and maybe more importantly careers. And yes the building industry and the regulations need looking at but honestly having worked at a few so called luxury developments the regulations need tightening as the build quality takes a nose dive of a cliff fairly quickly.
A high-speed train service would actually go a long way to balancing that out. But we don't get that any more, because the incompetents in government can't even manage to build a rail line.
Construction companies' battles with the planning system dont seem to be a problem round where i live. The council simply ignore local residents or any problems with the plan and build on our shrinking green space round here. Then they act all surprised when houses aren't built properly or the town floods.
Only problem is we are building more sprawl rather than building flats or taller terraced housing (three floors rather than two) so we are getting less people per square footage than we could be.
Australia has this exact problem too.
The root of the issue is current owners lobbying against any change that could depreciate their houses
I don’t even know where to start. There is one thing that I do know and I’ll be honest about it, and let you make your own conclusion. I moved to a nice village in the country from a postwar new town, I don’t worry about congestion, being attacked, being burgled, I speak to my neighbours and get involved in community events.
Bar the neighbours bit I didn’t get involved and had to deal with all the crap that comes with living in a town. That town can’t really develop anymore, so they are now going upwards with flats everywhere.
They want to build new homes and green belt land is in their sights, this would be a massive problem as there would be no infrastructure to support all these people, of which X amount will be social housing. Green belt land needs to be protected or otherwise we just turn into a concrete jungle.
We are a small island, people are living longer, people have more kids than they can afford and we have been too lax on immigration. All of these issues are what is causing the housing crises.
I won’t start on the shoddy build quality of new builds and the greedy developers.
UK doesn’t want to recognize that the tides have turned and need to modernize.
That's strange.
We have exactly the same problems here in Germany.
The Landed Gentry should have their estates seized by the King, and the House of Lords vacated.
I live in a Labour controlled council. I tried for years to knock down a horrible exlocal authority house in London and build 3 flats. In the end I gave up. I bought my house in 1996 it is now worth 10 times what I paid for it.
There four main issues 1) are older Nimbys trying to block ALL housing development often backed up by their local MP even if he/she is part of the government claiming to try and excelerate new housing. So the location can always be somewhere else, as they always spout we are not anti development but not in this particular location i.e. their neighbourhood. Local Planning authorities who seem to be able to justify delay by constantly coming up with new environmental or other surveys to then allow permission ala the footbridge example. Then exercated by a lack of resource to process it all hence again the delay. 3) It is the capacity to deliver in terms of workforce and frankly how hard they actually work when they are there rather than stare at their phones when they are onsite. 4) The amount of legal and illegal migration in the last 25 years to what is a very small island, 10+ million is frankly ridiculous, when you compare it to the previous 25 years. There are people from Australia and Canada commenting on here, but even if they received similiar migration numbers they still have the advantage of far more space with lower population numbers.There are no easy answers it is negative report but to be fair to the country it has not stopped building and when consider the above factors (which are not all the issues) it is a wonder we have built anything at all.
I live in NZ and our biggest problem is beurocracy. Our new government has created a minister for regulation which is a role designed to cut through all the red tape. Hopefully we see some improvements
All the above equals a great part of the reasons for the UK Vanlife movement
Ah, Government bureaucracy and permitting. Always the problem.
British construction companies who build new builds with the bare minimum regulations to save costs for their companies while making a profit when they sell their developments, knowing they’re built like shite should face penalties and be forced to build decent homes or not allowed at all to build anything. At least Poundbury, Dorchester and Nansledan, Newquay show what can be done in this country when new builds and towns are planned right from the beginning, building quality homes for ordinary people. We have some of the best engineers in this country which is why so many foreign students come here to study engineering in our world renowned universities, but something is gravely wrong why excessive bureaucracy and a government who either lacks vision or has no idea cannot put things right.
What is not said is that the construction standards are extremely low. Profit is built, not houses. How is possible a car to have 4 year guarantee and a house just 2 ?! I have every day shoes who last longer !
I learned about British building rules watching clarksons farm.
No doubt objective and balanced reporting..
They don’t want to build for the prices to stay high. 😊
Here in the North-West, most of our green belt land is being built on, thousands of homes for private sale are going to be built on Elton Resovour, the former East Lancs Paper Mill site and elsewhere which does nothing for those who can not afford a home or pay the high rents that private landlords are charging, and Bury Council are passing planing permission for homes of multiple occupation like there was no tomorrow with little if any consideration where the schools hospitals, doctors, nurses, public transport, and just about everything else that is already at breaking point is going to come from.
There are lots of empty buildings in the North-West and the UK that could be converted by councils with government grants for those on the housing waiting list, which is where the greatest need is and where the infrastructure is already in place.
This government has failed to recruit enough doctors, teachers, dentists, police officers, build schools et al. for a rapidly rising population, preferring to give petty tax-cuts to those that do not need it for the most part and vowing to cut the benefit budget even further while housing and funding illegal immigrants who, for the most part, have never been vetted, and we have no idea what crimes they have committed in their own country or where their real loyalties lie, many of them could easily be the enemy within and none of them have ever done anything for this country or paid a single penny into the UK and all of them have passed through at least one safe country.
And maybe you want to live in a concrete jungle, but I do not nor do many others, there are enough empty buildings of all kinds that can be turned into homes for those who can not afford to buy a home and would not lead to any unemployment in the building trade.
The building approval answer stamps in the UK are “NO”
Having smaller city foot print is good, just need to demolishe old single houses and build high rises as they are more efficient and greener.
Politicians, like their voters, will never choose to do the hard thing to prevent or reverse a problem. They only consent to fix things once they hit rock bottom, and the pain of fixing it is a lateral move from the current disaster.
most MP's have 2nd, 3rd, 4th homes that they rent out... they keep it all on a knife edge to maximise their own earnings. We need to Reform our entire bent, bureaucratic system
Sounds like a win win for the banks
I hear Sir Humphrey.
Right to Buy should've been implemented in its original format, seizure of all Council and Association homes, and flats and giving them to the then tenants
It's very simple over regulations have stalled construction cut the regulations and get out of the way and the market will do its thing
Sounds good, until you look at the regulations and see that most of them were passed for a reason.
You need to call Johnny Quid's stepfather
Why money is an artificial limitation.
I am a UK resident, the 2 issues we have, 1) lack of land, 2)NIMBY’ism!!
No , there is enough land
I agree we need to build more but you've got to bare in mind the UK only has 0.8acres per person when compared to our counterparts like France- 2.7acres per person or Germany at 1.1.
We have 1 dwelling per 2.9 people while France have 2.2 and Germany 1.9.
If we wanted the same ratio of housing per person as France we'd need 6 million more homes and to match Germany about 9million. We have 24.9million so far so we'd need maybe 25% more than we already have on the little land we actually have.
yeah don't bother. the left whining about tories and housing won't acknowledge the impact that population increase *cough immigration cough* has on housing demand.
Every time I hear of the growing poverty, irrelevance, and decay of Britain I render praise into God for making me live in such blessed times. It is divine justice.
Crown land, mean while the crown 👑 is in a grave. Complaining to Charles and William will work.👍🏿
Burkshar, London??? Its Bark-sheer & isnt in London
Tax the land not what is on it and the housing problem might be heading for resolution.
Some lessons needed here for pronouncing Berkshire, schedule, millstone, and probably others I missed.
& That Berkshire is a county & not in London & unlike Kent & Essex (Technically), no part of it is
Not enough young people coming into the industry
Thames Water have told builders in Sussex that they don't have the capacity to supply water to anymore homes.
Time to take the water industry back into state ownership.
I've been in construction for over 40 years they are building more homes than ever before the problem is property investors buying said homes time to tax the property investors out house are for homes not investment the investors are pricing our children out of ever being able to buy a house until this is stopped the problem will continue the USA has stopped investors having homes on their investment portfolio they have two years to sell up time britian did the same 🤬
Outside of London I’d question that the UK is a developed nation.
I live outside London and can say your bollocks comment does not add anything to the debate.
It's mass immigration, there were very little housing issues prior to 2004 in terms of availability and prices for renting and buying.
Not really. Taking immigration into account, the UK's population growth rate is less than one percent. There are many countries with higher growth rates - most countries, actually - who don't have such a housing problem.
It is easy for you to say that, but you need to give direct comparisons that have the same population increases at the same rate in the last 25 years and have the same land mass availability? As there people like you who will always deny immigration numbers and speed are not a huge factor in the housing and issues on public services However these issues were nowhere near as prevalent in the preceding 25 years when we even had a higher birthrate as a country.
50% of London's Social Housing is occupied by Foreigners, as is 20% of England's. England alone is nearly as dense as India or Bangladesh. Immigration doesn't help(should have a 10yr moratorium), and a ban on foreign or corporate ownership of single family homes. Implement:
Property Value Tax:
1st-2nd Properties 0%
3rd Property 50%
4th Property 100%
5th Property 150%
6th Property 200%
7th Property 250%
And so forth...
We've been trying our hardest to make Britain too shit to live in but still they keep coming, if people insist on importing humans you'd better be fine with your housing estate getting bigger and local environments getting paved over.
Its simple, as a nation we aren’t smart anymore.
That may apply to you but clearly you do not have a clue what your talking about and have not looked into the factors in the report or read the pertinent comments.
Georgism would solve a lot of the UK’s problems. Tax based on land value and all the dominoes will fall.
So tldr it's bureaucracy, nimbyism and environmentalist, like everywhere else.
Don't forget the effects that immigration has played in the housing crisis.
This issue happens in all western world countries. Poland has a similar issue. It takes years to get a permit.
NIMBYs and entrenched aristocracy.
Same issue amongst the developed Commonwealth. Is it really deserving to be placed in the too hard basket and is mass immigration helping via bludgers in governance policies from boomer age deeming it necessary via global malarkey. Speakers Corner is the last bastion of freedom of speech in England and it has become toxic due to whom ?
London, more like London't
"Public Consultations!? Have you ever attended one? It is a tick-box exercise. The locals are invited and can make their comments (usually including good suggestions since they understand the local situation). The next step is, "Peasants, you had your say; we ticked the box. Now get your smelly bodies out of here, and we will do exactly what the local government intended to do in the first place." Public Consultations are soul-destroying, Soviet-style pretend democracy exercises designed to communicate to local communities that their opinions do not matter.
In England, Berkshire is pronounced "BARKshire". Not my choice, but that's what it is.
There's so many names in the UK where the only way to know the pronunciation.... is to know the pronunciation 🙃
Who can afford to do it in the UK right now 😂
Burkshire 😂
It was how it was spelled 🤷
In portugal 80% of the housing building and investors, are mebers of the 2 main parties, so they control scarcity, controling the political local power, to be able to profit more, controling how much and who can build new homes, and both sides blame the other side.
If the regulation is shaped to ruin the market process, then you will have a ruined market.
Lazy islanders.
Broken economy 😂
So many immigrants and they are still unable to build?
londoner =muslim
Totally relax planning. None of this no building on the countryside. Only 7.7% of the UK is settled. Give people the freedom to build where they want to.
Then introduce Land Value Tax..
The
Second
"london got nearly decimated" o rly? you should look at the other guy....
i mean seriously? you could say that about dresden or some other german cities, but certainly not about london
1st
Another video about the housing crisis and how the government sucks yet you won't acknowledge the big fat elephant in the room: Ten of millions of economic migrants are causing the overcrowding and exacerbating every other issue
They will never ever admit this is a problem
Erm... your figures come directly from a certain wardrobe.
It's a double-edged sword as without the economic migrants there is a labour shortage in the construction industry.
@@julienb.9526 no- there is a big fat bloated government problem that makes everything 10x more expensive than it should be- meaning locals can't afford to have the kids required to sustain their nation. These immigrants are a band-aid to a much larger problem and you will be replaced in the process
Blaming migrants for everything is popular, but the numbers just don't add up to support it. it's not tens of millions of economic migrants. The total population of migrants in the UK of every type - anyone not born in the UK - is ten million, but that's an accumulation from decades of immigration. Giving plenty of time to construct homes. And the UK's net population growth, including immigration, is less than one one percent per year.
The Daily Mail loves to run stories showing over-filled dingeys of suspicious foreigners and talking about how they are invading the country, but it's an exaggeration. In real numbers there just aren't that many. The percentage of the UK population who migrated is less than that in Spain, Germany, any of the Scandinavian countries, and *far* less than Canada or Australia: 14% vs 21% and 30% respectively.