| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Brentford to Grow by MORE than Fifty Percent? | |
| Posted by: | Michael Brandt | |
| Date/Time: | 11/04/13 00:01:00 |
| Funnily enough Adam, I though I would disagree with your entry, but actually it does inform. In the main I find myself largely agreeing with you. To a point. It is the national and GLA policies that are the root problem. They have been wrong since John Prescott issued edicts that met a political ideology but did not make things better. My issue is that councillors and councils need to put their differences aside and lobby hard to get things changed. I'm all for minimising car use and going for public transport but this town lost it's 15 min service into Waterloo which was the only fast route in and now have three slow rail options taking anything from 40 mins to an hour. My boss gets into town from Amersham in less than half the time it now takes me. He benefits from lower council tax, better public services, no parking problems and so on and yet does not contribute to London's GLA costs. But a car is still vital for so many especially as so many now have to work non standard hours. A car parked is not doing any harm and keeping them stored and out of the way is not exactly difficult except someone wants to ensure it has a fiscal value. In a car free development, residents still have cars, they just park them in someone else's neighbourhood. That makes it all a joke. There seems to be an assumption that affordable housing means social housing or council housing. It doesn't. Nor does it mean housing for nutcases, thugs or serious problem families. Most Londoners are earning less than half of the minimum now require to buy a 1 bed flat. So it equates that most Londoners are in need of affordable housing. But it has become synonymous with poor quality. Almost if it's sour grapes from developers. Most of the housing we live in around here is (or was) what was built as affordable housing for ordinary income people. Large numbers of terraced housing which you could not give away 40 years ago was affordable even 12 years ago and the typical semi-detached which is found all over the western suburbs are nothing special but now the most sought after and in demand homes. Yet all that seems to be getting built are flats priced way beyond the means of ordinary income people. Much is said about the possible increase of the local populus rising by 70% with no additional facilities to cope with that. But if what has already happened is anything to go by it will be a minimal increase. So few people actually live full time in the new developments that it like a ghost town in places. None of this can be right. Building unaffordable homes for investors, the wrong kind of stock, Problem creating planning rules and so on. The plethora of skyscrapers recently approved highlights something is really wrong. Very few contain anything like affordable accommodation and the service charges exceed what an average income couple could afford. We just looked into shared ownership for my daughter. It worked out even more expensive than a straightforward mortgage on a freehold property. Either way on a good salary, she has no chance of ever getting her own flat. So yes, I still think a big broom is needed but it probably would be better aimed at the national policy and that needs to be powered by the local authorities and that does not seem to be forthcoming. |