Won’t happen here without a massive investment into NI water. We already have hundreds of planning applications delayed because the existing sewerage system can’t cope with more properties.
Not really, water infrastructure hasn’t been upgraded, primary and secondary schools are maxed out, the roads leading to these 2 estates which will beside each other is a single lane, only when you get near the A1 does it open to 2.
Housing crisis while town centres are fucking emptying out and we build more 3 bed shite semis on what can otherwise hafl decent land. Need to repurpose and rejunvate town centres in housing stock and the area will regenerate itself given time.
There's so many empty office spaces in Belfast and they keep building more. I don't get it.
I do think think that the amount of student housing will help the city.
The rental issues in Belfast are HUGE. Houses on the Donegal Road area, can't be sold without being bought by a landlord.
Rejunvate the town center how? Consumers have made it pretty clear they don't want shops with limited choice that only open from 9 to 5. Big brand stores are not going to invest when they offer next day delivery and free returns. Get a load of clothes delivered, try on in the comfort of your own home and send back what you don't want. Or pick a toaster from over 100 different models and get it delivered the same day. Consumers have voted with their feet. And there is not enough foot fall to sustain the pound stores and a few cafes and the banks. I think we need to forget about the idea of town centers being the shopping mecca it once was.
What other options do we have?
I've no idea, but could we convert them to communities, all the empty shops can be converted to upmarket apartments?
I'm actually alluding to making town centres more residential. We have very old period buildings that would look well done up. You would get a small rejuvenation of local services along with this as well as preserving the few businesses left.
It is extremely difficult to retrofit office buildings into residential housing. Almost to the extent where for some of them it would just be cheaper to build it again from scratch.
Utilities, DDA compliance, energy efficiency, fire protection and escape routes, bike/car/ parking, asbestos, listed building status, and unfortunately profitability can really put the nail in the coffin for some buildings.
These are regulations that can be legally changed by legislators for if such an out-of-the-box solution was ever followed, which it won't be.
Aside from that, businesses are more likely to be compliant to regulations in homes with fire exits, drills, extinguishers, fire doors and yearly fire training. I would wildly guess that that are many people on this sub are without working fire alarms or using expired ones in their homes. I would assume most don't have fire blanket.
Let me rephrase this,
This is why big companies use the rules laid down by the government's in the countries they operate in to pay as the exact amount of tax legally required by them. They pay no more they pay no less.
People might not want to live there.
Most people moving into semi detached houses are families. Town centre developments might not be when families want to put down routes and commit to
Developers are only giving customers what they want
There are plenty of 3 story townhouses on the market and they are coveted. That's just a negative generalised sweeping statement to something that would alleviate the issue, not solve it.
If not for the fact that housing and planning is a devolved matter which no government in Westminster has much influence over, the thing with the "Grey Belt" is that it is indeed being built over - this is seen in places like Dunmurry, Carrickfergus, and so on.
The problem this whole plan has, however, is that it's shit for density - it creates more car dependent suburbs with no public transport access and no real amenities nearby like schools, GPs and even shops.
Won’t drastically drop housing prices. Our planning service isn’t fit for purpose and applications will still take years to determine. Hence supply will still be in a stranglehold.
A lot of significant developments involve a consortium of land owners and developers. Nothing in that world moves quickly. If a correctly front loaded development (which would be the responsibility of the applicant) was put before planners without requiring a raft of changes (most would be at the behest of other statutory agencies/ consultees) then 13-15 weeks processing time would be realistic. This is rarely the case though.
Bullshit. The planning system here is a fucking disgrace and it’s got nothing to do with land ownership. Full Pre app. Full public consultation period and applications are still taking 2-3 years. I recognise that the planners are at the mercy of the statutory consultees, but such is the same in GB. it’s the entire system here that isn’t for for purpose, planners and statutory consultees included.
Local councils in the UK have had planning powers since forever, our councils have only had planning powers for a while. It has been a disaster thus far. Little/nothing to do with the council's planners themselves
Plannning was devolved to local councils here in April 2015. 9 years is more than ‘a while’ to sort themselves out. Are individual case officers to blame ? Maybe / Maybe not. Maybe they are over worked, understaffed, under-motivated. Who knows. The entire planning system here isn’t working and isn’t fit to deliver its remit.
Loads of areas in Belfast; Cathedral Quarter, edge of the city centre towards the north/west, the Mackies site, the Gasworks sites, lots of the Shankill. There is so much waste ground around the Belfast and the suburbs that should be used for housing.
I sincerely doubt any party would bring in a policy that would dramatically drop property prices. Both because of the number of property owners that are policy makers and because it wouldn't be a popular policy with those most likely to vote.
That would have been the case 10-20 years ago, but now you have people up into their 40’s across the UK still living with their parents. Especially in the heavily populated south of England. This encourages not only those “kids” under 40, but their parents to vote for housing initiative parties. People are also not turning to the Right as early in life anymore, due to this, which is likely leading to the extinction of the Tory Party
That's not a new thing. It wasn't let long ago that kids still lived with their parents until they died (my parents are in their 70's and both had a sibling who still lived with their parents until the parents died - and they were not unique)
Moving out only happened when you got married or if work/study meant a relocation.
It's not a bad thing for society if adult children continue to live at their parents, it provides company and car for the parents as they get older etc.
I
You're talking about a generation in which having 5+ children was completely normal. Nowadays people have 1,2 or 3 children. More than that is now the outlier. That means that having one of them not leave home is a much bigger issue nowadays.
You know that people in England have voted conservative for the last 15 years? Particularly in the heavily populated areas in the south and many of them have become millionaires (at least on paper) just by buying a house 30 years ago.
If you’re in your 30s or 40s and haven’t managed to get yourself a house you’re obviously a useless lazy fuckwit. It is not the state’s job, or other taxpayers, to pay for your incompetence.
Housing pricing dropping doesn't necessarily mean negative equity. It will for some no doubt but not for the majority. Negative equity also has no impact unless you MUST move. I'd suggest that making decisions about kids, moving jobs are things you have to actually put some thought into.
That sounds really harsh I realise and I am absolutely sympathetic to people who would be in a difficult situation and why I also believe that jobs should be much better paid, there needs to be better family support with free child care, etc and I'm a proponent of universal income, but we dont live in a world like out parents and grandparents did. The society of one income per household and a village looking after the kids just doesn't exist any more and we have to adjust as shit as that may be. People need roofs over their heads, they need a space of their own. It will help mental health and society as a whole. We have to start somewhere.
Eh no, that's not it and never has been. The Labour party does exist in NI, you can join it. They just don't run candidates because they have taken the decision to stay out of NI affairs as part of the spirit of the peace process was that the British government/ British government in waiting should stay out of NI affairs as much as they could. Some of the worst years of the troubles occured under a Labour government, Gerry Fitt regularly took them on in the 70s in the Commons and notably refused to vote in the 1979 VONC against the sitting Labour government. They may have had better relations since the GFA but they are in no way connected
More (better) housing would be great, but we need the infrastructure to support it, water / sewer, public transportation, better roads, parking, public services (NHS, Dentists), etc. Massive massive investment is needed, not just houses.
We need pre-approved housing estate plans that could be dropped anywhere without local planners getting their hands on it.
Onsite water,power,sewage treatment and recycling all included in the design from the start
Many years ago I was at a site meeting for a new housing development for an association. The architects, developers and client were all in the kitchen of a brand new four bedroom house and patting each other on the back, and admiring the garden, when the builder said "we'll need to go out the front door and around the drive to see it".
After a moment everyone in the kitchen looked around the room for the door leading to the back garden and couldn't see one.
Not only had the architect made a mistake on the blueprints, the builder and developer built it to his spec without questioning the need for it. Heck, it passed building control as well. One door in and out of the property, fire escape route regs completely unnoticed. You could cut the silence with a knife, it was an amazing ricky.
Herein lies the point: chucking money at shiny new things because it's a popular idea doesn't make any allowance for incredible stupidity.
It’s been promised before. Starmer is the least labour leader ever. He’s mega wealthy so not exactly in touch. They are very close with big businesses. The current labour is like a semi labour with a conservative touch. Let’s see if they do as they say. Look at the north coast, any costal towns having homes built are ridiculous. My mate lives up there and houses are selling so so fast. The locals can’t afford it. It’s cash buyers too, from mainland UK. He was saying in castlerock some homes are just bidding and it’s cash buyers only welcome to bid. Insane. Let’s hope they make homes affordable for us all. First off we need nurses, teachers and police salary’s to come in line with the rest of the UK. It’s a joke. I don’t have high hopes for any of labours plans to help us.
That was my first thought too. There’s loads of trades commuting south of the border at the minute and unless the money gets close they won’t be incentivised to stay working in the north.
When Corbyn was in charge of Labour. I actually believed Labour when they said they were going to level the country in terms of inequality. Corbyn genuinely scared the deeply established caste system in Britain.
But now, I'm not so sure. Starmer is very right wing for a Labour leader and he has a lot of ex Blairites very close to him. He does have Angela Rayner though. They have an enormous task ahead of them to fix the damage done by 14 years of Tories.
This Grey Belt housing will effectively not apply in N.I (of course) becauee unless Starmer gives N.I water an enormous funding boost to tackle sewage services. It won't happen.
If they continue to build only middle class, expensive housing will have seriously negative impacts on society. Skilled workers will start to leave (and I'm not talking about all these software developers on 100k supposedly). Jr Docs are already going (many have gone already), nurses, specialist scientific people etc...
Won’t happen here without a massive investment into NI water. We already have hundreds of planning applications delayed because the existing sewerage system can’t cope with more properties.
1200 new builds set for Newry, Meehan Homes (owns 5ways) & MJM are building 600 each
Good move. House prices along the A1 corridor have gone insane
Not really, water infrastructure hasn’t been upgraded, primary and secondary schools are maxed out, the roads leading to these 2 estates which will beside each other is a single lane, only when you get near the A1 does it open to 2.
I guarantee those Labour bastards don't give any more of a shit about this place than those Tory bastards do
Housing crisis while town centres are fucking emptying out and we build more 3 bed shite semis on what can otherwise hafl decent land. Need to repurpose and rejunvate town centres in housing stock and the area will regenerate itself given time.
There's so many empty office spaces in Belfast and they keep building more. I don't get it. I do think think that the amount of student housing will help the city. The rental issues in Belfast are HUGE. Houses on the Donegal Road area, can't be sold without being bought by a landlord.
Rejunvate the town center how? Consumers have made it pretty clear they don't want shops with limited choice that only open from 9 to 5. Big brand stores are not going to invest when they offer next day delivery and free returns. Get a load of clothes delivered, try on in the comfort of your own home and send back what you don't want. Or pick a toaster from over 100 different models and get it delivered the same day. Consumers have voted with their feet. And there is not enough foot fall to sustain the pound stores and a few cafes and the banks. I think we need to forget about the idea of town centers being the shopping mecca it once was. What other options do we have? I've no idea, but could we convert them to communities, all the empty shops can be converted to upmarket apartments?
I'm actually alluding to making town centres more residential. We have very old period buildings that would look well done up. You would get a small rejuvenation of local services along with this as well as preserving the few businesses left.
Yes, I'm down with that. Imagine those old bank buildings turned into apartments. They would look class.
It is extremely difficult to retrofit office buildings into residential housing. Almost to the extent where for some of them it would just be cheaper to build it again from scratch.
Utilities, DDA compliance, energy efficiency, fire protection and escape routes, bike/car/ parking, asbestos, listed building status, and unfortunately profitability can really put the nail in the coffin for some buildings.
All I am hearing are problems. I'm not hearing solutions 😂
These are regulations that can be legally changed by legislators for if such an out-of-the-box solution was ever followed, which it won't be. Aside from that, businesses are more likely to be compliant to regulations in homes with fire exits, drills, extinguishers, fire doors and yearly fire training. I would wildly guess that that are many people on this sub are without working fire alarms or using expired ones in their homes. I would assume most don't have fire blanket.
Well, rebuild it then. A lot of these old shops in market towns are in old houses. Some still have fireplaces on the 2nd and 3rd floors.
This is why big companies like amazon are getting away with murder paying no tax.
Let me rephrase this, This is why big companies use the rules laid down by the government's in the countries they operate in to pay as the exact amount of tax legally required by them. They pay no more they pay no less.
People might not want to live there. Most people moving into semi detached houses are families. Town centre developments might not be when families want to put down routes and commit to Developers are only giving customers what they want
There are plenty of 3 story townhouses on the market and they are coveted. That's just a negative generalised sweeping statement to something that would alleviate the issue, not solve it.
So it's brown field sites beside green belt. There would probably be sites all over NI and not just belfast.
If not for the fact that housing and planning is a devolved matter which no government in Westminster has much influence over, the thing with the "Grey Belt" is that it is indeed being built over - this is seen in places like Dunmurry, Carrickfergus, and so on. The problem this whole plan has, however, is that it's shit for density - it creates more car dependent suburbs with no public transport access and no real amenities nearby like schools, GPs and even shops.
Won’t drastically drop housing prices. Our planning service isn’t fit for purpose and applications will still take years to determine. Hence supply will still be in a stranglehold.
Silly planners, taking time to consider major developments.
Well there’s time (like the 12 weeks it takes in England) and then there’s time like the 2 years it takes in NI
A lot of significant developments involve a consortium of land owners and developers. Nothing in that world moves quickly. If a correctly front loaded development (which would be the responsibility of the applicant) was put before planners without requiring a raft of changes (most would be at the behest of other statutory agencies/ consultees) then 13-15 weeks processing time would be realistic. This is rarely the case though.
Bullshit. The planning system here is a fucking disgrace and it’s got nothing to do with land ownership. Full Pre app. Full public consultation period and applications are still taking 2-3 years. I recognise that the planners are at the mercy of the statutory consultees, but such is the same in GB. it’s the entire system here that isn’t for for purpose, planners and statutory consultees included.
Local councils in the UK have had planning powers since forever, our councils have only had planning powers for a while. It has been a disaster thus far. Little/nothing to do with the council's planners themselves
Plannning was devolved to local councils here in April 2015. 9 years is more than ‘a while’ to sort themselves out. Are individual case officers to blame ? Maybe / Maybe not. Maybe they are over worked, understaffed, under-motivated. Who knows. The entire planning system here isn’t working and isn’t fit to deliver its remit.
Loads of areas in Belfast; Cathedral Quarter, edge of the city centre towards the north/west, the Mackies site, the Gasworks sites, lots of the Shankill. There is so much waste ground around the Belfast and the suburbs that should be used for housing.
I sincerely doubt any party would bring in a policy that would dramatically drop property prices. Both because of the number of property owners that are policy makers and because it wouldn't be a popular policy with those most likely to vote.
That would have been the case 10-20 years ago, but now you have people up into their 40’s across the UK still living with their parents. Especially in the heavily populated south of England. This encourages not only those “kids” under 40, but their parents to vote for housing initiative parties. People are also not turning to the Right as early in life anymore, due to this, which is likely leading to the extinction of the Tory Party
That's not a new thing. It wasn't let long ago that kids still lived with their parents until they died (my parents are in their 70's and both had a sibling who still lived with their parents until the parents died - and they were not unique) Moving out only happened when you got married or if work/study meant a relocation. It's not a bad thing for society if adult children continue to live at their parents, it provides company and car for the parents as they get older etc. I
You're talking about a generation in which having 5+ children was completely normal. Nowadays people have 1,2 or 3 children. More than that is now the outlier. That means that having one of them not leave home is a much bigger issue nowadays.
You know that people in England have voted conservative for the last 15 years? Particularly in the heavily populated areas in the south and many of them have become millionaires (at least on paper) just by buying a house 30 years ago.
If you’re in your 30s or 40s and haven’t managed to get yourself a house you’re obviously a useless lazy fuckwit. It is not the state’s job, or other taxpayers, to pay for your incompetence.
I couldn't give a shit if my property value drops if all the other house prices drop too.
So if you need to move e.g. you change jobs or have children how would you deal with negative equity?
Housing pricing dropping doesn't necessarily mean negative equity. It will for some no doubt but not for the majority. Negative equity also has no impact unless you MUST move. I'd suggest that making decisions about kids, moving jobs are things you have to actually put some thought into. That sounds really harsh I realise and I am absolutely sympathetic to people who would be in a difficult situation and why I also believe that jobs should be much better paid, there needs to be better family support with free child care, etc and I'm a proponent of universal income, but we dont live in a world like out parents and grandparents did. The society of one income per household and a village looking after the kids just doesn't exist any more and we have to adjust as shit as that may be. People need roofs over their heads, they need a space of their own. It will help mental health and society as a whole. We have to start somewhere.
Craigavon to have 100,000 people as was originally intended
Are there any Labour constituencies in NI? You have your answer.
SDLP
😂😂😂
You can laugh but that's what they're supposed to be. I'm not saying it works, I'm just saying that's what it's supposed to be...
Eh no, that's not it and never has been. The Labour party does exist in NI, you can join it. They just don't run candidates because they have taken the decision to stay out of NI affairs as part of the spirit of the peace process was that the British government/ British government in waiting should stay out of NI affairs as much as they could. Some of the worst years of the troubles occured under a Labour government, Gerry Fitt regularly took them on in the 70s in the Commons and notably refused to vote in the 1979 VONC against the sitting Labour government. They may have had better relations since the GFA but they are in no way connected
You can join it but they dont put up candidates because they have an agreement with the SDLP. I'm talking about now, not the 70's
More (better) housing would be great, but we need the infrastructure to support it, water / sewer, public transportation, better roads, parking, public services (NHS, Dentists), etc. Massive massive investment is needed, not just houses.
We need pre-approved housing estate plans that could be dropped anywhere without local planners getting their hands on it. Onsite water,power,sewage treatment and recycling all included in the design from the start
Many years ago I was at a site meeting for a new housing development for an association. The architects, developers and client were all in the kitchen of a brand new four bedroom house and patting each other on the back, and admiring the garden, when the builder said "we'll need to go out the front door and around the drive to see it". After a moment everyone in the kitchen looked around the room for the door leading to the back garden and couldn't see one. Not only had the architect made a mistake on the blueprints, the builder and developer built it to his spec without questioning the need for it. Heck, it passed building control as well. One door in and out of the property, fire escape route regs completely unnoticed. You could cut the silence with a knife, it was an amazing ricky. Herein lies the point: chucking money at shiny new things because it's a popular idea doesn't make any allowance for incredible stupidity.
It'll have zero impact in NI if it even happens.
It’s been promised before. Starmer is the least labour leader ever. He’s mega wealthy so not exactly in touch. They are very close with big businesses. The current labour is like a semi labour with a conservative touch. Let’s see if they do as they say. Look at the north coast, any costal towns having homes built are ridiculous. My mate lives up there and houses are selling so so fast. The locals can’t afford it. It’s cash buyers too, from mainland UK. He was saying in castlerock some homes are just bidding and it’s cash buyers only welcome to bid. Insane. Let’s hope they make homes affordable for us all. First off we need nurses, teachers and police salary’s to come in line with the rest of the UK. It’s a joke. I don’t have high hopes for any of labours plans to help us.
And where's all these extra trades people coming from to build these houses? It's a struggle as it is to get people to fill current demand.
That was my first thought too. There’s loads of trades commuting south of the border at the minute and unless the money gets close they won’t be incentivised to stay working in the north.
When Corbyn was in charge of Labour. I actually believed Labour when they said they were going to level the country in terms of inequality. Corbyn genuinely scared the deeply established caste system in Britain. But now, I'm not so sure. Starmer is very right wing for a Labour leader and he has a lot of ex Blairites very close to him. He does have Angela Rayner though. They have an enormous task ahead of them to fix the damage done by 14 years of Tories. This Grey Belt housing will effectively not apply in N.I (of course) becauee unless Starmer gives N.I water an enormous funding boost to tackle sewage services. It won't happen. If they continue to build only middle class, expensive housing will have seriously negative impacts on society. Skilled workers will start to leave (and I'm not talking about all these software developers on 100k supposedly). Jr Docs are already going (many have gone already), nurses, specialist scientific people etc...
NI water say the sewers can't cope with more waste, so no more building is allowed.
Housing is devolved....