Shock! Horror! Government Not Good At Spending Money On Council Housing!

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• That got me thinking Timmy whilst the maid was serving me breakfast.

  What puzzles me is why Corbyn et al and/or LDs don’t go on the offensive, faced with actual Tory policies that defy ‘One Nation’ claims? I haven’t a clue why.

  Look at some 20th.C political history, although it covers the period when baby boomers grew up. UK public debt in 1955 was 140% of GDP, well above today’s. Harold Macmillan, then Housing Minister, later Prime Minister, was MP for Stockton, a working-class seat. Despite his posh/paternalistic background he was clearly a very one-nation Tory, with economic policies distinctly leftwards of today’s Labour or L.D.s.

  To be specific, the Harolds (Macmillan/Tory and Wilson/Labour) presided over a construction rate of over 300,000 homes per year. That’s the sort of figure we need to solve today’s homeless crisis. Yet since 1979, ‘Thatcher and Sons’ [ref.: Simon Jenkins’ book] haven’t managed to build more than 150,000 to 200,000 homes per year. Few have been council flats or houses, which are what’s most needed.

  Finding the land? Easy; look at how Letchworth or Milton Keynes did it or at how councils in the Netherlands and Germany acquire land, give it planning permission and sell it to developers or self-builders. Paying for houses? Hardly rocket science either. Before any rental income comes in, issue 40 or 50 year government bonds. Rich pensioners who lend £500k to the government via NS&I could even bequeath these loan notes to their grandchildren. That approach could fix the payments on say £400 bn of spending until 2066, i.e., there is no problem if interest rates go up.

  I’d rather see councils do the borrowing for however many rented houses and flats they need, though, so central government needs to return the power to issue bonds to local government. It’s called local democracy;. Most countries have it, the UK doesn’t seem to understand it.

  The cost of each million council houses, done to very high specifications and decent space standards? My guesstimate = about £80bn.

  Water companies already issue very long-dated bonds. The interest rate on some of their index-linked debt has been about 1% per year. Hardly crippling; at that rate it would cost about £3bn per year to repay £80 bn over 50 years.

  The UK has too many deep-seated problems – three being the homelessness crisis, as discussed; missing vocational skills and a huge current account deficit – to spend years arguing about Brexit. The only way to reconcile 52% and 48% seems to be a Norway-like situation, meeting roughly in the middle; i.e., half in and half out of the EU [as Peter Hitchens said].

  http://www.taxresearch.org.uk

  • As some dead American once said, the problem with people is that so much they know ain't so.

    Finding the land? Easy; look at how Letchworth or Milton Keynes did it or at how councils in the Netherlands and Germany acquire land, give it planning permission and sell it to developers or self-builders. .... It’s called local democracy;. Most countries have it, the UK doesn’t seem to understand it.

    As anyone who has looked at the problem has realised, the problem with housing is not money. It is not land. It is planning permission. We could find the money if we wanted to. There is lots of land. What there isn't is local government permission to build.

    The reason for this is obvious - developing land benefits the land owner as he gets rich; it benefits the country, more or less, because we get more houses. It does not benefit the land owner's neighbours as they get increased traffic, clutter and depressed property prices. It is communities that oppose development for other people. Which is why local governments are the strongest voices against development. Build on the Greenbelt? Good luck with that. It is not the Third World refuse in Inner City London that will object. It is the people who like to walk their dog in open fields.

    The problem is local democracy. Or more accurately the problem is the way that locals can impose their designing preferences on other people without paying the costs of doing so.

    • Don't mention the I-word. Don't mention the demand side.

  • "What puzzles me is why Corbyn et al and/or LDs don’t go on the offensive, faced with actual Tory policies that defy ‘One Nation’ claims? I haven’t a clue why."

    Because the last chap who ran a country on Corbynite lines demolished 2 million homes in the UK between 1939 and 1944.

• Cutting all the Murphbollocks fat off Twatty's contributions would leave him with just the title in most cases. Good. The Fatnecked clone could at least try to make up his own lies.

  The list of stuff the govt should do is very, very small. The World would be so much better if looking for such a list WAS the govts only function.

• Couple of days ago I listened to an interview with Nigel Wilson, Chief Exec Legal & General. Says they invested £1 billion last year in Built to Let, that there is also an ever-expanding demand for over 55’s housing – that the world and his granny are queuing up to invest in UK housing if only the government would ease up on planning restrictions. Seems all the government has to do is to get out the way and the market will solve everything. Always providing we can import 500,000 Polish brickies, sparkies, plumbers, etc.

• "That got me thinking Timmy whilst the maid was serving me breakfast."

  A patronising cunt isn't he. Even when you are supposed to think that he is jesting.

  "What puzzles me is why Corbyn et al and/or LDs don’t go on the offensive, faced with actual Tory policies that defy ‘One Nation’ claims? I haven’t a clue why."

  The last sentence is the key.

  "Look at some 20th.C political history, although it covers the period when baby boomers grew up. "

  That wasn't in the 20th Century then?

  "UK public debt in 1955 was 140% of GDP, well above today’s. Harold Macmillan, then Housing Minister, later Prime Minister, was MP for Stockton, a working-class seat. Despite his posh/paternalistic background he was clearly a very one-nation Tory, with economic policies distinctly leftwards of today’s Labour or L.D.s."

  Posh and paternalistic--qualities entirely absent from Murph of course. The only airs he has are the ones that fill his skull. And of course Supermac could see that bribing people with their own / borrowed / printed money was ever popular among the hard of thinking. Whose ranks include both Supermac and the Bloated Prince of Codeconomics himself.

  "To be specific, the Harolds (Macmillan/Tory and Wilson/Labour) presided over a construction rate of over 300,000 homes per year."

  Bully for them. Those lads must have had deep pockets. Tho' people might have been better able to buy their own homes had not the state been stealing that cash to provide shoddy goods-to-rent.

  " That’s the sort of figure we need to solve today’s homeless crisis."

  Stop importing the 3rd world and solve it that way. Bad for knife sales tho. Again they prob steal those rather than buy so...

  "Yet since 1979, ‘Thatcher and Sons’ [ref.: Simon Jenkins’ book] haven’t managed to build more than 150,000 to 200,000 homes per year. Few have been council flats or houses, which are what’s most needed."

  Population was declining into the Age of Automation before the scum of the left decided White Replacement was the new black so to speak. No need for said houses. And even less need for the imports.

  "Finding the land? Easy; look at how Letchworth or Milton Keynes did it or at how councils in the Netherlands and Germany acquire land, give it planning permission and sell it to developers or self-builders."

  Stealing other folks property backed up by the threat of state violence is never too difficult--even for Dutch thugs.

  " Paying for houses? Hardly rocket science either. Before any rental income comes in, issue 40 or 50 year government bonds."

  Borrow more fucking money? On top of the 2 trill they already can't pay back? To provide houses for the 3rd world who drain rather than contribute? This Spud lad is a corpulent genius. Lets hear more.

  "Rich pensioners who lend £500k to the government via NS&I could even bequeath these loan notes to their grandchildren."

  Their grandkids will be digging through either dumpsters or smoking urban ruins by then Porkster. Although I suppose the grandkids should get the "investments" left to them. If society does manage to survive the G-Kids will be the ones working 100 hour weeks to repay the debt to themselves.

  " That approach could fix the payments on say £400 bn of spending until 2066, i.e., there is no problem if interest rates go up."

  No problem to you-- you Fatfuckwit.

  "I’d rather see councils do the borrowing for however many rented houses and flats they need, though, so central government needs to return the power to issue bonds to local government. It’s called local democracy;. Most countries have it, the UK doesn’t seem to understand it."

  It is called local thieves running up colossal debts that will never be repaid in order to house those with ever-less capacity to earn the money the local thieves would need to steal to pay back their borrowings.

  "The cost of each million council houses, done to very high specifications and decent space standards? My guesstimate = about £80bn."

  And your guesstimate-- Mr Third-Eleven Accountant and Putrid Poltroon of Pomposity--is of value because your experience in this area is?

  "Water companies already issue very long-dated bonds. The interest rate on some of their index-linked debt has been about 1% per year. Hardly crippling; at that rate it would cost about £3bn per year to repay £80 bn over 50 years."

  So vast sums of cash are going to be raised by bonds that are to pay 1% a year. Er....

  "The UK has too many deep-seated problems "

  Too many fuckwitted buffoons like you is amongst the biggest of them pal.

  "– three being the homelessness crisis, as discussed;"

  Most folk have a roof over their head. The numbers of ( mostly addicts/mentally ill) sleeping rough are minute. We do not have an obligation to provide the 3rd world with a Western lifestyle esp when we are getting less than nothing--ie a shitload of problems --as a reward.

  " missing vocational skills "

  Achieved via shitty sate schools.

  "and a huge current account deficit –"

  Which bank is that in then?

  " to spend years arguing about Brexit. "

  A traitor and friend of foreign powers as well. Good job he's living now rather than in the 40s.

  "The only way to reconcile 52% and 48% seems to be a Norway-like situation, meeting roughly in the middle; i.e., half in and half out of the EU [as Peter Hitchens said]."

  No--fuck off. Or is democracy only good if it is local? That is local freeloading imports voting for natives to pay for a nice lifestyle for the freeloaders.

  Those who don't care for democratic results that don't suit them are free to cross the channel any time. If you are going Spud please go carefully. That much weight moving too quickly might unbalance the entire South East. More.

• Personally I am very pleased Mr Murphy posts here and find the arguments interesting if sometimes a bit long. He is trying to link several points together in many cases.

  Let's please address the arguments themselves, as we would wish others to do to ours. This could be a really interesting debate.

  • He doesn't have any arguments and there is no evidence he reads them. He is just spamming so he can get banned. Then he can say that TW bans people too.

    • Yep. But I still wish he was banned for bad manners.

      • Don't ban him. Tim just needs to remove the reprinted Murphy bollocks from each posting. Since that is roughly 100% of Twatty's output he will get sick of seeing his name with fuckall under it (save perhaps a note from Tim to the effect that "plagiarised materials have been deleted from this post" etc) and he will either fuck off or start at least spewing his own poison.

    • Indeed, his very first post here noted we are neoliberal and took that to mean he is invited. He is here solely to wreck the site, and when Tim realizes that we want to read each other's reactions to Tim's columns, and not wade past shouting matches with a troll, the troll will return home and bray, as lefties do, "They're all hypocrites!!!"

  • It's not the Murf. Whatever one might think of Richard - ego, utter bollocks, etc, yes sure - but this looks like someone struggling (looking at the other posts)?

  • Ecks

    “plagiarised materials have been deleted from this post”

    That makes good sense, because no one wants to see all of their "very best material" simply plagiarised on another site... It won't deal with the problem this poor chap has of course.

• 'The second is that much more general point, government’s just not very good at spending money.'

  At risk of repeating myself . . . you have it backwards. Government is fabulous at spending money. They are awful buyers. Since they are spending Other People's Money, they don't exercise care, and spend freely.

• Re "Twatting on Tim's" guesstimate.

  Construction industry cost data for house building indicates that the the national median cost to build a 3-bed, 4-person 2-storey house designed to the Nationally Described Space Standard (i.e. with an internal area of 84 square metres) is about £97,000. This is the cost of building just the house; on to this needs to be added the cost of external landscaping (gardens, footpaths, fences, walls, planting), infrastructure (roads, power, water, gas, sewerage, telecoms) and fees (consultants' fees, CIL, s.106, s.278, etc.). This varies according to the location and circumstances of the build, but adds about a further 25%.

  So the national cost for a median house is about £116,000 or £116 billion per million houses. If you want "very high specifications", the national cost goes up to around £144,000 per house (about £144 billion per million).

  If you want to do this in flats instead, the national median cost for a 3-bed, 4-person single level flat (74 square metres per flat plus 20% for corridors, stairs and other shared facilities - so 89 square metres each) in an 4-storey block is £152,000 each or, for very high specifications, £181,000 each - so £152 billion per million or £181 billion per million.

• "...free up the permission process by blowing up the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 and successors."

  That would soon result in a vast loss of amenities in this crowded isle. The TCP Acts only need amending to allow for 'directed development'. Every district in the UK has some sites that could be developed for housing without loss of amenity - much of the West Midlands, for example - and where connections to utilities are readily available. Cut the red tape on directed development sites, guarantee approval within 10 working days, and house building will surge.

• I've been heavily involved in trying to build a £1.5M mixed use development in a posh part of London for 4 years now and we have yet to secure planning permission. The costs and red tape involved are absolutely horrendous and the highest indirect cost imposed on us by the Local Planning Authority is their requirement that we build the non-residential part of the development to BREEAM Excellent standard (BREEAM, in case you don't know, is a form of virtue signalling eco-lunacy which the Low Carbon Consultancy Industry is milking for all it's worth).

  There is also a substantial amount of taxation that is levied on new builds, taking the £1.5M development above as a fairly typical example, our tax liabilities include;
  Community Infrastructure Levy £49,250.00
  Mayor's Levy (to pay towards London Cross-Rail) £9,850.00
  s106 - Affordable Housing Levy £61,156.00

  Fifteen years ago a developer could throw down a planning application that consisted of little more than some Drawings, a Design & Access Statement, and a Heritage Statement. Today the list of reports and studies demanded by the LPA is exhaustive, and if they don't like the development they will keep demanding further reports and studies, all of which adds to the cost.

  Using the example above once more (and ignoring the Architect's fee of 5% of the final build cost), these are the studies we have been required to produce (and others that will be required once building work starts) and the costs in consultants fees that we are on the hook for if we want to see this £1.5M development through:
  Planning Consultant fees for Pre-App & Planning Application £4,829.40
  Construction Sequence & Methodology Report £3,200.00
  Energy & Sustainability Statement for Planning £2,400.00
  Services (Drains, Water, Elec & Gas) Search £520.40
  BREEAM Assessment £7,200.00
  Bat & Ecology Survey £697.50
  Flood Risk Assessment (FRA) £1,465.00
  FRA Exceptions Test £130.00
  Street Parking Survey £875.00
  Parking Safety Report £500.00
  Affordable Housing Contribution Calculation £1,202.50
  Heritage Statement £600.00
  Local Authority Pre-Planning Application Fee £920.00
  Local Authority Full Planning Application Fee £1,540.00
  Tasks to meet BREEAM Excellent during Construction £15,000.00
  Ground & Soil Desktop Study £1,500.00
  Arboriculturalist Survey £1,000.00
  Acoustic Consultant £1,500.00
  Asbestos Survey (of existing structure) £1,500.00
  Structural Engineer £8,925.00
  Building Services £3,000.00
  Consultant for Building Regs Part L1A, L2A and EPC's £2,000.00
  Party Wall Surveyors £5,000.00
  Building Regs Mandatory Inspections £2,500.00
  Post Construction BREEAM Tasks £3,000.00

  Given where we are now in terms of the cost and the long lead times to build new housing I don't think Tim is too far off the mark when he suggests that the solution would be to tear up the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 and start afresh (even if he does say it tongue in cheek). But since that is never going to happen, I suggest instead that you invest in a house, because you can be sure no Government in the UK will be able to build enough houses any time soon.

  • Likewise, Bruce Bialosky today documents the things California is doing to make housing unaffordable, notably requiring everyone on the job to be paid union wages despite being willing to work for less.

    https://townhall.com/columnists/brucebialosky/2018/03/11/california-to-take-over-housing-market-n2458490

    If a rollback of regulation preserves a Heritage Statement, where the developer is required to write about whether his use of his land affects anything I consider my cultural birthright, then the rollback has not rolled back far enough.

    • In California, making housing unaffordable is the _intention_ of those policies. Cranking up house prices is pretty effectively ethnically cleansing the state of Mexican immigrants.

      • Too bad about the millions of productive native Californians who were swept away in the cleaning. The Mexicans (no, many did not immigrate) are now in tent cities in LA in someone else's parking lot or vacant lot, left to their own devices until the stench begins to bother city fathers.

        • I didn't think there were that many native Californians left. Weren't they almost wiped out in the 19th century?

    • @Spike
      Thanks for that link.
      In a nutshell, Government intervention to provide more 'affordable' housing only serves to make all housing more unaffordable.

      And as SMFS alluded to above, local government IS the problem. Take ALL planning decision making away from the LPAs and give it to the National Planning Inspectorate instead (or better still the private sector) and that will prevent the capture of the planning process by NIMBYism.

      • Indeed there is little that government can do to lower the price of housing, as even a new regulation with which the builder was already in full compliance must be learned, communicated, and compliance must be documented.

        I don't agree on moving planning to a national inspectorate. The problem is government power over the use of private property, having nothing to do with inadvertent trespass such as pollution; not that the power was captured. Give the power to the more remote national level rather than the local, and it will still be "captured," not by parochial affectations but by global ones such as class warfare and unknowable "climate effects," and those issuing the orders will still pay no price for making wrong decisions nor for rendering land unusable.

  • One point. I am not tongue in cheek about blowing up the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 and successors. I am deadly serious about it.

    • Tim cut out Twatty's Murphy reposts and just leave any original content by the Twatster. I don't have all day or every day to be fisking his dreary deserts of drivel--nor do most other commentators. He is using you to spread the Blob 's bullshit. Cut him down WITHOUT banning him and let him write his own comments.

      • I agree with Mr Ecks. It would take an excellent coder though to automate cropping out his copy and pastes and leaving the twat's own thoughts in place, but if it can be done it would make the comments much more readable

        • Twatty does his cut'n paste so badly it is fairly obvious.

          Indeed often everything seems to be Murph C&P--first to last.

    • @TW
      Good.
      Because I could write an entire article on how LPA's cynically use section 4 of the TCP Act to stifle development.

      • TW wrote a piece on how non-TWs are welcome to write entire articles. Go for it!

    • Well, if you really want to get rid of it, why not do some investigative journalism into the new Tottenham Hotspur stadium's source of funding? It's some of the most naked corruption seen in the UK for decades: the Haringey councillors who approved Spurs' planning application, including the large amount of highly profitable unrelated property development which is paying for it, are now shareholders in overpaid contractors on the project. This is not considered abnormal in the planning industry, it's just the way you get projects through.

      Giving scum like Haringey council that kind of power is just an open door for corruption.

  • Molon Labe>

    Try employing a couple of councillors and/or planning officers as 'planning consultants'. You'll get everything through without delays. It's the normal cost of doing property development in the UK these days.

• That picture (looks like it) is of houses build by a local council in the 1930s. Back then, local councils could just get a (almost) "normal" mortgage from the Public Works Board, buy land, and build, with the finances structured to pay off the loan, just as any other developer in the 1930s was doing. Many 1930s council and private estates are nearly interchangable, with local councils being "just another" developer.
  It was after WW2 and the T&CPA that central government started meddling and both making local council house-building harder and imposing speed and quantity requirements.
  By coincidence, Ivor Smith the architect of Park Hill in Sheffield died last week. Park Hill went from streets in the sky to slums in the sky within a couple of decades, as prophised by Syd Dyson who insisted the council should be building "workers cottages with a bit of garden". Nah, Syd, he was told, you're living in the past, this is the future!