The UK’s housing boom risks failure without proper infrastructure planning – lack of water, broadband and transport could turn new homes into headaches | Kevin Ferriday
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In Northern Ireland, we are witnessing an increase in new housing developments but the infrastructure remains what it was a hundred years ago. Also, no increase in schools to accommodate more families including shopping outlets especially banks. Yes in NI the rural high street still has a place!
How about re-utilising the huge number of empty properties and office blocks before ripping up more of the countryside for homes no one can afford? Where will all the tradespeople come from. It’s near impossible to find anyone for jobs around the house.
In my local area, Severn Trent thinks it is acceptable to wait until hundreds of houses are built before upgrading the sewage system. Space was reserved to create a new doctor's surgery but this has now been cancelled, squeezing capacity elsewhere. Infrastructure should always be built first.
Years before any homes were constructed near the A19 in North Tyneside, a pub was built plus a new Metro station with a big car park. Houses came later.
This is a common, and ongoing, failing of local body and national governments. Allowing developers to build substandard homes without proper infrastructure is a British reality. You only have to look at the grotesque profits they make to realise why.
Here in my rural area of Devon we have power outages frequently because the National Grid can’t cope. I work for a farm that generates its own power, but even they get locked out of the power system when National Grid fails.
It is not uncommon to see diesel fuelled generators being used to push power down the lines. We have large housing developments going up on green field sites but there have been no changes to the infrastructure.
And that “infrastructure” should include hospital bed numbers,GP increases, school places currently these aren’t a factor but impact of major developments on them is huge.
The big problem is that doctors don’t want to become GPs and teachers are leaving in droves. You can build schools and surgeries but not necessarily get people to work on them.
The number of applicants far outweighs the positions available to train to become doctors.
We could copy the best ideas from other counties, but the medical council is more interested in getting practitioners (with their minimal training) to be considered doctors.
The developers make the profits, so they pay for infrastructure. It's not difficult. Make devs pay down a ringfenced infrastructure bond as a condition of giving planning permission.
It will also encourage them to hurry the fuck up with the building work to recoup their infrastructure outlay.
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We could copy the best ideas from other counties, but the medical council is more interested in getting practitioners (with their minimal training) to be considered doctors.
It will also encourage them to hurry the fuck up with the building work to recoup their infrastructure outlay.