So I recently started delivering for some extra cash and I deliver to a lot of new build estates and from my personal experience, they have no infrastructure.
Bus Stops
Corner Shops
Doctors
Barbers
Food/takeaway
They are literally just a pile of houses with little roads..
Is this the experience from all around the UK?
Or just the Midlands?
32 comments
They’re built to be cheap and profitable, if comfort, functionality, or consideration for others were involved it would only because someone higher up plans on living there.
I mean a lot of older housing estates don’t have these things either.
Aye it’s shite, I live in a newish estate but it’s near the old village.
Closest pub is a 45 min walk, closest shop is an Asda 15 min walk away, there is 1 bus stop with 1 bus every hour until 10pm and some places in town don’t deliver this far.
I drive.
Lots and lots of cars.
They’re throwing up 500 houses in one estate (another few hundred in other estates nearby) with, I shit you not, one seesaw, two swings and fuck all else in the way of amenities.
Local GP isn’t getting bigger, locals schools likewise. Going to mean literally thousands more cars on roads which are already comically inadequate.
But councils don’t mind because they get a few social houses out of it and claim they’re creating jobs.
I live on one. It’s alright. Nice and quiet. If we had a takeaway or a pub, there’d just be a load of fucking wankers hanging around.
It’s a 20 minute walk to the nearest town, so I’m not too fussed.
Mine is walking distance to a train station, bus stops, leisure centre, pub (Toby carvery but still), park and a hospital 🤷♂️ Some have good infrastructure some have bad.
Mine is still being built, and we have promises of things being built (a leisure centre is next apparently, not that we have a shop yet…). But we do have a coffee shop, primary school and a bus stop. It’s nice, it’s quiet. I wouldn’t live here if I didn’t have a car though. I’m hoping that once it’s more fully built and is more the small town they are promising it’ll be lovely.
I do house calls with my job and call new build estate scooby doo land because all the roads look the same.
To be fair, neither do loads of older build houses, in fact my new build house is closer to those things than my parents.
It’s worth noting that a lot of new builds are built on brown land or green land which is typically away from those things anyway.
New build Waterfront estate in South Wales, narrow roads, cars everywhere, houses packed as tight as possible, no front gardens as such, in some cases your driveway is in front of next doors house, small back garden overlooked by houses on every side. A four bed terraced on the main road is over £330k. I wouldn’t live in one for a pension.
We’ve had two built in the last few years – one has essentially been planted in a field next to an old estate with shops there. Second looks like a new build housing estate got thrown in a field and as many houses as possible crammed in and that’s it – a family member has one of the 2-beds and I cannot stand the house, I’ve referred to them as “thin” before. Three of us and I felt cramped as buggery.
We had a few added to a small empty area on my estate (iirc they used to be garages) but those are quite spacious in comparison to the ones on either estate.
We went to see a new build. NGL it was a really nice house. But there was no internet of any kind (developer said yeah get a ‘dongle’ like it was 2005 again lol). No doctors, no shop, school was a 3 mile journey in the car (no busses either). When we got outbid we were not too upset and moved on. Ended up getting a place that wasn’t as nice, but did have several shops, a doctors, pharmacist and a school all within a 15 min walk. And it had great mobile signal and virgin media and now we have FTTP too.
The developers don’t give a shit. They’re just after filling up empty fields with houses and putting extra strain on the existing services, many of which can be miles from these housing estates.
This is in Bedford btw, so not just the midlands.
I deliver to them a lot and prefer delivering there because the roads are accessible mostly rather than taking a truck down a row of terraced houses and trying to deliver them pallets. Most of them seem to have un finished roads though years after been built.
I live in a new build estate (I didn’t buy as a new build but the first owners sold after 1 year which is when I bought it). It’s walking distance to the town centre and I have everything I need on the doorstep. Yea the house doesn’t have ‘character’ and is identical to every other house on the estate, but I’m a single guy with my own 3 bed house, its more than enough space for me and having something simple and modern is great as its easy to clean and maintain, I wouldn’t want something high maintenance. I couldn’t be happier with it.
The furthest thing from mine is the doctors which is half a mile. I guess we got lucky.
I live in a new build – from the early 90s.
I’m used to villages where the house built in 1975 is still called “the new one”. Currently living in an estate bigger than those villages and only surviving because there’s a decent sized wood (and then fields) outside my back gate. And somehow no one can overlook our garden.
If I lived three doors away I’d have gone mad years ago.
Soulless shitboxes
That’s certainly the new build housing development of thousands of houses on the edge of the city I live in. Few amenities and no room for more them either – all the land with planning permission is densely covered in houses and blocks of flats. There’s a primary school, a small community centre building, and enough commercial building for 2-3 small shops like a hairdresser, GP surgery, or similar. No general retail, no shops, no restaurants, definitely no pubs. The only place even vaguely nearby to buy food is one, now very busy and overloaded, Waitrose which existed before the houses were built.
Almost nothing for thousands of houses. I think it is a horrible place to live, having to drive somewhere else for everything.
I lasted 14 months. You know all those utter mutants you bump into when out and about? Well they all live on new build estates.
Fucked off to the country and it’s the best thing I ever did
They cope by fucking up the infrasture of nearest pre-existing place.
We’re 20 minutes walk away from a school, doctors, petrol station and shops.
10-15 minute drive to Aldi, Lidl, Tesco, Morrison, Asda.
The estate was built with 2-3 parking spots and/or garages for every house, but apparently everyone and the kids drive thesedays, so each house has something like 5 cars, so they park up on the junctions and exits, as you do.
The Facebook community group is full of curtain twitchers, who rage about dog shit and cats invading the garden. They’re also filled with people raging about everyone “speeding like mad” when there’s kids on the streets, but they’re the first to let you know the speed camera van is parked right round the corner.
I wouldn’t mind the shops being a bit closer tbf. I can do with the 20 minute walk anyway, but apparently NO ONE ELSE can, because even my fucking neighbours drive their little shits to school and back, and won’t even let them get the bus. It’s a 20 minute walk ffs. If it ain’t pissing down, make ’em walk.
Developers will have had to pay a (CIL) Community infrastructure Levy and likely some section agreements in order to get planning. But this money rarely seems to be getting spent on anything at all related to the developments themselves.
I personally like not having shops on our estate especially as the nearest one is less than a 10 minute walk. We have got a fab modern community centre, 3 play parks, basketball court, woodland walks and orchards.
There are plans for a school and there is already a preschool and fitness classes / kids activities in the hall. Also got a lovely cafe with more fields and public walks. It’s close to a main town but feels like you are in the middle of nowhere.
It’s lovely and quiet, got loads of parking so no issues there, solar panels on the majority of the houses and everyone is really nice so can’t complain for now. Not for everyone but works well for us.
We’re on a new build estate in Scotland. We’re still in walking distance to the nearest tesco and town centre. There is a commercial area planned but its not sold yet and the park is ready but needs approved by the council. Our kids are 5 min walk to school on no main roads. Not all estates are badly planned. Plus the infrastructure will come. Some towns have been around for hundreds of years and taken time to build up, I believe things will come eventually as I’ve seen in other areas that have had new build estates. It might take years though.
What’s do you mean how do you cope. Deliver your shit without looking for shops/doctors/barbers/takeaways and get the fuck out of there. Yes it’s like this all over the UK lol
I’m so glad I live on a 70s estate. So much better and more spacious
I’m in my early mid 40s and I don’t drive and I live mostly with my bf in the flat that I own and these places are absolute barren lands of mystery to me. I could not live within one. I’ve been to houses within them and you are stuck miles down nonsensically named ‘closes’, 3 feet of grim Astro turf- so many people have shifted it back to real grass.
The uk is too carcentric, we really need to have better bike infrastructure and public transport, I’d certainly be happy to ride the bus to work
Nope. It’s the same in Wales. Where they throw in a weirdly out-of-plumb roundabout. It was built by Redrow….we call it Roswell. Tried to disguise a crashed saucer…..
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.2055128,-4.1719926,3a,75y,183.8h,86.93t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sFlGJoIItYJjwsRfviux-Pg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en&authuser=0
Whole UK is like this. My next door neighbour who I share a wall with can get food deliveries from most of the takeaways but I’m just outside their catchment zone by one meter…stupid thing is the way the roads are, you have to drive past my house to get to them. We have a nearby bus stop, but that was there before these houses were built. No corner shops, no barbers, but another neighbour is a psychic so at least we’re apparently all protected from evil spirits
I love my new build, been in 2 years now. The estate is lovely. The only complaint on the local Facebook is about the bus services, which are dire… but it’s an affluent area where everyone drives anyway so not sure what everyone’s issue is?
Had it professionally snagged and there with no major issues. It was all just touch up jobs. God knows how many they would have found going round my old 30s semi. It’s so much warmer and better insulated which is fantastic given energy prices. If all houses for sale were snagged the same way as new builds the results would be hilarious! The problem is you don’t get a 2 year all inclusive warranty or a 10 year NHBC warranty with a second hand home, so who’s guna fix all the issues!
Some new builds are built terrible, some are fantastic. It’s a few bad ones that mean all new builds get tarnished the same. Likewise some plots/designs are terrible, others are amazing. You just need to do your research about the local area and that particular estate or builder before you buy.
I refuse to buy a new build. My partner and I recently bought our first house and though my partner did express interest I really put my foot down and said absolutely not.
To start with, they’re of shockingly bad build quality. Anecdotally, I’ve heard 2nd hand of a few people whose houses had to be totally rebuilt after it was discovered that the wrong type of timber had been used causing them to crumble. Not just that but they charge you extra for things that should be provided such as a lawn, connection to gas mains and sewers.
Secondly, they build them in the most inappropriate places. Flood plains especially. I mind one estate of what were meant to be high value mansions (Cala homes) built on top of an actual marsh. They dumped a massive amount of sand on top of this marsh and didn’t stabilise it properly so the sand is slumping out at the edges and everything is sinking causing massive structural issues for these houses. Thing is, these homes were £600-750k 15 to 20 years ago.
Thirdly and directly related to your point, developers come along to some random place and lazily shit out these awful building sites without the faintest microcosm of a thought as to how they might fit into the area dropping houses all over the place in a higglty pigglty fashion, cramming detached houses so close together that they might as well be terraced, no parks or green spaces, no schools or GPs, no libraries, no pubs and not even a church ffs! Sports facilities? Forget about it.
On a related note, in so many cases the developer builds their hellish little estate with one road leading in and out and that road goes straight onto a dangerous and high speed A-road so if you wanted to escape, good luck cause you’ll need it.
These new builds are worth fucking pennies and they’re trying to flog them off for £250k.
If you want to see good urban design, go to central Europe where soviet planners actually did a half decent job making pleasant housing estates. Seriously, you have these estates of flats but they actually built schools, arcade shops, doctor surgeries and all the good amenities to be within 500 metres of every block. Most of the blocks aren’t even that bad on the inside either.