I see a lot of people often get upset over new housing estates being built in their neighbourhood, often for some valid reasons of extra impact on infrastructure and local amenities. But aside from that, what is your opinion and feelings?
Do you oppose them on grounds of impact on the feel of the neighbourhood, or are you otherwise indifferent?
37 comments
We’re surrounded by greenbelt, I don’t want more houses being built around us.
Happy for houses to be built on previously developed brownfield sites.
There’s loads of houses going up round here at the moment. A lot of it being built on green field sites. Farmers selling off parcels of land, that kind of thing.
There’s a lot of objection to them. People roll-out the green-belt argument, rightly or wrongly. People need places to live, after all. I think the main problem is that the houses are built but there’s no investment in services and infrastructure. No new doctor’s surgeries. No new schools, or dentists. No shops, cafes, playgrounds for the kids. There are rarely even any new bus routes or cycle paths.
Consequently, existing services get stretched and traffic can be a nightmare as people are forced to drive a couple of miles or more to access something that really could have been within walking distance.
I’m not sure what the solution is, or even if one is needed. But that seems to be the biggest issue with new estates popping up everywhere.
Build them. People need homes.
More houses means more people and more people means more nice restaurants and bars and all the stuff I enjoy. I’m all for it.
Sexually aroused.
There’s been around 1500 built or being built near to where I used to live and a lot of people have objected to them. Personally, I don’t really care about the quantity, as long as the infrastructure is updated with schools, surgeries etc.
The biggest problem is the quality of the building, it’s absolutely atrocious. Spindly, thin, badly built and badly finished in a very short amount of time, I watched one batch go up in less that 2 months. They’re akin to the pre fabs that went up after the war and like them they won’t last 50 years, I pity the poor saps that have bought them.
I support any development that increases the number of homes in my area. Even if my so-called progressive councillors don’t.
Wish there were more of these. Lovely dense housing, driving down the prices and pushing out the awful old-stock housing. Coupled with more schools, GPs and Warhammer stores to fulfil the infrastructure needs. Ideally, all supported by solar panels in the surrounded fields. Yes in my backyard!
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I’d be happy to see more homes built if there were more schools and hospitals to go with it.
We need more houses. But it’s a damn shame that these new estates don’t have any facilities, and the roads to and from these estates to wherever the nearest shops are certainly won’t get upgraded… imo new estates need a shop or two, room for a hairdresser or whatever, a newsagent…
All depends really. My local council keeps slapping houses up with no thought about the lack of infrastructure.
Also it depends where they’re built. We moved to the house we’re in because it has a beautiful view of the sea. I wouldn’t be too happy if they built a row of houses in front of mine that would block that nice view.
Build them sure, but why do they all have to cost half a million? Have not seen one house go up near me that could be affordable to first time buyers or people with lower income. It’s shocking!
They are needed, but they won’t solve the problem. 250k rough average net migration over the last 20 years, roundabout 150k new homes every year. We’d have to build more than a million houses this year to even get back to where we were in 2003, yet alone actually make a dent in increasing supply relative to demand. 500000 people came to the UK this year all needing accommodation. No wonder the rental market is insane. At the current rate of growth (a blip I admit because of Hong Kong and the end of Covid) to have any hope of improving things in the next few decades we need to be building a Cardiff and all the associated infrastructure and services every year.
The only people who benefit from ever expanding populations and the required mass development are landlords and the government.
Usually the ones that are built on brown land are already in a location with a decent amount of amenities.
I am opposed to the one immediately next to where I lived.
First reason is plumbing. The sewerage has historically been unable to cope, even with the demands of the current housing. It’s been a few years since we complained enough to get it fixed, but all they’ll have done is match the required capacity and not allow for excess.
Second reason is access. There’s only two viable routes onto those fields. One is the farmer’s access track, but that opens literally metres from a light controlled railway bridge. The next one is through a small cluster of houses a few years newer than where I live, where the road in was left open-end as if to allow for such a thing. However, that’s only about 50 metres further down from the farm track, so still fairly close to the bridge.
Third is pedestrian safety. The only way to cross the railway bridge is on the southbound side of the road. These new houses would be on the northbound. The council has been refusing to install a pedestrian crossing on this busy road for over a decade.
If they affordable well built housing then absolutely, but anything above £150k can piss off
I get upset because all the new developments near me are 4-6 bedroom detached homes with a truly niggardly number of so-called affordable homes tucked away somewhere at the back and absolutely no social housing.
I’m on the other side of this, one of the people in the new homes. I do often wonder what the people living nearby must think, after being on the edge of countryside for so long and now having a new town being developed. There are plans for infrastructure at least (we have a school and a leisure centre is going through planning permission). But yeah, I can see why people would be a bit miffed.
I don’t like housing estates when the area they are in are in disrepair. They usually just try and turn the housing estate into its own little area within an area and give it its own name to not associate it with the area. Instead of focusing money on building up the whole area they just focus on the estate and that’s it. Sorry if that sounded like a rant
I don’t have a problem with new houses themselves but in the west country the sheer number of new houses is mental ,
Areas supposedly rural are no more but still have rural amenities bugger all buses etc.
They have just built 40 odd houses in our village , we only had 34 before,
The next village same thing except its the local town that has come to meet them.
It’s unsustainable no new schools, roads, railways, doctors , or work.
10mins south a new town is going in sherford, 40 mins up the road another new town Cranbrook, 1000s of houses going into the torbay area and I think another 1000 or so at Newton abbot , vast estates at Exeter, all of this and more in a half hour drive,
It’s like a cancerous growth swallowing up devon and Cornwall at the moment.
Infrastructure and amenities is the biggest issue I think. More people accessing the same services, same school places, same GP surgeries and dentists, same municipal pools, using the same parks and playgrounds.. Its a recipe for disaster, or at least overcrowded towns and cities.
Aside from that however, I think most new estates look absolutely awful. The houses are small and all really samey, with tiny gardens and inadequate drainage. The build quality is terrible – cheapest of the cheap. They’re often leasehold rather than freehold, meaning ground rents can escalate quickly. They roads are often unadopted by the council, at least until the entire estate is built, meaning the early purchasers are having to pay out for service charges. The layouts of these estates are awful, car-centric mazes whereby you have to drive to get anywhere at all. Active travel is an afterthought, if it’s considered at all, and I’ve seen at least one estate where to get to the playground literally on the other side of a fence, you would have to walk following the windy twisty roads out of the estate, walk along the busy main road and turn back on yourself down another street – a 0.8mile walk to get to the playground you could see from your driveway.
Absolutely hate them. I’m starting to look to buy a house, and the first thing on my “no” list is new build houses on mass estates.
Horrible, wherever they are.
I’m for new affordable housing in the right place but very much against the developers trying to cash in on land that has been put aside (green belt, AONB, National Parks, SSSI etc.) for the benefit of the existing residents. In Brighton (where I am) there are loads of developments going up and a lot of push from developers trying to build on what green spaces we have left. We’re hemmed in by the South Downs national park to the north and the sea to the south so land is very much at a premium. My worry is that we end up like some of the big cities with practically zero green space and an overcrowded city. I’ve thought about this quite a bit and struggle to understand why there is a need not just in my area but in general. Surely there is a limit to the population that can be supported in a specific area? If there isn’t the infrastructure to support them and they can’t live here then go somewhere else. What drives people to an area? If it’s for a job then get a job closer to where you live now or research the place you’re moving to. Don’t accept it then bitch about how much it costs to rent/buy or the lack of facilities.
I’m sure there’s an upside.
Apart from the construction disruption, massively increased traffic, hugely increased demand for doctors (already impossible to get an appointment), schools, dentists (hahahaha) etc etc
No problem with it if done correctly.
Converting the disused railway shunt yard behind my house into housing, great plan! My full support.
Converting a public common which plays a vital part in drainage and has alot of wildlife in? Silly idea and will have me objecting.
Only issue with the estate behind is that they are too tightly packed with not enough parking.
Basically sensibly located, ideally brownfield, developments are great. But ripping up valuable pieces of our environment is a bad idea.
My area has so many older brownfield sites it could host home to meet the cities housing target no problem. But for whatever reason these aren’t being built on.
Well, I didn’t have the most favourable opinion of Bellway before they built a new estate right next door to my house, but it couldn’t get any worse now.
– Essentially tried to steal a patch of land from me. They’d sold plots based on inaccurate surveys they had made. “But they’ve already been sold” – “tough shit”.
– Trucks, lorries, etc using my driveway as a turning point when it isn’t designed for vehicles of that size, therefore completely wrecking my garden in the process. Had to go out and take photos of them doing it before they would stop and fix it.
– On the subject of the driveway, “can we rip yours up so we can access the services underneath?”.
– The houses themselves are built with the usual amount of care and consideration. Already so many complaints from the new neighbours, including one street where everyone’s gardens turn into a pond when it rains too much.
I could go on and on. I’m fine with new housing, even if it is nearby. There’s a need for it. But there are ways and means of doing it. Bellway are absolute mickey-takers. One of the scummiest companies around.
I’m in Bristol. After the failed ‘Avon’ experiment in the 70s it’s back to being run by a council that only controls the core City and not the hinterlands/commuter belt
An inability to play nice with the surrounding councils made worse by a dickhead Mayor has meant:
– We do whatever Bristol Uni want, even if it requires half the town being student accomodation.
– We have no room within the boundaries for housing meaning we’re approving 15 story+ blocks all over the place, some of which do not meet the council’s own standards.
So yeah – I don’t care about development per say, just when it’s done in an irresponsible manor.
investors bought an old farm which was the nice view from our council houses living room.. im not joking new developers have build new build over swamp land in record time and now they are struggling to fix all tbe problems arising from the ground shifting and houses sinking.. some have even bought a house there.. all in all i think its just empty houses to attract foreign investment.. its ruining this country..
Live in a fairly new one and while it was great for us to get on the housing ladder, we are looking to move fairly soon.
We’ve been here five years and our road still isn’t finished, the connecting road to the main road isn’t finished, and the main road still hasn’t been adopted by the council, which means ours can’t be.
As a result of the council not adopting the area, we’re currently paying a “management” fee on top of council tax. This, despite the “green” at the end of our road still being half building site.
They’ve just built a new primary school and a sixth form college is due to be built soon too, but a lot of the extras promised are nowhere to be seen. Cinema, shops, bars, restaurants, etc. were all supposed to be part of the development, but aside from half a dozen retail units that have sat empty the entire time we’ve been here, there’s no sign of any of it. Laughably, some of the units have signs in the windows promising a grand opening in 2019.
A woman in the estate had an offer to buy one of the units at the listed price essentially ignored, and it seems the developers have form for ignoring offers, raising the asking prices to unreasonable levels, claiming lack of interest, then turning the units into more flats.
They’re currently finishing what they’ve dubbed “Phase 3” of the development, but it’s actually the fourth phase of building because they split “Phase 2” into “Phase 2a” and “Phase 2b”. “Phase 3” has had a bit of a setback though, because they’ve built half of it on old dockland for “waterfront” views and it flooded a massive chunk of the half-built houses when we had a period of rain a month or two back and had a strangely high tide. There aren’t any proper flood defenses protecting the dockside from the sea, so I’m not really sure what their plan is there.
I live in the new forest and round here all we hear is bs like “80 new affordable homes to be built” yet I don’t think they’ve built much in the 4 years I’ve lived here I think they need to leave the south coast alone but especially in the new forest as there’s no infrastructure for it like a good 60%are over 60 and most the jobs are either wiping old peoples arses or working in hospitality/pubs which is not any good for anyone wanting to actually achieve something plus I like the fact the beaches aren’t to busy in comparison to Bournemouth where you can’t even move
I work for a developer in Scotland, we are quite small (less than 200 total per year) and tend to develop rural sites.
What we find is people who actually come from rural communities generally always want new homes as it helps to sustain the local services like the corner shop, community hall and small primary school.
The people who complain are the “incomers” who bought homes on the first phase of a development, who now sware (lie) they didn’t know there would be a second phase next to them and do everything in their power to stop an allocated development site. These are of course the people who’s children go to private school and have no concern about the local school. The same people who don’t care about developer obligations that help fund the local GP or community facilities.
NIMBY-ism at its finest.
I understand people saying that these new estates don’t come with a new school or GP surgery for example. But we have a finite amount of Teachers and GPs. The government limit the number of new doctors trained each year for example.
So if a new GP surgery was built or new School, those doctors and GPs would just come from other existing surgeries and schools.
Therefore all you’re doing is moving the resource from one place to another without replacing it.
Long story short – unless we trained new doctors and teachers in line with new housing being built, there’s little point building new GP buildings and new schools? The only benefit would be less travel involved to get to the then further stretched resource?
So the issue is perhaps that we aren’t training enough GPs and Teachers in line with the rate of population increase, rather where the existing ones are located?
It’s just a thought that’s popped up each time I see this in the news!
Hate them , barely any goes to the locals and they just end up being filled by people they ship from places like Tottenham who set up enclaves.
My town is currently getting a massive housing estate expansion on the edge of town.
The main issue that people have pointed out that there’s currently no additional facilities (shops, schools) being built. The one exception being that we may be getting a McDonalds. The nearest primary school is well over a mile away as is the High Street.
Also the neighbouring village is now being absorbed by the town
As a Town Planner this is an interesting thread to read.
Must go hand in hand with infrastructure (shops, schools, medical care). This infrastructure must be completed before it is needed.
Other than that I don’t mind more houses. I do hate shoddy construction/ building practises and the awful planning that makes them a maze of shitness with zero parking.