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[email protected] · September 9th 15, 04:59 PM posted to uk.transport.london

In article , (Roland Perry)
wrote:

In message , at
14:28:06 on Wed, 9 Sep 2015, David Cantrell
remarked:
In some years they built more than 400,000 houses. Today we can't
manage even 300,000.
That's because Gordon Brown caused a serious recession and people
couldn't easily pay for new houses. Whole "new towns" have been put on
hold as a result.

I'm more inclined to blame Clement Attlee's green belts. At least in
London and its immediate surroundings there is little land left to build
on unless you first knock something down. ALL of the new developments
near my place - and there are a lot of them - are on the site of some
now demolished building.

Whereas where I live in Mid-Cambs, a place with a severe housing
shortage, the vast majority of new homes are on green fields sites.
Assuming the developers can be bothered to build them, which for a
couple of the developments north of Cambridge they can't.

There are a few brown-site developments in the City Centre, but they
are usually at the high end of the market (eg £500k for two beds).

The large amount of (fairly) recent building on former employment sites,
mainly ex-Philips like at St Andrew's Road and St Matthew's Gardens, is more
reasonably priced. And some 30% is affordable housing (40% on newer
developments).

--
Colin Rosenstiel