I agree with Simon Jenkins’s overall message that England’s rural communities desperately need low-cost and affordable homes to rent and buy (David Cameron failed to foist new houses on rural areas. Why does Keir Starmer think he’ll succeed?, 18 July). But beyond that he seems to dive down a whole string of rabbit holes, such as 80% of British students expecting “the luxury of living away from home” – the implication being that students should not be enabled to make a first move towards independence. And then he rails against onshore wind turbines.
To say that the Conservatives failed to foist new houses on rural areas is wrong. It was their national planning policy framework that unleashed rampant executive housebuilding of four- and five-bedroom homes on villages and towns across rural England.
What rural communities crave are homes for those on low wages, first-time buyers, properties for old crocks like me to downsize into, and flats for single people to own or rent. For a start, the exemption enjoyed by housebuilders such that they don’t need to provide a percentage of affordable homes if a market housing development falls below a certain number of units, should be scrapped.
What our rural communities would support are homes suited to local conditions, as shown in local housing needs surveys and community neighbourhood plans. As the philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville stated in 1835, the “strength of free peoples resides in the local community. Local institutions are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they put it within the people’s reach; they teach people to appreciate its peaceful enjoyment and accustom them to make use of it.” On this Mr Jenkins and I can agree.
Dr James Derounian
Winchcombe, Gloucestershire
• The Conservative party had already foisted thousands of new houses on rural areas, which have done nothing to solve the housing crisis. Acres of sprawling look-alike housing estates can be seen around every town and village here in the West Country, as in every other part of Britain. There is no concession to modern design solutions, compact groupings or minimal land use, except in the meanness of inside space.
Restoration and conversion of the evidently huge number of empty properties throughout the country is discouraged by VAT (imposed on repairs but not on new-builds). This should be reversed, thus encouraging people to buy these properties, or councils to acquire them and make them available to rent.
I wish politicians and journalists would cease to trot out the mantra that “we must build more houses”. For, as Jenkins says, these developments are for those who can afford them and nothing to do with housing for the homeless. Please, Labour, don’t regress to the same rural development mania.
Valerie Organ
South Molton, Devon
• Simon Jenkins is right: there is a problem about where to site new homes. But, so far, updating seaside towns has been ignored, even though Reform did well in seaside locations such as Clacton.
Next door, Jaywick Sands has been identified as one of the most deprived neighbourhoods in England. With more people working from home, such areas become even more desirable to live and work in. The infrastructure is already there, rather than starting from scratch with new towns landed on unwilling locals.
Rosanne Bostock
Oxford
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