CBI: Step change needed in housing ...

[Calcaria]

THE GUARDIAN

Business leaders urge government to tackle UK housing crisis
Incentives for older people to move from large houses, expansion of rental sector and more building are needed, says CBI
Jill Treanor
https://www.theguardian.com/society/201 ... ness-lea...


CBI

Press Release
Step change needed in housing delivery and mindset – CBI
http://www.cbi.org.uk/news/step-change- ... sing-del...

Read the CBI's latest housing report here
"NO PLACE LIKE HOME"
DELIVERING NEW HOMES FOR A MORE PROSPEROUS BRITAIN
http://www.cbi.org.uk/cbi-prod/assets/F ... ing-Repo...

If the UK is to meet the Government’s welcome ambition to build one million new homes by 2020, a step change is needed in mind set and delivery on housebuilding, according a new CBI report.

In No Place Like Home the UK’s largest business group advocates an ambitious new way of thinking – matched with action – to tailor the types of houses that are built and the way they are delivered to the needs and aspirations of those who will live in them.

The UK’s housing shortage is not just a social issue, but an acute problem for businesses. The Government has taken bold steps to deal with the problem – from Help to Buy to the more recent combined Home Building Fund – but lack of affordable homes continues to hamper firms’ ability to recruit and retain talented staff, and long commutes impact workers’ productivity. ...

Josh Hardie, CBI Deputy Director-General, said:

“Solving the UK’s housing shortage has long been a tough nut to crack. For Britain’s businesses, it is far from something confined to the news columns. It’s a problem the impacts of which are seen every day, from high prices barring people moving home and deterring them from applying or staying in a job, to the dent it puts in productivity. ..

[Midsmartin]

This may be an unpopular view on the property board, but in my view it isn't so much a housing crisis as a population crisis. We have lots of houses, but the number of people just keeps going up (and of course we like to live in smaller groups too). As a result we live in some of Europe's most expensive and smallest houses, with congested roads and railways.. which all gives us a lower quality of life. All that boring farmland we put them on is actually producing some food for us too. We import 40% or so of our food. I'm not sure how confident we can be that the rest of the world will have spare food to send us in 50 or 100 years as its population rises, dealing with all manner of problems along the way from soil erosion, groundwater depletion, to climate change.

So. yes, of course the people we have need somewhere to live, but the future priority should be an attempt to control population growth worldwide - I don't just mean to stop immigration in Daily Mail style. That will be hard, but we need to try. There are two sides to the supply/demand equation, but we only ever seem to hear about increasing the supply, not reducing demand.

I also know that building houses is good for our economy, but what is our final objective here? We can't go on forever doing that.

I'll leave you to it now.. don't want to completely hijack your thread!

[youfoolishboy]

I suggest reducing demand is impossible in a free country unless you read the Daily Mail hence nobody talks about it. We actually have a declining population among the native population it is the migrants that actually help us have enough workers to support the system. You do after all need a rising population to support the larger number of retired and unfit to work part of the population if you don't believe me have a look at the problems Japan have with a declining population.
OK that should get a bite.

[MagicRat]

I suggest reducing demand is impossible in a free country unless you read the Daily Mail hence nobody talks about it. We actually have a declining population among the native population it is the migrants that actually help us have enough workers to support the system. You do after all need a rising population to support the larger number of retired and unfit to work part of the population if you don't believe me have a look at the problems Japan have with a declining population.
OK that should get a bite.

With finite land mass and resources at some stage an ever rising population results in an ever decreasing quality of life for the majority. Smaller living spaces, more crowded roads; longer queues for education, healthcare and essential services. Reducing demand is not impossible; it is essential.

How about a policy of planned population reduction only allowing immigration by people who truly provide high value skills to the economy? Address the issue of the ageing demographic by mandating healthy living so that the majority can look after themselves for longer. Impose onerous penalties and withdraw healthcare for those that knowingly choose to adopt unhealthy lifestyles. Reward people that take responsibility for their own lives.

[youfoolishboy]

Have a good look at google earth at the UK and tell me we are densely packed. There is plenty of room just need to get rid the NIMBies and large landowners who don’t want neighbours and magically land will become free to build on. Longer queues for heathcare is a function of not putting enough money into healthcare its been a problem long before we had migration. I have not noticed more crowded road they are just as crowded as they always have been round me. Migrants tend not to own cars they have enough problems getting food and somewhere affordable to stay so you cannot blame them for driving more 4x4s. We as a country desperately need to increase production and exports to pay of our large debts getting rid of the migrant workers is akin to throwing out the paddle whilst up a certain creek
Taking in migrants who only work in high end jobs is fine but who will pick vegetables and do all the other manual work our population refuses to do. Try watching some programs with farmers complaining they cannot get workers to work in the fields other business have the same problem we just don’t have people who will do the work even for low skill jobs so your idea does not work in reality. As for your dictating how people live by penalising them by removing healthcare good luck with convincing any political party to bring in that draconian law. We live in free country if you are really keen on moderating lifestyles ban the products, again good luck getting a party to actually do it there would literally be riots.

[TopOnePercent]

There is plenty of room just need to get rid the NIMBies and large landowners who don’t want neighbours and magically land will become free to build on.

The problem with just throwing up more houses, is that nobody builds commensurate infrastructure to support them - roads, rail, doctors, dentists, schools etc. Just the houses.

Were the cost of providing said infrastructure added to the cost of the house, new builds would be the most expensive houses in the country by a very long way. So what we have instead is new people moving into an area and expecting to just use the infrastructure that already exists, crowding out some of those already living in the area. That is why people object to new housing estates.

Longer queues for heathcare is a function of not putting enough money into healthcare its been a problem long before we had migration.

The NHS is funded up to the eye balls. We spend £120 Billion on it in England alone. The problems with healthcare are not financial, they are efficiency and allocation of resource related.

I have not noticed more crowded road they are just as crowded as they always have been round me. Migrants tend not to own cars they have enough problems getting food and somewhere affordable to stay so you cannot blame them for driving more 4x4s. We as a country desperately need to increase production and exports to pay of our large debts getting rid of the migrant workers is akin to throwing out the paddle whilst up a certain creek

I've been driving 20+ years. I can well remember when you could drive through London in the early hours of the morning and experience empty roads. Not now. I can recall regularly driving down from the North East to Cornwall overnight, because I could do the drive in about 6 hours - good luck with that now.

My wife is a migrant, as is one half of most of our coupled up friends. They ALL drive cars. Half my team at work are migrants from all over the world, and again, they own a lot of cars between them.

Taking in migrants who only work in high end jobs is fine but who will pick vegetables and do all the other manual work our population refuses to do.

Simply remove the choice and allocate the role to someone currently unemployed.

Open door immigration has not worked for most people outside of London. Sooner or later population reduction becomes the logical strategy, as todays younger carers become tomorrows older cared for, you need what amounts to a Ponzi scheme to keep it rolling. And all Ponzi schemes ultimately fail for the same reason.

Immigration is possibly best debated on another board, so this will be my only post on the matter here.

[Wizard]

Surely the issue cannot be looked at nationally. The South East is relatively crowded and has eye watering house prices. Other parts of the UK have many fewer people and in sme cases houses cost a fraction of the price in the South East. The problem is that the South East has a disproportionate number of the better paying jobs, this draws in people who bid up house prices.

What we need is not more or less but a rebalancing. Trouble is that to do this requires a long term plan and five year term at best governments are not really interested in long term.

Terry.

[youfoolishboy]

Wizard thank you for pointing out the obvious point that the previous poster ignored in my post. There is plenty of space in the UK the SE is over crowded infrastructure is not a problem there are empty houses up north. In further reply to the anti immigration argument the poster felt was important I read last night an old FT I picked up at the airport a few weeks ago and there was an article highlighting the worries of food manufacturers in the Midlands, factories not farmers, that they are going to struggle if migrants are take out of the workforce as they cannot get enough of them now. A few years ago before the migration of Poles etc they just could not get staff at all and those they got were very unreliable. A local employment agent said he would book twice the number of people he needed for any work assignment as he rarely go enough of them on the day to actually get out of bed. I really get annoyed by the one eye view that UK workers are desperate to work or can be forced to work it has been tried before and failed latest attempt to remove some of the 'long term sick' from the dole queue resulted in almost riots.