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Magazine Issue 7 - Spring 1998
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| Take action for social housing and defend the green belt... Paul Deluce reports on the growing national housing and land crisis. The fight against greenfield housing developments has finally hit the national political agenda. A media feeding frenzy followed the Government's decision to allow ten thousand homes to be built west of Stevenage, and two thousand at Newcastle. These developments, the first major incursion in to the Green Belt for sixty years, will pave the way for councils throughout the country to relax their greenbelt planning regulations. A wave of planning permissions for housing schemes is expected to follow. Developers, who have been buying up cheap agricultural Iand for many years, are rubbing their hands in excited anticipation at the long awaited-cash bonanza. The noise of corporate snouts in the trough has been deafening. However, local communities, national campaign organisations, the direct action movement, and even the Tory party are rising up and organising what the construction trade press has dubbed "the second eco-war" (the first being the fight against the national road programme). At Sandy Lane outside Bradford, where Bryant Homes are currently trying to build a housing scheme on the edge of the village, local residents have turned to direct action. They have blockaded the site entrance with their caravans, and have been joined by a pantomime cow, keen to 'moove' the developers out of her field. Campaigners in Stevenage have been working round the clock to defeat their scheme. They are being supported by CPRE, FoE and that merry bunch of eco warriors, the Tory party - led by William Hague, complete with green wellies and banners. Action for Social Housing, a newly formed coalition of direct action groups, recently occupied the headquarters of the (Housebuilders Federation), the construction industry's principal housing lobby group. They plan to 'lobby' housebuilding companies such as Bryant Homes in the near future. This of course, is just the beginning. The debate about the number of new homes that need to be built is currently wide open and rapidly changing. The government has now abandoned the "predict and provide" model (see p.4 article, this issue), which forecast the need for an additional 4.4 million homes. They have replaced it with something ca11ed "monitor and manage", which is supposed to involve regional Ievel decisions about the amount of new homes needed. According to a recent study by the homeless campaign group Shelter, 1.4 million new homes are actually required. As yet, there has been a failure to include a number of housing issues in the 'Great Housing Debate'. For example, it is widely accepted that there are three-quarters of a million empty properties in the U.K. Now is surely the time for this particular national scandal to be addressed. A massive resurgence in the s q u a t t e r s 'movement is predicted. Many thousands of people used to live on the canals and nverways of Britain, but they have been driven out by tourism. An increase in affordable riverboat housing should be encouraged for those who choose to live on boats rather than in houses. A typical corporate housing development will require new roads, new car parking, supermarkets and so on. Massive areas of land will be bulldozed. How about some car free developments and more housing co-ops? Hey, how about some low impact developments along the lines of Tinker's Bubble in Somerset? Finally, brownfield Iand is in short supply in the south of England, but it is covered with developments that society can live without, such as luxury hotels and the Millennium Dome. It's high time that these kind of developments were stopped, and the land made available to the wider community, especially those who need a roof over their heads, a place to grow and purchase food, and places to work and play. Demand for new housing seems to come from two constituencies: those in genuine need, and from a market driven by the desire of the aMuent middle cIasses to move to the countryside in ever increasing numbers. While many of us share a common dream of one day owning a lovely house in the country, it will inevitably result in the widespread destruction of the very thing that we all love, the countryside. We aIso believe that the Government lacks the vision to seize this opportunity and move this debate forward for the benefit of all. So we should concentrate our efforts on doing it for ourselves. We must stand up, unite, liberate those empty homes and defend those green spaces. Otherwise, if the developers have their way we shall see over the next twenty years the most appalling corporate rampage over what is left of this beautiful land. Contact: Urgent Housing Network, Box HN, 111 Magdalen Rd. Oxford OX4 1RQ |