Gone very quiet

[Digga]

skwdenyer said:

Local councils for many many years were forced to sell off stock and banned from building more with the money. Today, where will they get the cash, when central Govt still mandates what they get and what it is to be spent on (and have slashed the funding).

Easy to blame local Govt - that's what central Govt wants you to do. Doesn't scan, however.

This is the crux:



And yes, I know plenty who happily lived in post war prefabs. There are a few still about around here.

https://x.com/NobleFrancis/status/1770748737192616...

[skwdenyer]

Digga said:

skwdenyer said:

Local councils for many many years were forced to sell off stock and banned from building more with the money. Today, where will they get the cash, when central Govt still mandates what they get and what it is to be spent on (and have slashed the funding).

Easy to blame local Govt - that's what central Govt wants you to do. Doesn't scan, however.

This is the crux:



And yes, I know plenty who happily lived in post war prefabs. There are a few still about around here.

https://x.com/NobleFrancis/status/1770748737192616...

I know. Now, hands up who here voted for this ridiculous policy.

[ThingsBehindTheSun]

Dr Interceptor said:

My local pub does this... Only employs bar staff between 18 and 20 to save £2.84 per hour per staff member. The problem is they're (generally) unreliable, grumpy, moody, don't speak properly, and generally not very good at their job. You do get the odd good one of course.

We went to a pub for food once that only employed youngsters and they were exactly like this. Plus they seemed to not want to use a pen to write anything down and just gave us a "I got this" nod as each of us ordered.

First of all they completely messed up the drink order.

Then the food arrived and they had completely messed this up. We then got the "We can make you another one and it will be 15 minutes, is that OK"?

Not really, the whole point is we want to eat together. If you had just written this down this would not have happened.

Never been back since.

[Digga]

skwdenyer said:

I know. Now, hands up who here voted for this ridiculous policy.

That's as disingenuous as saying "hands up who voted for 20mph speed limits in Wales".

[Steve H]

skwdenyer said:

But how would people on NMW have coped with inflation, especially in energy bills but also more generally, without an increase?

I'm like a broken record, I'm afraid - we needed to let the housing market collapse in 2008/9 and be rebuilt sustainably, with lots of investment in new units on (sanely-valued) land. It is the only solution to this problem if we won't accept the building of masses of new social housing.

Surely if house prices collapse, the only investment in new housing will be if local/national government puts it into social housing? Commercial developers would just be mothballing everything until things improved. Put it another way, when prices did drop significantly in 08-09 that’s exactly what they did.


I was too young when Maggie got started but would have voted for selling off council housing, but I can’t see any argument for more not being built. It’s the perfect way of providing (relatively) sensibly priced rental housing and boosting home ownership levels for the current generation that are struggling to get on the ladder.

Even if we allow that the previous sale money has now been pissed away, I would have thought the income raised by renting new homes out would cover the investment cost if organised correctly.

[Paddymcc]

Steve H said:

I would have thought the income raised by renting new homes out would cover the investment cost if organised correctly.

Yes surely the cost of subsidising the private landlords and tennants would more than cover the costs of the mortgage on a property if they actually built them themselves.

Personally id put a moratorium on people buying the council house stock until things are at least on a path to being fixed.

[Steve H]

Is there any council stock left that is still being sold?

TBH I thought it had pretty much all gone and was handled by housing associations that rent out but don’t sell now.

[skwdenyer]

Steve H said:

Is there any council stock left that is still being sold?

TBH I thought it had pretty much all gone and was handled by housing associations that rent out but don’t sell now.

Govt is extending RTB to Housing Association stock - utter madness. Compelling HAs to sell.

[skwdenyer]

Steve H said:

skwdenyer said:

But how would people on NMW have coped with inflation, especially in energy bills but also more generally, without an increase?

I'm like a broken record, I'm afraid - we needed to let the housing market collapse in 2008/9 and be rebuilt sustainably, with lots of investment in new units on (sanely-valued) land. It is the only solution to this problem if we won't accept the building of masses of new social housing.

Surely if house prices collapse, the only investment in new housing will be if local/national government puts it into social housing? Commercial developers would just be mothballing everything until things improved. Put it another way, when prices did drop significantly in 08-09 that’s exactly what they did.


I was too young when Maggie got started but would have voted for selling off council housing, but I can’t see any argument for more not being built. It’s the perfect way of providing (relatively) sensibly priced rental housing and boosting home ownership levels for the current generation that are struggling to get on the ladder.

Even if we allow that the previous sale money has now been pissed away, I would have thought the income raised by renting new homes out would cover the investment cost if organised correctly.

If in 2008/9, Govt had signalled clearly that prices would not be allowed to return to previous levels, I suspect things would have been different. Developers will always develop if there's margin; the problem was all the banked land at huge prices.

Selling off Council Housing is madness. It was mostly really great quality stock, designed to be maintainable and very difficult to replace, as well as often being in great locations as urban environments expanded (we mustn't ghettoise social housing).

It would have been far more efficient for Govt to co-invest with developers in building affordable housing for sale. Giving away lots of housing at very cheap rates to people who happened to have been renting for a long time (often without any means testing - council housing was get-in / stay-in, never needs-based) was just a giant piece of poorly-controlled asset transfer. Had Labour proposed it in a different way, it would have been branded "wealth redistribution" and stealing public assets to buy off poor voters.

[clockworks]

Is it even possible for local authorities to build decent social housing at an "affordable" price, unless done on a large scale?

With building costs for extensions at £1500+ per sq metre, a compact 3 bed would cost at least £100k for the shell. Add in the price of a plot, plus fitting it out, and it's going to cost £200k. Just the interest on the loan would be more than the "social" rent income.

Where I live, new builds are going on the market for around 50% more than the equivalent 1960's build. 4 bed dormer bungalow next door has just gone on the market at £450k. Nicely updated too.
New build 4 beds the other side of the village are £600k and up. One on a wider plot (proper detached, with more the 3 feet between buildings) is closer to £700k.

Maybe prefabs are the only real option?

[classicaholic]

In the UK we seem to want to build with bricks and mortar a lot whereas I built a house in the US that was really very quick to build, has great insulation and is warm in the winter and cool enough in the summer at a much higher temperature range than we get in Britain. The house is timber frame with boarded outsides, lots of insulation and then covered with plastic siding, the roof is basically roofing felt and was incredibly quick to build and didnt cost a fortune, 18 years on and its still looking good and is fully watertight, I was sceptical at 1st as it looked like a garden shed build wise but it and millions of others in the US cant be wrong.

[Paddymcc]

classicaholic said:

In the UK we seem to want to build with bricks and mortar a lot whereas I built a house in the US that was really very quick to build, has great insulation and is warm in the winter and cool enough in the summer at a much higher temperature range than we get in Britain. The house is timber frame with boarded outsides, lots of insulation and then covered with plastic siding, the roof is basically roofing felt and was incredibly quick to build and didnt cost a fortune, 18 years on and its still looking good and is fully watertight, I was sceptical at 1st as it looked like a garden shed build wise but it and millions of others in the US cant be wrong.

I think in the UK there is difficulty getting insurance cover for non standard construction methods? Timber frame with brick outer walls are popular here in Ireland in the North and South.

I posted a picture earlier of the tin bungalows built after WW2 and they surely wouldn't cost much to build these days with prefabricated systems.

[Sheepshanks]

skwdenyer said:

And I've been saying for a long, long time that our economy is broken, a fact only hidden by a variety of smoke and mirrors and Govt policy (including de facto subsidies for low-paid workers). So many on here shouted me down.

Read somewhere the other day that Warren Buffett strongly believes in working tax credits as a way of rebalancing the difference between those on vastly different rates of pay.

[Strocky]

Paddymcc said:

I had this conversation with my accountant recently when he asked was i interested in taking on some more labour so i pointed him at my profit margin % and how much i would have to increase turnover to cover that 24k a year.

Simply not worth the hassle.


With regards the housing posts above i cannot understand how and why local councils are not flat out building those pre-fab bungalows to solve things. My local town still has quite a few of those tin ones constructed after WW2 and they are still perfectly serviceable and liveable.

The solutions are there its just no one wants to do anything about it.

A handy internment camp for those wanting to dodge national service

[skwdenyer]

Paddymcc said:

classicaholic said:

In the UK we seem to want to build with bricks and mortar a lot whereas I built a house in the US that was really very quick to build, has great insulation and is warm in the winter and cool enough in the summer at a much higher temperature range than we get in Britain. The house is timber frame with boarded outsides, lots of insulation and then covered with plastic siding, the roof is basically roofing felt and was incredibly quick to build and didnt cost a fortune, 18 years on and its still looking good and is fully watertight, I was sceptical at 1st as it looked like a garden shed build wise but it and millions of others in the US cant be wrong.

I think in the UK there is difficulty getting insurance cover for non standard construction methods? Timber frame with brick outer walls are popular here in Ireland in the North and South.

I posted a picture earlier of the tin bungalows built after WW2 and they surely wouldn't cost much to build these days with prefabricated systems.

The great thing about Governments is they can self-insure. There are lots of "unconventional" building methods that would be appropriate for large-scale social housing. Obviously we need to be careful (for instance, all those cancerous concrete towers), but social housing is an area ripe to help the progression of British building standards.

If that has the additional feature of making it harder for RTB to operate, that's a good outcome in my book

[Sheepshanks]

Strocky said:

Paddymcc said:

I had this conversation with my accountant recently when he asked was i interested in taking on some more labour so i pointed him at my profit margin % and how much i would have to increase turnover to cover that 24k a year.

Simply not worth the hassle.


With regards the housing posts above i cannot understand how and why local councils are not flat out building those pre-fab bungalows to solve things. My local town still has quite a few of those tin ones constructed after WW2 and they are still perfectly serviceable and liveable.

The solutions are there its just no one wants to do anything about it.

A handy internment camp for those wanting to dodge national service

It's mentioned in another thread today that Britian has the highest proportion of substandard dwellings in Europe. Feels embarrasiing, that.

Also the second lowest number of dwellings relative to population.

[Digga]

Well, this gives a decent handle on the magnitude of decline in constrution:

https://www.cityam.com/speedy-hire-profit-tumbles-...

It also serves to remind that, every year a government fails to keep house construction on an even keel, leads to a huge reduction in capacity of the ancillary industries.

[skwdenyer]

Digga said:

Well, this gives a decent handle on the magnitude of decline in constrution:

https://www.cityam.com/speedy-hire-profit-tumbles-...

It also serves to remind that, every year a government fails to keep house construction on an even keel, leads to a huge reduction in capacity of the ancillary industries.

Indeed. But Labour would have been so much worse

[Digga]

skwdenyer said:

Digga said:

Well, this gives a decent handle on the magnitude of decline in constrution:

https://www.cityam.com/speedy-hire-profit-tumbles-...

It also serves to remind that, every year a government fails to keep house construction on an even keel, leads to a huge reduction in capacity of the ancillary industries.

Indeed. But Labour would have been so much worse

The decline began in 1978 and no government since has halted it.

[skwdenyer]

Digga said:

skwdenyer said:

Digga said:

Well, this gives a decent handle on the magnitude of decline in constrution:

https://www.cityam.com/speedy-hire-profit-tumbles-...

It also serves to remind that, every year a government fails to keep house construction on an even keel, leads to a huge reduction in capacity of the ancillary industries.

Indeed. But Labour would have been so much worse

The decline began in 1978 and no government since has halted it.

I agree. The “revolution” of the 1980s was that the private sector would fix it. Of course the private sector has operated precisely as one would expect, maximising profits not output.

Unfashionable though it may be amongst many on the right, some big Government is actually needed.