Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Britain doesn’t build

worksinprogress.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 520 posts

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#11

Post by dijit »

roenxi wrote: post #4

Britain's energy-per-capita has collapsed since 1965 [0]. How are they meant to build houses and live in them without energy? Construction is one of the most energy-intensive activities we have, and maintaining a warm home is up there. Britain is one of the usual suspects who listened to environmentalists, fought nuclear, let fossil fuels slide and bet big on renewables. They're going to need to have a bit of a focus…

I mean, there's a few things inaccurate with this statement.

The UK's targets meet the very minimum which they agreed to with other nations (Paris Accords: https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement) but are trotted out by the conservatives as if they're very forward thinking.

However, it was 2008 that the UK agreed that it would build more nuclear energy generation plants, and EDF planned to build 4 of those by 2017.

On 26 January 2017, the UK notified the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) of its intention to withdraw, following on from its decision to withdraw from the European Union. Leaving has wide-ranging implications for Britain's nuclear industry, including regulation and research, access to nuclear materials and impacts about twenty nuclear co-operation agreements with non-EU countries.

The UK withdrawal raises the question of nuclear fuel availability in the UK, and the need for the UK to enter into new treaties relating to the transportation of nuclear materials, which haven't even begun.

In 2020, nuclear power generated 46 terawatt hours (TWh) of UK electricity, just over 15% of gross electricity generation, and about half its 1998 peak of 91 TWh.

The new EDF sites aren't ready and are expected to be commissioned by 2026, just in time for Hartlepool and Heysham 1 to close down.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#12

Post by muteor »

dairylee wrote: post #5
bluescrn wrote: post #2

There's loads of houses being built in the UK (often of questionable quality, built for maximum profit, packed into minimal amounts of space). It may still not be enough to match the demand, but the real problem is we don't seem to be building any infrastructure to support these homes. More people and more homes requires more roads, railways, hospitals, police stations, power stations, sewer capacity, even reservoirs…

The infrastructure is often insufficient for existing homes nevermind for any expansion. I've recently moved house but I'm having to stay registered to my Dentist & Doctors 30 miles away because the wait list to get registered in my new town is months.

They just built over 1000 homes near me, but not one dentist or doctors. Now the small local surgeries are expected to take these new households on. Again government policy not holding up to community needs.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#13

Post by ideamotor »

bluescrn wrote: post #2

There's loads of houses being built in the UK (often of questionable quality, built for maximum profit, packed into minimal amounts of space). It may still not be enough to match the demand, but the real problem is we don't seem to be building any infrastructure to support these homes. More people and more homes requires more roads, railways, hospitals, police stations, power stations, sewer capacity, even reservoirs…

In the US, but I find that to be a great point. I only see this mentioned in the context of environmentalism (city dwellers use less resources). But yes! They use less city resources too.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#14

Post by cnity »

spacebanana7 wrote: post #6
ggm wrote: post #3

I find the economic reductionism in housing planning really irritating. It's not like other public utility functions, but it is damn close to a fundamental and is included in human rights declarations. What kind of state throws up it's hands and claims "it can't" fix housing when states can do precisely that? Thatcher's revolution in council housing is a cesspit of counterfactual outcomes. It made individual househol…

> Our elected leadership are captive to stupid market force arguments Perhaps recently, but the state driven housebuilding programs have met similar failures. Local authorities and their residents seem equally hostile to housebuilding whether it's made by the private sector or public sector (see the backlash faced by Labour governments under Harold Wilson or Tony Blair). Perhaps one of the better arguments against de…

> Local authorities and their residents seem equally hostile to housebuilding whether it's made by the private sector or public sector

In my experience (in Edinburgh) the vast majority of people I speak to tend to view the private developments (especially the insatiable appetite for student accommodation) and short term lets far less favourably.

Granted, Edinburgh is a special case with an incredibly high demand for short term letting and students.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#15

Post by nindalf »

dairylee wrote: post #5
bluescrn wrote: post #2

There's loads of houses being built in the UK (often of questionable quality, built for maximum profit, packed into minimal amounts of space). It may still not be enough to match the demand, but the real problem is we don't seem to be building any infrastructure to support these homes. More people and more homes requires more roads, railways, hospitals, police stations, power stations, sewer capacity, even reservoirs…

The infrastructure is often insufficient for existing homes nevermind for any expansion. I've recently moved house but I'm having to stay registered to my Dentist & Doctors 30 miles away because the wait list to get registered in my new town is months.

Doctor only 30 miles away? Luxury!

It’s unrealistic for me to get treatment from a GP in my area so I simply travel thousands of miles away to another country once a year for treatment.

Thousands more homes being built as well, so this isn’t changing any time soon.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#16

Post by tsukikage »

bluescrn wrote: post #2

There's loads of houses being built in the UK (often of questionable quality, built for maximum profit, packed into minimal amounts of space). It may still not be enough to match the demand, but the real problem is we don't seem to be building any infrastructure to support these homes. More people and more homes requires more roads, railways, hospitals, police stations, power stations, sewer capacity, even reservoirs…

We need to build houses at least as fast as the population grows. Because this has not happened for decades, we need to build houses even faster than that, to clear the backlog. This is not happening.

Meanwhile, no-one will build infrastructure for settlements that do not yet exist, and we consistently elect a party that believes in less, rather than more, infrastructure in general. Rather than an investment, Tories fundamentally see infrastructure spending as an unrecoverable loss.

At least if more housing gets built there will be more people in the area pestering their MPs for solutions to infrastructure problems - perhaps even enough to outnumber the NIMBYs. One can hope.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#17

Post by blakblakarak »

robertlagrant wrote: post #10
ggm wrote: post #3

I find the economic reductionism in housing planning really irritating. It's not like other public utility functions, but it is damn close to a fundamental and is included in human rights declarations. What kind of state throws up it's hands and claims "it can't" fix housing when states can do precisely that? Thatcher's revolution in council housing is a cesspit of counterfactual outcomes. It made individual househol…

Note: I originally said Britain built 30k houses last year, which commenters have corrected. Thank you! I don't really understand all this. Surely the main reason for a lack of housing is the difference between house demand (e.g. Britain took in 606k people in net immigration last year) compared to house supply (Britain built I think around 200k houses last year). The state shouldn't need to build houses (in fact it…

The state does need to make houses to provide for lower paid people who do critical jobs.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#18

Post by bowsamic »

ggm wrote: post #3

I find the economic reductionism in housing planning really irritating. It's not like other public utility functions, but it is damn close to a fundamental and is included in human rights declarations. What kind of state throws up it's hands and claims "it can't" fix housing when states can do precisely that? Thatcher's revolution in council housing is a cesspit of counterfactual outcomes. It made individual househol…

The worst part is that all of the new building projects are absolutely terribly built. It has gotten to the point where buying a house that was last worked on 20 years ago is more reliable than a new build, since so many new builds have borderline dangerous mistakes, and also huge illegal corner cuts that the government does nothing about. Not only is the construction bad, but so is the planning. Many of these new builds are completely car dependent with no plan made for access to the town centre or for building local shopping areas

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#19

Post by spacebanana7 »

robertlagrant wrote: post #10
ggm wrote: post #3

I find the economic reductionism in housing planning really irritating. It's not like other public utility functions, but it is damn close to a fundamental and is included in human rights declarations. What kind of state throws up it's hands and claims "it can't" fix housing when states can do precisely that? Thatcher's revolution in council housing is a cesspit of counterfactual outcomes. It made individual househol…

Note: I originally said Britain built 30k houses last year, which commenters have corrected. Thank you! I don't really understand all this. Surely the main reason for a lack of housing is the difference between house demand (e.g. Britain took in 606k people in net immigration last year) compared to house supply (Britain built I think around 200k houses last year). The state shouldn't need to build houses (in fact it…

Agree about the supply/demand difference causing the difference but I think your numbers are off. The UK build around 200k new 'dwellings' last year (financial year ending March 2022) according to [1] but I don't know whether that accounts for demolitions.

[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/...

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#20

Post by blitzar »

robertlagrant wrote: post #10
ggm wrote: post #3

I find the economic reductionism in housing planning really irritating. It's not like other public utility functions, but it is damn close to a fundamental and is included in human rights declarations. What kind of state throws up it's hands and claims "it can't" fix housing when states can do precisely that? Thatcher's revolution in council housing is a cesspit of counterfactual outcomes. It made individual househol…

Note: I originally said Britain built 30k houses last year, which commenters have corrected. Thank you! I don't really understand all this. Surely the main reason for a lack of housing is the difference between house demand (e.g. Britain took in 606k people in net immigration last year) compared to house supply (Britain built I think around 200k houses last year). The state shouldn't need to build houses (in fact it…

> Britain built I think around 30k houses last year

The latest house building statistics show that in the financial year ending March 2022 there were 204,530 dwellings completed in the UK.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/...

Post reply on HN