General Chat

I live in one of those rural rows of houses that the councils built between the wars. It belongs to a huge housing association now and I have always said that, as the end o the line, I have no need to own a house. Also, it is a proper house oe built to replicate a farm cottage with enough room to live and a garden where a man could grow enough to provide a large part of the nutrition or his family as well as having space for them to play.

I have been here since I was ten and always hoped I was preserving the opportunity for other poor children to grow up here.

You remember Glad who did the sausage sandwich run with Fred. Well she died and so did her son. They had lived on the other end of the row.

A man from the housing association was talking to a neighbour and it looks like Glad's house, which belongs to the housing association, is being sold!

They are throwing up estates of little, cheaply built houses crammed together on greenfield sites around the city and selling off the old rural ones I think. Ghettoising the poor.

There will be no poor people in the villages anymore, priced out by people who have earned urban wages and bought all of what is left of the little houses to extend beyond the pocket of those trying to raise children with no garden or space to play unsupervised.

Possibly, Glad's house will go to a tenant wanting to buy and move but there is a good chance they will be people who have grown up in Tower Hamlets (let's say) dreaming of some rural idyll who will be made miserable when they find out what there is unavailable to them in their rural dream.

I am just pleased that I am old and the end of the line!

so very true
but it is developers that are ruining london suburbs, converting houses into tiny little flats
the council allowing developments on any land available, including our library, very little affordable or council housing and no suppoting infrastructure.
Someone is making lots of money
oh well the concrete jungle is well on its way

Then we have to imagine the lives of those poor people living in converted offices :-( :-(

Surely local authorities still need to give permission for single dwellings to be converted into multi-occupied dwellings; unless building and planning regs have changed somewhat. Same goes for change of use from office to residential.

Edit: I do know that sometimes local authorities used to have a helluva fight from some developers, often resulting in planning appeals, though.

Planning regulations are not as tight as they were. Something to do with stimulating the building industry.

Developers still whispering in the ears of councillors no doubt, Sharron. It was sometimes the way they could get their applications through when planning departments had decided on recommending refusal.

I have a fairly frustrated friend on the parish council who is none too happy about it.

Your friend will have to make friends with his county councillors, Sharron - he/she could get friendly with his local MP too.

I’ve known some good ones and some who are only in it for what they can get out of it - and mostly it is what they perceive as glory and fame (notoriety in my words).

Sad, innit!

It seems ridiculous to sell off social housing, when we're so short.
I presume the council initially let a Housing Association take over/buy the houses, on the condition they remained as social housing.

This is what I m wondering about but I am assuming that they can provide more ghetto housing by selling a couple of rural homes.

It is all economic in't it?

It's all money in the pockets of a few :-|

I suppose they might get 300K for the house and that will build three or four chicken sheds on an estate.