A Solution for Once Off Housing.

TadhgL16

Once off housing litters the country and many of the people living in these houses have no purpose to live there.I think land should be zone at the edges of towns and villages of circa 0.25 acres per site and people should be free to build there own house. This gives an alternative choice of housing for people who want a spacious site instead of cramped, uniform semi-detached housing estates. I think only people who are employed in agriculture should be free to build a house on their land. This allows people to build their own house in their local area without the taxpayer subsidising services being brought out into rural areas.

What do other people think about solving the problem of once off housing further damaging the countryside?

donvito99

I am the only one who uses the term One off Housing?

And OP I agree with you. We should develop near railway and luas stations, and discourage all other projects.

Are we not doing all theses things at the moment though?

looksee

Does that mean that someone who is employed in agriculture who gets permission to build and then changes employment would have to move out? Would they be only able to sell to someone else in agriculture? What about someone maintaining a remote reservoir or wind farm for example? What about all the existing houses occupied by non-agricultural workers?

foggy_lad

People living in one off housing should not be subsidised for school buses postal services refuse etc etc. There should be collection places and post boxes at main roads where they go with rubbish and for their post and they want to live in the sticks so they can bring their own children to school instead of expecting taxpayers to pay extra for them.

kkelliher

TadhgL16 wrote: »

I think only people who are employed in agriculture should be free to build a house on their land. This allows people to build their own house in their local area without the taxpayer subsidising services being brought out into rural areas.

As farming is mainly funded through subsidy surly the taxpayer is already contibuting towards their lands? not to mention the fact that they can hand the land to their offspring to build on with little or no revenue to the state.

One off housing should be managed in terms of want to live and should not be ruled with a tight fisted local bias. If someone wants to move to an area and build their own home they should be free to do so once they commit to the area. That is they should be made hold onto the property for x number of years or face a penalty. At the moment you have local need applicants getting planning permission for one off housing and selling it. this is currently and has previosuly been happening on a massive scale and flies in the face of the planning legislation. A simple review of rural housing for sale at present is startling in terms of the number of large one off housing units only recently built for sale and number of sites for sale with planning permission grants.

Planning should be based on growth, sustainability and regeneration of areas and not simply protection of local land ownership. how many villages have been left with no centre as the young dissapear and new entrants are prohibited from entering due to planning.

murphaph

TadhgL16 wrote: »

Once off housing litters the country and many of the people living in these houses have no purpose to live there.I think land should be zone at the edges of towns and villages of circa 0.25 acres per site and people should be free to build there own house. This gives an alternative choice of housing for people who want a spacious site instead of cramped, uniform semi-detached housing estates. I think only people who are employed in agriculture should be free to build a house on their land. This allows people to build their own house in their local area without the taxpayer subsidising services being brought out into rural areas.

What do other people think about solving the problem of once off housing further damaging the countryside?

I'd broadly agree with this. We've literally ruined our countryside with one off monstrosities that are not at all sympathetic to the location they are built in. These "individual" houses are more often than no picked from a book of generic plans and tweaked a bit.

Great Britain is far more densely populated than Ireland but you can find many more truly unspoiled tracts of open countryside over there than at home. we have suburbanised the countryside and it is very sad what we have lost.

All further development should be concentrated on existing settlements, with the prerequisite infrastructure being in place BEFORE development of housing commences.

ardmacha

I think land should be zone at the edges of towns and villages of circa 0.25 acres per site and people should be free to build there own house. This gives an alternative choice of housing for people who want a spacious site instead of cramped, uniform semi-detached housing estates

This kind of idea has a lot of potential, rather than the usual totalitarian prohibition approach which does nothing to increase supply.

All further development should be concentrated on existing settlements,

Ireland has a dispersed population, these houses are in existing settlements.

Aidan1

This gives an alternative choice of housing for people who want a spacious site instead of cramped, uniform semi-detached housing estates

Frankly, the same could be done by insisting on a diversity of housing types in new estates through the planning system. And before people start shouting about how hopeless that system is, they should be reminded that it has been changed very dramatically since the boom. The 2010 Act will undoubtedly come to be seen as the most valuable contribution the Green Party made, and Phil Hogan's massacre (I mean reform, of course) of the local government system looks promising too. Few more tweaks like the above and we might be getting somewhere.

lockon...

Isn't it funny that most towns and cities have been destroyed by bad housing/buildings ever since the building regulations came into force in 1966.

Neworder79

Your idea has merit, I think carrot rather than stick is needed. There's currently no incentive to move closer to a run down town or village if you have access to land through family. But if zoning and grants encouraged building around planned hub villages, and services were provided like schools, fixed line broadband, water, sewage then I think the rural one off trend could be turned around. Would require large scale investment and planning though which I can't see happening. Might see some counties test similar approaches in the future hopefully.

cgcsb

looksee wrote: »

Does that mean that someone who is employed in agriculture who gets permission to build and then changes employment would have to move out? Would they be only able to sell to someone else in agriculture? What about someone maintaining a remote reservoir or wind farm for example? What about all the existing houses occupied by non-agricultural workers?

I would say he means new builds, since he's speaking of planning permission. i.e. you wouldn't have to knock down your house if you retrospectively changed employment. I would say energy production and mining would be included

cgcsb

It's a great idea and very much in line with the national spatial strategy which aims to create urban hubs where services can be effectively provided. The problem is in Ireland, county councilors and staff in the planning office can be bought off. i would change the regulations so that if people chose to build in a certain area, they have to propose sustainable solutions themselves to their needs, i.e. are they going to construct a pipe line to connect them to the main sewer, are they going to locate adjacent to a local bus service, etc.

If they are not willing to pay to connect to the sewer, public transport corridors etc., no planning permission

cgcsb

cgcsb wrote: »

It's a great idea and very much in line with the national spatial strategy which aims to create urban hubs where services can be effectively provided. The problem is in Ireland, county councilors and staff in the planning office can be bought off. i would change the regulations so that if people chose to build in a certain area, they have to propose sustainable solutions themselves to their needs, i.e. are they going to construct a pipe line to connect them to the main sewer, are they going to locate adjacent to a local bus service, etc.

If they are not willing to pay to connect to the sewer, public transport corridors etc., no planning permission

The National Spatial Strategy has been scrapped http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2013/0218/1224330163251.html but overall this is an idea that could have worked.
I imagine a lot of people would have been very happy to build to their own design and standards on serviced sites of varying sizes.

I'm surprised that no landowners came up with the idea.

murphaph

Deleted User wrote: »

The National Spatial Strategy has been scrapped http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2013/0218/1224330163251.html but overall this is an idea that could have worked.
I imagine a lot of people would have been very happy to build to their own design and standards on serviced sites of varying sizes.

I'm surprised that no landowners came up with the idea.

It's very common if not the norm in Germany. "Estates" with all the houses being identical or even are rare here. We'll be buying a serviced site in the next couple of years in the Berlin suburbs and building our own house on it.

murphaph

murphaph wrote: »

It's very common if not the norm in Germany. "Estates" with all the houses being identical or even are rare here. We'll be buying a serviced site in the next couple of years in the Berlin suburbs and building our own house on it.

Milton Keynes is one of the few places in the UK that (used to) provide serviced sites like that, I'm not sure if there are any left now.

JupiterKid

Actually there were a handful of housing estates in Dublin and the regional cities built between the mid 1960s and the early 1980s where the houses are quite individual from each other, where a developer built the roads and services and then sold individual plots to builders who built houses to spec. I know as I grew up in one.:):o

For some reason these types of housing development never "caught on" and practically none have been built since the early 90s.

Apanachi

murphaph wrote: »

in Germany. "Estates" with all the houses being identical or even are rare here.

Although it is becoming less rare, near where I live there are estates popping up all over the place

Alun

JupiterKid wrote: »

Actually there were a handful of housing estates in Dublin and the regional cities built between the mid 1960s and the early 1980s where the houses are quite individual from each other, where a developer built the roads and services and then sold individual plots to builders who built houses to spec. I know as I grew up in one.:):o

For some reason these types of housing development never "caught on" and practically none have been built since the early 90s.

Interesting. This seems to be similar to the way they operate in the Netherlands as well, at least in the town I lived in.

As far as I could tell, it was the local council who led any large scale housing development by buying the land themselves. They then decided on the overall layout of the estate including the road and cycle path layouts, then the location of areas set aside for shopping centres, health centres, schools etc. and only when all that was settled upon, did they parcel up the available building space. This space was split into areas for various types and levels of housing, including subsidised housing that they'd sell to interested developers, and also some plots that they'd sell on the open market for people to build their own houses. Mostly though it'd be large building firms, but you'd rarely see more than 10-15 houses of the same design in the whole estate. The council would be very strict as to the type and quantity of house allowed on each parcel of land, so they kept control of the overall 'design' of the estate.

It seemed to work well, but that level of involvement by the council in the fine details of planning would probably be considered too 'interfering' here unfortunately.

murphaph

JupiterKid wrote: »

Actually there were a handful of housing estates in Dublin and the regional cities built between the mid 1960s and the early 1980s where the houses are quite individual from each other, where a developer built the roads and services and then sold individual plots to builders who built houses to spec. I know as I grew up in one.:):o

For some reason these types of housing development never "caught on" and practically none have been built since the early 90s.

Good point..case in point would be Allenview Heights in Newbridge, where my grandparents used to live. Shame it never caught on IMO. There probably wasn't enough money to be made in it!

Alun

murphaph wrote: »

Good point..case in point would be Allenview Heights in Newbridge, where my grandparents used to live. Shame it never caught on IMO. There probably wasn't enough money to be made in it!

I guess the market price for building land is set according to the absolute maximum number of houses / apartments you can manage to squeeze onto it / get planning permission for.

Personally I'd love to build my own house, but have no desire to live in a field in the backside of nowhere, and would much prefer to build on a brownfield site in or very close to a town but any available sites are currently priced such as to make such a thing financially unattractive.

hi5

Alun wrote: »

I guess the market price for building land is set according to the absolute maximum number of houses / apartments you can manage to squeeze onto it / get planning permission for.

Personally I'd love to build my own house, but have no desire to live in a field in the backside of nowhere, and would much prefer to build on a brownfield site in or very close to a town but any available sites are currently priced such as to make such a thing financially unattractive.

Which is why the Kenny report of 1974 which proposed to control the price of development land to its agricultural price plus disturbance fee of 25% never got off the ground, too much money to be made by the few.

A decent sized site would also be good for personal development and innovation and creativity, with workshop/shed or greenhouse/ vegetable garden etc.
The ideal position for these developments could be existing villages and towns near motorway junctions.
Or better still super-impose a map of the rail system over the motorway network and pinpoint the junctions near rail lines, developments could then allow for new rail stations in the future justifying local frequent commuter trains .

seamus189

Sorry to dig up an old thread but I thought people might be interested in the scheme Limerick County Council tried to get going a few years back. I don't think it really got off the ground though due to bad timing but if it had it would have been a great alternative to one-off houses scattered around the countryside and a way to get villages and small towns alive again. I think part of the problem is that these days it's become almost accepted that to follow the crowd every young couple should be looking to build their brand new dormer on a green field.

http://www.lcc.ie/Planning/Serviced_Residential_Sites_in_Towns_and_Villages/

seamus189

looksee wrote: »

Does that mean that someone who is employed in agriculture who gets permission to build and then changes employment would have to move out? Would they be only able to sell to someone else in agriculture? What about someone maintaining a remote reservoir or wind farm for example? What about all the existing houses occupied by non-agricultural workers?

I know in the North here the planning guidelines are trying to make sure any new houses constructed on farms are built pretty much right beside the sheds and farm yard. It doesn't impinge on offspring who are serious about taking over the farm and at the same time ensures that the house will continue to be associated with the agriculture and can't be easily sold off separately from the farm.