Extra 28,500 homes for Gloucestershire by 2032

“HAW HAW is spot on with his comments .cameron out HAW HAW in simples.”

“scarpimpernel - some good points - the real reason for increased demand is not immigration - but increase in household units caused by break up of the traditional man/wife/children units into more single units. Yes higher birth-rates amongst some segments of immigrants also a factor nationally but not that pronounced in Gloucestershire.

Liberaisation of planning will help not only in building more traditional housing units but also widening the definition of a dwelling - in a free country planning authorities need to get out of their shells in defining housing and allow people freedom to devise their own to suit needs. The alternative would be greater state dependency and local authorities in conflict with local residents that just don't want development of any sort near them.

Mr North has a hard act but it would help if council housing teams start coming out of their holes and learn to improvise/enable rather than restrain people looking for their own solutions.”

“Not surprising that so many people are objecting to these proposals. But what people fail to realise as ever is that the three councils have no control over immigration - they cannot control who enters the UK, this is a matter for the national government and one that even they cannot easily rule on.

The next thing is that whether people like it or not, every council throughout the country has to assess its housing needs objectively. If you then do not make difficult decisions about where this housing should go, the decision will be taken out of your hands altogether and so will happen anyway but without any control or ability to squeeze as much out of the developers for all of the needed facilities and infrastructure that people have rightly mentioned.

For all the talk about brownfield sites and empty homes; if people bothered to look into the proposals they would see that of the 28,500 new homes, 13,800 at the last count were made up of developing most of the brownfield land left in the area. And if this is all redeveloped for housing then I would also question indeed where all these people will work in losing much needed employment land. You cant have it all ways - develop all the brownfield land (which is mostly employment land) for housing and you will only need more employment land to replace it.... and where? - on greenfield land. As for empty homes, the vast majority of these homes are empty for a period of no more than 6 months and then they return to use. This is because they may be between lets or in probate. The number of long term properties however, is much, much smaller and in no way can satisfy the need for housing over 20 years.

Finally, there seems to be concern over levels of housing at 28,500 homes over 20 years being huge. These levels are similar to the levels of housing provided over the previous 20 years so we need to get some perspective here.

Just be thankful that we are looking at 28,500 and not over 40,000!!”

“I note again this plan does not include the Stroud area - seems we will lose all our Green spaces to yet more houses.”

“Send the EU Immigrants home. That will free up plenty of accommodation and you will be able to go to work without finding a Pole in your place doing your job for less...”

“Developers don't *need* to build these houses, they *want* to build them, to keep from going under. Whether the houses can ever be sold is a problem for the medium to long future. How the growing population will afford them is *not* the developers' problem, but the government's and the electorate's. And if it's about votes, we're... well, the only words that seem suitable probably aren't to TiG...”

“Terrible news. Truly appalling...”

“Interesting article but where is the developer requirement for:
Schools,
Youth Centres,
Community Centres,
Surgeries,
Clinics?

As others here have said it is fine "planning" the construction of 1000s of new houses but with reductions in public spending and the fire sale of public property, how exactly is new community infrastructure, to support the projected increase in population, going to be provided?

Unfortunately it is time to reconsider immigration in general, particularly where the individuals coming to the country are criminals or have no value to the British economy that cannot already be provided by people already living in the country.”

“cut immigration asap”

“Not only is there a question mark on where the potential tens of thousands of occupants of these new homes (if ever built) are going to work, but where are they all coming from to occupy these properties? More importantly, to BUY the majority of them?

We know there are thousands of people on council / housing association waiting lists, but they can't afford to buy or rent any of the current available housing stock (if they could, they wouldn't be on a housing waiting list). And with proposals to relax the amount of "affordable housing" within new developments to stimulate development, there will be much fewer "affordable housing" built in the coming years, meaning those who need accommodation won't be helped out at all by this proposed housing boom.

The majority of the 28,500 new homes will be sold on the open market, with some bought by investors to rent out. Where are these potential private buyers / renters coming from? They aren't all currently living in a tented village waiting for a new house to be built - so one new property occupied is one existing property vacated.

This new housing boom is wrong. Even with the amount of immigration into the country, there is masses of available property already, so why on earth do we need to build so many more, so desperately?”