UK Strategic Planning

[ender4]

12 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

 

 

Look at those pictures! Nothing quite says welcome to your new family home like the oil stain under the tarmac patch for your little audi you bought on a pcp.

 

 

That's terrible but not every development looks like that. Some are pretty nice with lots of greenery. The developers actually like putting in a bit of greenery as it helps sell the houses (or sells them at a higher price if they were all going to sell anyway).

[chrisp65]

2 minutes ago, markavfc40 said:

Not a single tree and hardly a patch of grass/shrubbery etc in site. It is horrible. 

To be fair just down the road there’s an Asda and that has two olive trees in buckets outside the main entrance.

Genuinely shocked when I saw those pictures, shocked and sad. 

[OutByEaster?]

Housebuilding has become difficult in this regard - there are a number of developments around the edges of Birmingham city centre that went with very limited parking and now people can't park for miles around them because all of the street parking in the area is full of the people that live there.

Young people can't afford to move out, but they can afford a car, so there's a big increase in three and four car households -yes, we'd like to be moving to a society of less cars, but the facts are that we're not at the moment - and the state of the housing/rental market means that where we have actual family houses they need a lot more parking than they used to.

There needs to be a regulatory impetus on developers to allow enough room for both cars and greenery/gardens, rather than trying to squeeze out as much from the space in terms of number of dwellings as they can - but we're not moving in the direction of legislating that because no one in government at either a local or national level wants to admit that they're planning developments with cars in mind.

[limpid]

2 minutes ago, ender4 said:

That's terrible but not every development looks like that. Some are pretty nice with lots of greenery. The developers actually like putting in a bit of greenery as it helps sell the houses (or sells them at a higher price if they were all going to sell anyway).

A friend who is a landscape architect says that developers of residential sites will only do the minimum required by the local rules. He's often employed to tick a box. They won't even do basic accessibility if they can avoid it.

[Xann]

The decline in the standard of food will bring increased demands on healthcare.

[chrisp65]

42 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

Housebuilding has become difficult in this regard - there are a number of developments around the edges of Birmingham city centre that went with very limited parking and now people can't park for miles around them because all of the street parking in the area is full of the people that live there.

Young people can't afford to move out, but they can afford a car, so there's a big increase in three and four car households -yes, we'd like to be moving to a society of less cars, but the facts are that we're not at the moment - and the state of the housing/rental market means that where we have actual family houses they need a lot more parking than they used to.

There needs to be a regulatory impetus on developers to allow enough room for both cars and greenery/gardens, rather than trying to squeeze out as much from the space in terms of number of dwellings as they can - but we're not moving in the direction of legislating that because no one in government at either a local or national level wants to admit that they're planning developments with cars in mind.

 

29 minutes ago, limpid said:

A friend who is a landscape architect says that developers of residential sites will only do the minimum required by the local rules. He's often employed to tick a box. They won't even do basic accessibility if they can avoid it.

 

With no green space, you have a roof full of water going in to the sewer system. You have a road full of rainwater going in to the sewers and on this development you have all that car hard standing instead of lawn or shrub. So water run off is 100% and instant. So the drains are inundated.

So the water company diverts the shit to the rivers and tells us it needs billions to be invested in bigger pipes.

What it needs is some green space, a planted roof, lawns, trees. Slow down the water, make the place less dystopian looking.

Zero joined up thinking because everything is in a private silo and designed for the earliest possible extraction of profit.

 

[OutByEaster?]

1 minute ago, chrisp65 said:

With no green space, you have a roof full of water going in to the sewer system. You have a road full of rainwater going in to the sewers and on this development you have all that car hard standing instead of lawn or shrub. So water run off is 100% and instant. So the drains are inundated.

So the water company diverts the shit to the rivers and tells us it needs billions to be invested in bigger pipes.

What it needs is some green space, a planted roof, lawns, trees. Slow down the water, make the place less dystopian looking.

Zero joined up thinking because everything is in a private silo and designed for the earliest possible extraction of profit.

Yep - absolutely - and no government oversight because they're lost in the fantasises they've sold us about how the world is run.

[Genie]

11 hours ago, ender4 said:

That's terrible but not every development looks like that. Some are pretty nice with lots of greenery. The developers actually like putting in a bit of greenery as it helps sell the houses (or sells them at a higher price if they were all going to sell anyway).

I live on a new build estate. There’s a green to the left of my house. At the front there’s another green space with tree line/mini woodland behind it. We have parking for 2 cars and a front lawn, plus good sized back garden.

Outside of the street there’s a woodland walk which goes (surprisingly) through the woodland all the way around the estate. There’s also a walk added down to the canal. We see fox’s, deer, badgers and millions of squirrels daily.

Theres a lot of crappy new build estates but some lovely ones too.

[Genie]

10 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

 

 

With no green space, you have a roof full of water going in to the sewer system. You have a road full of rainwater going in to the sewers and on this development you have all that car hard standing instead of lawn or shrub. So water run off is 100% and instant. So the drains are inundated.

So the water company diverts the shit to the rivers and tells us it needs billions to be invested in bigger pipes.

What it needs is some green space, a planted roof, lawns, trees. Slow down the water, make the place less dystopian looking.

Zero joined up thinking because everything is in a private silo and designed for the earliest possible extraction of profit.

 

I thought with new build estates the rain water is not allowed to go into the sewerage system? Where I live the 2 are separate as I thought it was law.

I actually got a refund from Severn Trent water as part of the bill was for managing rain water in the household sewerage system but it doesn’t go into it (I’m sure they knew). I do wonder if they still carry on charging everyone else even though I pointed it out to them.

[chrisp65]

3 hours ago, Genie said:

I thought with new build estates the rain water is not allowed to go into the sewerage system? Where I live the 2 are separate as I thought it was law.

I actually got a refund from Severn Trent water as part of the bill was for managing rain water in the household sewerage system but it doesn’t go into it (I’m sure they knew). I do wonder if they still carry on charging everyone else even though I pointed it out to them.

At the new estate or any new development they will be separate systems. Then (a bit like the recycling in some towns) at some point off the estate the sewers join in the original combined Victorian sewer.

If you think about it, why else would increased rainfall mean the water companies need to discharge shit in to rivers? Unless rain just made householders really really nervous.

My house is 1920’s and has separate foul and rainwater. Unfortunately the sewers further down the hill were 1890’s design….

[Genie]

5 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

At the new estate or any new development they will be separate systems. Then (a bit like the recycling in some towns) at some point off the estate the sewers join in the original combined Victorian sewer.

If you think about it, why else would increased rainfall mean the water companies need to discharge shit in to rivers? Unless rain just made householders really really nervous.

I don’t think it’s the new estates which cause the issue, it’s the ones built a period ago which had all the water going into the sewerage system.

With ours the rain water is channeled into the nearby canal.

[limpid]

1 minute ago, Genie said:

I don’t think it’s the new estates which cause the issue, it’s the ones built a period ago which had all the water going into the sewerage system.

With ours the rain water is channeled into the nearby canal.

AIUI road drains can't go into water courses. Land drains can. In all those pictures there is nowhere to put a land drain.

I suspect that you have a garden which means you probably have a land drain.. Do your gutters drain into your sewers though?

[Xann]

There's a new estate next to the Oxford line up to the Mids.

They looked decent, very similar to my folks' new build late 70s house.

There was something odd. Had a Dougal moment.

They weren't far away, they were small.

[HKP90]

12 hours ago, Genie said:

I thought with new build estates the rain water is not allowed to go into the sewerage system? Where I live the 2 are separate as I thought it was law.

I actually got a refund from Severn Trent water as part of the bill was for managing rain water in the household sewerage system but it doesn’t go into it (I’m sure they knew). I do wonder if they still carry on charging everyone else even though I pointed it out to them.

Not really just new build estates, any new resi project is pretty much required to carry out soakaway (infiltration) testing to prove that (surface water) soakaways are unsuitable. It's actually gone way too far the other way as we're having to do these tests on loads of sites with heavy clay soil where there is doodly squat chance in hell they will work. I do a lot of watching water not move in trial pits. 

[Genie]

6 hours ago, limpid said:

AIUI road drains can't go into water courses. Land drains can. In all those pictures there is nowhere to put a land drain.

I suspect that you have a garden which means you probably have a land drain.. Do your gutters drain into your sewers though?

No, gutters go separate to sewers. I know because the arco drain outside our house initially wasn’t connected (long story) and I mentioned about tapping into the sewerage and they said they couldn’t. They ended up digging up my front garden so they could connect the drain to the point the gutter down pipe goes under ground.

[Xela]

On 26/10/2023 at 15:21, chrisp65 said:

 

 

Look at those pictures! Nothing quite says welcome to your new family home like the oil stain under the tarmac patch for your little audi you bought on a pcp.

 

 

There is a whole new town (Lawley Village) in Telford like that. Vast majority of homes have no greenery or parking, despite everyone having 4 kids and 3 cars. 

 

 

[chrisp65]

I need to go to Slough, at a specific time on a specific day.

Car = £30 fuel

Train = £269.20 (plus parking at the train station)

 

decisions, decisions…

[Stevo985]

On 27/10/2023 at 19:33, Xela said:

There is a whole new town (Lawley Village) in Telford like that. Vast majority of homes have no greenery or parking, despite everyone having 4 kids and 3 cars. 

 

 

I know this is an old post but I have a friend who lives in Lawley village and it's exactly as you described. Absolute madness that most of the houses don't even have parking. It actually looks worse than those pictures you've quoted because it makes it look like cars are just strewn everywhere

[Genie]

2 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

I need to go to Slough, at a specific time on a specific day.

Car = £30 fuel

Train = £269.20 (plus parking at the train station)

 

decisions, decisions…

What if you’re leaving the house and the car gets cancelled? Have you considered that? 

[chrisp65]

Just now, Genie said:

What if you’re leaving the house and the car gets cancelled? Have you considered that? 

That’s a good point.

Also, what if there are no seats in the car. The car has no sunroof so it’s not conducive for extended standing.