Building the homes that communities need
This week the government announced investment of £142 million in vital infrastructure to support the development of the homes that communities need, helping more people onto the housing ladder.
Key facts:
Housing Minister Kit Malthouse MP said:
"For decades, governments of all stripes and types have not built enough new homes but we are turning that around, brick by brick.
We are driving to create homes, opportunities and thriving communities – and this £142 million investment will mean we can build more of the properties our country so badly needs.
We need to keep upping our game and build more, better, faster, if we are to meet our ambition to deliver 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s."
Key facts:
- The funding will be used to widen bridges, build roads and connect utilities so up to 8,500 properties can be built.
- The funding, from the £5.5 billion Housing Infrastructure Fund, is part of the Conservative drive to deliver 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s.
- The money is allocated to local authorities after a competitive funding allocation process.
- You can find more details including the local authorities to which money was allocated in the most recent round here.
Housing Minister Kit Malthouse MP said:
"For decades, governments of all stripes and types have not built enough new homes but we are turning that around, brick by brick.
We are driving to create homes, opportunities and thriving communities – and this £142 million investment will mean we can build more of the properties our country so badly needs.
We need to keep upping our game and build more, better, faster, if we are to meet our ambition to deliver 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s."
Comments
My point is quite simply, why do we need more building regs? why not just not buy a building that is sh*t, honestly builders will soon stop building them.
For the avoidance of doubt that is a more than mildly perverse misinterpretation of what I had written.
One of the targets will certainly have to be better insulation: there are a wide range of possible means of working towards that target and I neither specified that tighter building regulations would necessarily be one of the means used to get to that target nor ruled it out.
More research into means of insulation, publishing improved designs and standards, tax incentives are just some of the other tactics which might be used.
Over my adult lifetime building regulations have gradually become more bureaucratic - I write that as someone who was at one stage responsible for a department which enforced them - and part of me sympathises with Jim's dislike of regulation as an automatic solution, but scrapping them would not be a realistic option.
Focussing building regs more effectively on the most important aims and making them easier to administer and comply with might well be worth trying, however.
The legislation was only laid before parliament this week, the methods used to implement it over the next thirty years will almost certainly evolve and change with time.