this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2025
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6
Labour housing plans could destroy 215,000 hectares of nature in England, analysis shows (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I'm curious what the numbers look like for commercial properties standing empty because they're investment vehicles for legal financial shenanigans. I'm talking about how many offices we've built over the last twenty years when anyone with a lick of sense could see this was a waste of time.

I don't mean "why aren't we doing that instead" - the article just gets me wondering about how much space we've wasted on worthless concrete garbage that stands perpetually empty.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 14 hours ago

According to The Big Issue (I can't find where they got their numbers from) there are/were more than 20 million square feet of empty office spaces in London. Which if we extrapolate from data I can find on occupancy rates within just the city of London, equates to around 5% of the total office space.

Not really a particularly large amount when you also see that roughly 7-8% of residential properties are also currently unoccupied.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Let's do the More or Less thing. Is that a big number?

  • England has a land area of just over 13,046,000 hectares ^https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/land-use-in-england-2022/land-use-statistics-england-2022^
  • 215,000 / 13,046,000 = 1.6% of England we're talking about here.

I'm big on environmentalism and regenerating England's natural habitats, but trading a percent or so of total land area to ensure people have homes seems like a no brainer. Ideally we'd build higher density to avoid having to continue suburban sprawl, but any homes > perfect homes that are never built.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

trading a percent or so of total land area to ensure people have homes

Ignoring the huge amount of brownfield area we have from closed factories etc.

Honestly if it was truly about a shortage of land. I'd be all for it. But it is not. It is about refusing to clean up and build on already developed land. In an attempt to increase profits.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

And the country's largest project to convert a brownfield site (Teesworks) to housing has sucked up hundreds of millions in public grants and investment, hoarded cash and extracted private profit for one man Lord Ben Houchen.

Possibly the biggest case of local government corruption and mismanagement in our time.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

You do not need to pave green space to build homes. There's plenty of paved, ugly, low-density areas in desperate need of upgrades. The problem is the British public's obsession with that idea that everyone needs their own patch of grass and two cars.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

NIMBYism is killing this country. We have the smallest available housing stock in Europe by some margin. Labour are right to be trying to make a dent in the issue.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

They could always start with this issue:

https://www.actiononemptyhomes.org/why-empty-homes-matter

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

There are 28 million families in the UK. [1]

Your article implies there are 25 million houses and 1 million is empty. [2]

The empty houses in the photos are not suitable for living in and should be condemned if they haven't already. Rebuilding a mid-terrace house is not simple and even after blow all of that we managed 1 million out of the 4 million required to at least have one home per family. That sounds like a terrible plan to work on the most expensive work and ultimately not make a dent in the issue.

[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/families/bulletins/familiesandhouseholds/2023#%3A%7E%3Atext=There+were+28.4+million+households%2C-parent+family+%2811%25%29.

[2] https://www.actiononemptyhomes.org/why-empty-homes-matter

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

The effect of this would be extremely minimal. Almost all empty homes in the UK are homes that are temporarily empty pending sale or between renters. Having empty homes is actually extremely normal, you can't really not have empty homes, as people are always moving.

With rare exceptions, empty homes aren't just sitting there empty for years, like this article implies. The landlords would much rather rent them out and make money.

The UK has far fewer empty empty homes than anywhere else in the developed world. Our housing stock isn't enough.

There's no other option but to build more. I hope Labour's plans can help with that, but who knows. And it'd need to be sustained.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I said it's a start, not the whole answer to the housing problem.

Also, just as examples:

Long-term empty homes To be classed as ‘long-term empty’ a home has to be liable for council tax and to have been unfurnished and not lived in for over 6 months. This figure is increasing all the time, but as at October 2023, it was 261,189.

Holiday lets These are an extension of second homes - homes not used as primary residences but used to make profit for their owners, short-let for several weeks or months of each year, blocking them from becoming anybody’s home. In many cases owners ‘flip’ to business rates which are often cheaper than paying council tax. As at March 2024, there were believed to be at least 85,000 of these such dwellings, flipped to business rates.

https://www.actiononemptyhomes.org/facts-and-figures

I'm not against building more homes. We need more council homes for sure. Housing should be seen as a human need, not a commodity to trade.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Damned if you do, damned if you dont

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (2 children)

They don't have this problem in China

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

because they have much more land and much less regard for the environmental and cultural history and importance of different areas?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Doesn't necessarily mean land. A nice big new bus station was built in Belfast and people found things to complain about. Meanwhile the Chinese people I knew were like "woah, this place actually has the ability to develop"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

So what's your point, the world would be a better place if we were all Chinese?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Different attitudes

[–] [email protected] 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

So we should just accept every thing that's imposed on us blindly without questioning it?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

Sometimes the questioning can get a little silly and impede progress

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

or France, Italy, ....