Campaign Briefing - Greenfield Housing

So, we may have won the fight against the roads programme. But do we now we sit back and watch as 1000 square miles of British countryside are covered in concrete because...

The Wrong Houses Are Being Built In The Wrong Places!

Thanks to the House Builders' Federation (HBF) and New Labour's obsession with creating jobs in the construction industry, developers could have shoved up nearly 5 million new homes by 2016, based on spurious household projections that seem to crystallise Thatcherite values of individualism. Lobbyists have conned the government into thinking that the only way to deal with a national housing crisis is by building new houses - despite the fact that thousands of homes stand empty. And so the government has foisted quotas of new houses onto local councils, effectively forcing them to give permission to new schemes that invariably local people don't want. There is a presumption that there will be a "trickle down" in the housing market to homeless people, despite the fact that rich people buy houses as financial investments not to live in and that most people will never afford a mortgage. This is one of the sickest symptoms of capitalism in this country - housing is treated not as a basic need, but as a commodity. A genuine desire by government to address the housing crisis would lead to changes in legislation, for example on social housing and rents.

Homes For Need Not Greed

Typically the proposed houses are unaffordable to all but executive types, built without consideration of local infrastructure or ecological footprinting, not built to "Lifetime Homes Standard" and often come on the back of road schemes. It's cheaper for developers to build on greenfield sites than to renovate derelict urban areas. Brownfield sites suitable for housing are being wasted with temples to consumerism such as the Millennium Dome.

Local opposition to housing developments has been dismissed as "NIMBYism" or, in the words of one of the top housebuilders, Bryant Homes, "unreasonable obstructions". Housebuilders such as Beazer and Wimpey have even been asking for the government to abolish the planning system. Apparently we should trust them to "self-regulate". Yet planning regulations still penalise sustainable low-impact developments. The "lost village" of Brithdir Mawr in Wales has recently been discovered after having to camouflage itself from planning officials for years, and anyone who's tried to put up a straw bale house will tell you how difficult it is to get planning permission.

Groups campaigning against the government housing allocations in their area are forming super-coalitions and starting to hook up with those with direct action skills. Posh conservationists the CPRE recently published a helpful free booklet on how the planning system works (kindly sponsored by Esso, oh dear, and available by sending an A5 sae to CPRE Publications, Warwick House, 25 Buckingham Palace Road, London SW1W 0PP ) while issuing a reminder that "the first local people know of plans affecting their local countryside can be when the bulldozers move onto the site - and by then it is too late to make a difference." (!) Tell that to the residents of the village of Sandy Lane near Bradford who have managed to stuff Bryant Homes by moving their caravans onto the site, hooking up with Bingley road protestors to jump on bulldozers, and putting up posters in their windows warning off potential buyers of the Bryant greenfield houses.

Campaigners in Hertfordshire are up against Persimmon Homes, who want to build 10 000 houses on greenbelt land to the west of Stevenage. While groups from the huge CASE (Campaign Against Stevenage Expansion) coalition are still arguing through the planning system, some of them are already organising a "beat the bulldozer" pledge: to add your name contact CASE c/o Dyes Farm, Langley, Hertfordshire, SG4 4PQ . The strength of the situation is that by working together we can build alliances with disgruntled local people all over the country...

Information For Action

Check the local press - there's bound to be an unpopular housing development near you. If possible, find out who the company behind it is and do some research on them (contact Corporate Watch for details of how). Most housebuilders have regional offices - an action at, on or in one of these hubs of corporate power may help remind the builders of the perils of ignoring local opinion.

You can also find out about campaigns in your area by contacting: URGENT, Box HN, 111 Magdalen Road Oxford OX4 1RQ Tel. 07000 785202,info@urgent.org.uk,http://www.urgent.org.uk . Protest groups are springing up all over the country which would benefit from input from hardened activists with a variety of tactics up their sleeves. URGENT (which stands for Urban Regeneration and Greenfield Environment NeTwork - you come up with a better inclusive acronym!) was set up earlier this year to bring together everybody concerned with this issue to share information and campaigning skills. To officially support the network and receive the newsletter and e-mail updates, preferably send a cheque for £10 (£5 for individuals) payable to "URGENT" to the address above. Or please help URGENT out with offers of office equipment / your articles / donations / newspaper clippings.

What's The Alternative?

How are we to house ourselves sustainably? Ideas abound within the grassroots movement with solutions ranging from squats to yurts, housing co-ops to boats, self-build to strawbale homes. So the construction industry can sod off - give us the land and the powers and we'll house ourselves quite nicely thank you.

Groundswell seem to be quite sorted for ideas: get in touch with them at the National Homeless Alliance 5-15 Cromer Street WC1H 8LS Telephone 0171 833 2071 Fax 0171 278 6685, emailgroundswell@home-all.org.uk .

Other useful contacts are The Land Is Ours , the British land rights campaign network, and the Advisory Service for Squatters .