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Rugeley loses its towers


MHS

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2 minutes ago, Tonka said:

I'd rather have the towers then all the houses that are planned

Why?  Better for the old site to be used than more green fields lost to concrete.

Its a good site in walking distance of the town center rather than miles away needing more car journeys to go shopping etc.

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1 minute ago, Tracy D'arth said:

Why?  Better for the old site to be used than more green fields lost to concrete.

I agree entirely, sadly it’s cheaper to develop green field sites than brown field. 

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42 minutes ago, Tracy D'arth said:

Why?  Better for the old site to be used than more green fields lost to concrete.

Its a good site in walking distance of the town center rather than miles away needing more car journeys to go shopping etc.

you actually think people will walk to town?

where is the employment for them without driving ?

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11 hours ago, Tracy D'arth said:

Why?  Better for the old site to be used than more green fields lost to concrete.

Its a good site in walking distance of the town center rather than miles away needing more car journeys to go shopping etc.

It's not the green field/brown site debate (with which brown is obviously better) it's the development itself that's the issue. At best houses will be crammed together with tiny gardens and totally inadequate car parking. At worst there will be tower blocks that will sow the seeds for tomorrows social unrest. 

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16 minutes ago, Slim said:

It's not the green field/brown site debate (with which brown is obviously better) it's the development itself that's the issue. At best houses will be crammed together with tiny gardens and totally inadequate car parking. At worst there will be tower blocks that will sow the seeds for tomorrows social unrest. 

Sadly the UK doesn't have enough land to have spaced out houses and large gardens, well not if we want any countryside left.     Reading another thread which dwells on the housing crisis I would have thought houses were welcome.

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Perhaps they could have converted the cooling towers in to flats? A bit like some of the gasometers at Kings Cross in that London. I've always found the shape of cooling towers rather aesthetically pleasing. One of those examples where a shape arrived at purely through a utilitarian engineering process is very easy on the eye.

50 years from now, if we are lucky, people will be complaining when the last wind turbines are demolished and how the landscape is diminished by the loss because we use fusion power for everything. Fusion is always fifty years in the future...

Jen

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That would have been a really good idea, those gasometer flats look great. 

I remember the campaign against the single wind turbine nearby where local residents felt their TV reception would be affected. 

 

I always wondered if a discount in electricity bills for those visually affected by generating structures would be a reasonable offer that may be helpful in quelling opposition. 

 

 

 

 

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I don't think cooling towers are as easily developed into flats as an empty set of steel frames that used to house a gasometer. Though I can imagine them being one of the few bits of late twentieth century industrial engineering future generations eventually get around to wanting to preserve for aesthetic reasons.

 

Did think they gave Rugely quite a bit of character - they loom over the canal and no matter how far you progress through Rugely you still seem to be just passing them - but I'm not sure if the locals agree

 

Pity I didn't take photos on the fine winter's day I passed through: I assumed they'd still be there when I went back!

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40 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

I don't think cooling towers are as easily developed into flats as an empty set of steel frames that used to house a gasometer. 

 

Or, in the case of those at St Pancras, a set of gasholder frames that had been carefully dismantled from a nearby location, had been thoroughly refurbished, and then re-erected as part of the construction of some entirely new buildings.

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3 hours ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

Perhaps they could have converted the cooling towers in to flats?

 

They're eggshell structures which are empty inside. I don't think they'd take kindly to cutting windows or adding internal weight.

 

MP.

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3 minutes ago, Simon (Hawksmoor) said:

I wonder how much of the housing will be "affordable"

O know what you mean by "affordable" however unless a house stands empty because nobody buys it is affordable, to somebody.  I wish they would find a term which reflected the situation more clearly.

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5 minutes ago, Simon (Hawksmoor) said:

I wonder how much of the housing will be "affordable"

House prices there are some way below the national average, so most of them probably - although, of course, affordable means different things to different people.

 

(My post crossed Jerra's).

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5 minutes ago, Jerra said:

O know what you mean by "affordable" however unless a house stands empty because nobody buys it is affordable, to somebody.  I wish they would find a term which reflected the situation more clearly.

To me "affordable" means a house that two people on minimum wage can afford to buy.

In the absence of any council housing these days.

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3 minutes ago, Simon (Hawksmoor) said:

To me "affordable" means a house that two people on minimum wage can afford to buy.

In the absence of any council housing these days.

 

 

 

My understanding is that the provison of affordable housing (which is generally a requirement of PP by the LA) is that it is for the 'low-paid' to be able to afford it, but, unless there is legislation in place to ensure that happens how would you stop two people on 'above minimum wage' from buying it, and / or putting in an offer above the asking price to make sure they get it ?

 

The whole thing is a farce - 'Affordable' is meaningless.

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52 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

 

 

My understanding is that the provison of affordable housing (which is generally a requirement of PP by the LA) is that it is for the 'low-paid' to be able to afford it, but, unless there is legislation in place to ensure that happens how would you stop two people on 'above minimum wage' from buying it, and / or putting in an offer above the asking price to make sure they get it ?

 

The whole thing is a farce - 'Affordable' is meaningless.

And even then the developers often wriggle out of the original PP commitment to building a certain % of those "affordable " houses anyway

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6 hours ago, Jerra said:

Sadly the UK doesn't have enough land to have spaced out houses and large gardens, well not if we want any countryside left.     Reading another thread which dwells on the housing crisis I would have thought houses were welcome.

Without getting into an almighty debate ? I don't entirely agree with you. I live just inside the M25 but spend a fair amount of time in either Nth Devon or Oxfordshire. The difference there and Watford is so stark it's inhumane. Only this morning I went to a supermarket about 1.5 miles away and next to it on a site that used be the main post sorting office they're building SIX 17 story tower blocks with effectively no parking spaces. This is being replicated throughout Greater London and no doubt other conurbations

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7 hours ago, Athy said:

Whatever the pros and cons of the demolition, full marks to the contractors for an extremely neat job.

Somewhere on YTube there's a video of the Bedford brickworks chimneys being demolished. The company that carried out the demolition , Robinsons  ?? was owned by someone I went to school with. There's a scene where he's being interviewed by a reporter. Sadly John passed away a few years ago but the event was mentioned in his eulogy.

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50 minutes ago, Slim said:

Without getting into an almighty debate ? I don't entirely agree with you. I live just inside the M25 but spend a fair amount of time in either Nth Devon or Oxfordshire. The difference there and Watford is so stark it's inhumane. Only this morning I went to a supermarket about 1.5 miles away and next to it on a site that used be the main post sorting office they're building SIX 17 story tower blocks with effectively no parking spaces. This is being replicated throughout Greater London and no doubt other conurbations

I am not sure how this is not agreeing with my statement that we don't have land space to allow spaced out houses and large gardens.    I would have thought building tower blocks was merely a sign of what I said.

 

Can youexplain please?

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3 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

 

 

My understanding is that the provison of affordable housing (which is generally a requirement of PP by the LA) is that it is for the 'low-paid' to be able to afford it, but, unless there is legislation in place to ensure that happens how would you stop two people on 'above minimum wage' from buying it, and / or putting in an offer above the asking price to make sure they get it ?

 

The whole thing is a farce - 'Affordable' is meaningless.

The definition of affordable is not without debate (see https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7747/) but what is clear generally is that the housing that meets the PP conditions is not affordable by the lower income sections of society, whether buy or rent. (see https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38067626)

 

In particular, any Local Planning Authority that sets its policies in terms of a p3ercentage of market rates, is going to find it hard to ensure a supply of housing at a cost that is no greater than a given percentage of the incomes of 90%+ of those living in the area.

 

In Cornwall in recent years, some Neighbourhood Plans have been agreed which contain restrictions on the access to new housing by those without a well established connection to the area. This was in response to the fact that the demand for second homes has pushed up prices so that they are unaffordable for a very high proportion of first homers from the area.

 

Sadly, whilst it is widely understood that the price of housing is a classic example of supply/demand where there is a shortage. Despite the whingeing from large developers there is not a problem in most areas regarding the supply of land. Generally, there is sufficient land owned by the developers which aleardy has PP, to exceed current building rates for a good number of years to come.

 

However, neither the developers nor the government have any interest in shifting the supply/demand equation. Developers want to maximise their profits (not necessarily the same as maximising turnover) so control the release of new build. The government, of most persuasions, is sensitive to the pressure from existing home owners not to do anything that impacts the asset value of their existing homes. The new and second hand markets for housign are very closely intertwined, price-wise.

 

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