Crap homes, poorly built to low standards with a huge profit mark up for the large building companies.
Why do we accept this in the UK? The rest of Northern Europe doesn’t.
Can we simply imagine nothing else despite McCloud’s decades of programmes.
Don’t forget the biggest group of donors to #Tories are property companies…it’s not a coincidence.
@JugglingWithEggs and the non profits building affordable housing are struggling:
https://en.econostrum.info/uk-housing-crisis-higher-interest-rates/
‘It should be noted that government subsidies generally only cover a fifth of the cost of building new affordable housing.’
A feeble amount for government to put into social housing building…but I do wonder what level of red tape they impose for the benefit of that meagre sum? It’s the Treasury reporting requirements to satisfy the bean counters that slow down most projects in this country at the moment.
@JugglingWithEggs there’s a lot of this, potholes leveling up and chargers are examples I know of: they make an announcement, say they are putting millions or billions into it, make it near impossible or not economically viable to apply (cost money to apply with no guarantee of funding) and it doesn’t go well.
The level of micromanagement I see on retrofit projects from the government is insane at the moment…and I assume this is just one area, they must be doing it for everything. Huge sums announced, then poor delivery and large sums handed back to Treasury.
I think it’s the class system at its peak - there is zero trust for tradespeople, local councils/housing associations from the privately educated that fill the civil service and government positions at all levels
@JugglingWithEggs @richardknott its a vicious circle as well, my relatives had a solar + battery scheme installed (via a local private company) - it had decent kit but there was a real lack of knowledge by the installers to get it working correctly, took *months* for it to be sorted (the director of the company had to get involved) and it seemed a lot of the younger staff were just learning on the job with 0 training (and sickness and staff turnover was also high)
@vfrmedia @JugglingWithEggs common for small businesses. My parents had solar installed 11 years ago, wasn’t that impressed and the company went under whilst they were getting the paperwork.
Then there’s the FIT scheme and the support on it from energy companies, after my dad passed we couldn’t change the address on the account and didn’t tell us we needed to do another set of forms for the FIT. We switched energy companies but involved the ombudsman to finish
@richardknott @JugglingWithEggs most solar installs now require a fairly advanced knowledge of industrial grade embedded control systems, which a lot of domestic electricians do not have - and teaching this requires taking staff away from revenue-generating work, which small companies often don't have the slack for (its things like this which should be subsidised by governments, a lot of the better sparkys were trained by the nationalised Electricity Board..
We had solar installed recently through a council Solar Together scheme…local companies bid to do the work, but the electrician who did the technical stuff and was responsible for MCS sign off was subcontracted. He said he now specialised in just doing solar installs because once you’ve upskilled to do it, it’s much less onerous work and better paid. Also said vast majority of his work was for farmers - we need to make more affordable.
@JugglingWithEggs welcome to 2024 where rampant capitalism is now at the point that you are routinely overcharged for substandard products and services.
We just can't get it right, we're still building homes that would have been thought of as poor in the 1970's. Any new building techniques get botched and end up costing more a few years later eg RAAC. Apartments can be thrown up as quick as a Lego kit, but having seen a lot being built, I have big concerns over quality. There seems to be little experience or learning from what other countries do well.
@JugglingWithEggs we need an NDS - National Dwelling Service.
@JugglingWithEggs While I agree with McCloud his programme is, umm, not a shining example of building well (especially in bulk). Not that that's his fault, of course. It's entertaining enough to watch idiots with too much money waste it on nonsense, like it would be to have a peep-hole into pre-revolutionary Versailles.
I mainly wanna know when bricks got so expensive that you can't build internal walls from them. A lot of post-war housing was built to an acceptably high standard, from what I can see mainly because it was nationalised, employed psychologists and sociologists, and had standards.
I think it's mainly our nation's shiny-suited grifters who make the place terrible.
I’m not a particular fan of McCloud’s programmes either - I doubt I’ve watched one in the past decade…but who else is saying there is another way to build homes, other than expecting the likes of Barratt, Persimmon and Taylor Wimpey to do the vast majority of it and skim off vast inflated profits?
I think the biggest issue is access to and the price of land with utilities in the UK. The big property builders hoard land and push up the price of any tiny remaining pockets.
@JugglingWithEggs I think the problem is that the private sector has shown that it can't effectively manage distributing a finite resource (land with planning permission, which is rightly limited). Ironic, really, given that's what it's supposed to excel at, but it just results in massive (literal) rent seeking and corruption.
Building control should be given the powers to Parker Morris standards, etc, and be encouraged to develop large residential portfolios. They should charge a fair rent -- fair in the sense of covering costs of building, administration, and maintenance -- which would be far below market prices, and hopefully bankrupt many private landlords and send freehold property prices tumbling in the process.
@JugglingWithEggs tell me about it. Lifetime working in construction and in my later years before retirement the standards really dropped from what I was taught to aim for. And I bet things haven't got any better in the fifteen years. My last ten were really quite depressing.
Curious to know whether you think the route cause of the decline in standards was trying to squeeze out more profit or a decline in training caused by the prioritisation of HE over FE courses by successive governments? Or both.
@JugglingWithEggs Most local authorities long ago dispensed with the resident engineers and surveyors who used to check on standards.