Kompany Car
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 19 Sep 2015
- Messages
- 4,227
My overarching contention is around not making aggressive steps via investment and financial incentives to major businesses to decentralise our economy away from just the south east.I presume every council has a policy (explicit or assumed) about where and how high towers may go.
If your contention is that the North is disadvantaged because housing demand is higher in the south, that's just part of the self-perpetuating reality of the pull of London.
Developers will go for highest profit, governments will say you must provide "affordable" homes, and developers will plead "viability".
The previous government scuppered NPR, by scrapping HS2 to Crewe and Manchester. NPR relied on sharing the HS2 infrastructure from High Legh into Manchester (and even then it was not a great business case). £17bn was a Tory fiction - there's no way it would fund new platforms at Piccadilly (let alone another £4bn for Burnham's subsurface station), 7 miles of tunnel under south Manchester, then another 30 miles of new or converted railway to Liverpool with 3 motorway crossings and over the Ship Canal, revamping Warrington Bank Quay, and the two new stations Mayor Rotheram wants in Liverpool), plus an airport station that was always to be privately funded - and all to have a Liverpool-Manchester journey time slower than Lime St - Victoria now.
I suspect we're actually on the same hymnsheet about infrastructure spending in London. Who can forget this benefit from cancelling HS2 to the North?
Housing is clearly unaffordable in London with areas like Enfield now up in the 350-400k bracket for a run down ex council house.
You therefore have three options or a combination there of..
1). In the Greater London area force the building of affordable houses by legislation, if land in the area is held for over 3yrs without houses being developed and sold then the land is sold at the median asking price for similar land to another developer or the government.
2). Build high speed railways to London which are cheap, for people commuting from the north, look to offset a percentage of the standard commuting fare against tax so that its no more expensive than travelling from say Stevenage (for instance). This allows cheaper houses in the north to be utilised but has the benefit of bringing higher salaries and money back to northern communities, hence improving the local economies.
3). Develop the North and significantly reduce spending in the London area, e.g. scrap the Lower Thames crossing for instance costing £10Bn. This will cool the growth in London. Use the money to incentivise major international and UK businesses to locate to the North to readdress the balance. For reference the spending per person is 2.5 times in London compared to northern England, that equates to 2.4k less per person. Make the spend equal.
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