please empty your brain below
|
|
I for one am delighted the site is being turned over for housing, just like the old gasworks site near where I live. Only a radical increase in housing provision will reduce the present unsustainable cost of housing.
bontempi | 20.06.22 - 8:42 a.m. | #
|
|
I agree with bontempi up to a point - we need more housing. But we are mostly likely going to end up with more variously motivated landlords, rather than owner-occupiers or council tenants who have a stake in their environment and community.
Philip | 20.06.22 - 9:00 a.m. | #
|
|
Philip - while you have a point, more housing is still beneficial even if it isn't owned/managed fairly. Maybe that's what allows the current system to continue, but the housing need is so pressing that it's hard to justify waiting for a better system to come along.
Ted | 20.06.22 - 9:54 a.m. | #
|
|
These holders are more or less the same (same engineer) as the Pancras ones - so they are kept while original masterpieces like East Greenwich are pulled down - but for the wretched Silvertown Tunnel, not more flats for a change. What has happened to all the war memorials which used to be among them - in the days when I could wander about among them un-safetyed when I was spending my days in the adjacent London Gas Museum. They had been collected up from all the closed North London gas works. There also used to be a big pile of machinery collected up for the museum. So?
MARY Mills | 20.06.22 - 10:06 a.m. | #
|
|
Mary, I believe the London Gas Museum collection went to the National Gas Museum at Leicester.
Jeremy | 20.06.22 - 10:35 a.m. | #
|
Flats. Sigh.
I guess the 'astronomical cost' of decontaminating the site becomes worthwhile when it's for flats.
I'm glad you got inside the perimeter while you still could.
Cornish Cockney | 20.06.22 - 10:46 a.m. | #
|
|
Jeremy: Leicester - yes and no. I thought that and put it in my recent book on the East London Gas Industry (which is on Amazon) but have been pulled up by someone who tells me that some items are now in the National Grid archive at Warrington- which I have visited several times and never knew.
MARY Mills | 20.06.22 - 11:11 a.m. | #
|
|
More flats? Aaaargh
It used to be good | 20.06.22 - 12:16 p.m. | #
|
|
What's the point of more flats for Asian investors to buy and not live in!
Tones | 20.06.22 - 1:29 p.m. | #
|
|
How bizarre, my partner moved to Bow last week and just yesterday we were walking along the river and commenting on the gasholders...
Felix | 20.06.22 - 2:04 p.m. | #
|
|
I guess it's too much to hope that the apartment blocks would be circular to occupy the footprints of the original gasometers..
Adrian | 20.06.22 - 2:30 p.m. | #
|
|
These developments of old gasworks are often hampered by delays and planning concerns over very costly remediation. I used to live in Torquay overlooking the old Hollicombe gas works site. Demolition of the gas holder started in 2003. That was the easy bit. Remediation followed in fits and starts, with serious concerns and objections regarding the plan for 185 flats. Now in 2022 the site is still undeveloped although planning permission still exists but is regarded as a stalled plan.
Bob S | 20.06.22 - 5:15 p.m. | #
|
|
I don’t have a dog in the fight but I hope some of the gas holders will be restored as a condition of planning permission. I think this is what happened at Kings Cross. It could become an iconic housing development but probably won’t.
Christopher Bellew | Homepage | 20.06.22 - 7:54 p.m. | #
|
|
The comment about flats being bought as an investment and left empty is worth noting. The ethnicity of the investors is neither here nor there. The emptiness is bad and wasteful, yes, but my impression is that the issue only affects a fairly tiny proportion of the enormous number of flats being built.
Malcolm of Kent | 20.06.22 - 8:53 p.m. | #
|
The internationally unmatched group value of the holders is set to be destroyed by leaving only one standing (if that), making the overall historical grade listing of the site pretty worthless.
As for the percentage of flats bought and left empty across London, I doubt anyone really knows.
Herbof | 20.06.22 - 10:11 p.m. | #
|
It should not surprise people, but actually the UK and London in particular has one of the lowest vacancy rates in the World. The UK average is just 3%. Compared to Finland where it is 11%. But Finland builds a lot of houses and Flats and we don't. New York has a vacancy rate twice that of London. So no, foreign investors are not leaving flats empty, why would they? That's leaving free money on the table!
People put too much store by populist articles blaming the problem on others when, it's nimbies and all the politicians who always oppose new housing schemes. Unlike other countries you have no right to build on your own land in the UK, supply is incredibly constrained. But no one will do anything about. The right will launch useless marginal mortgage schemes, while the left will talk about rent controls or second home owners as the problem, rather than the lack of supply, until building land is cheap , we won't gets lot's new housing. Increase supply , prices fall, it's not hard!
rational plan | 20.06.22 - 10:48 p.m. | #
|
But there isn't an unlimited supply of land in the UK, especially not around London. We need land for farming, recreation and nature as well. Plus (and no I'm not a Farage supporter) the UK has had massive amounts of immigration in recent years, adding to the demand for housing.
Finland is a vast, empty country of just 5.5m people, there's no comparison.
Mikey C | 21.06.22 - 1:11 a.m. | #
|
|
A gasworks is neither farm, recreation, nor nature. (It was probably seen as a blight on the landscape in its day, in the same way that people attack wind farms or solar panels now) Given that land is indeed limited and housing demand is indeed high, if not here then where? (and note that building houses where there aren't any jobs doesn't help any - London is where most of the demand is)
Lmm | 21.06.22 - 5:53 a.m. | #
|
|
Yes, they're kind of attractive, in a decaying industrial way. But I'm bemused by the implication (in the post and the comments) that we should leave a bunch of rusting metal, which has been decaying since 1984, and isn't accessible to the public, to keep rusting... more housing has to be a better use of the land.
Harry | 21.06.22 - 6:38 a.m. | #
|
There may not be an unlimited supply of land in the UK, but in England, housing accounts for only 1% of the land use. So actual amounts of immigration don't need to change that. Immigration is not the problem.
Of course, if land supply were a problem, flats would be the most effective use of it, notwithstanding the merits or otherwise of this particular site
Ian | 21.06.22 - 7:11 a.m. | #
|
|
|
TridentScan v2.10.0 | Privacy Policy
|