A belated birthday treat meant we were having tea on a sunny afternoon at The Grimsdyke Hotel. Beautiful. A secluded wood lay before us. An ornamental garden to the right. A lake with overhanging trees and pink cherry blossom scattered everywhere, over the tree roots and water. A wall of green smothered with purple flowers, shimmering in the breeze. “I want to spend my life like this,” I said, “surrounded by roses and trees and beauty.” Yes, my friend agreed.
We looked at the rows of roses on our right. There was a new, small wire fence! Turned out a deer had been coming in and eating them! How sweet! We idly ambled to the wood to look for him, and wandered further in. The trees were gnarled and old, apparently an apple orchard had been here. I knew the history of the house and there was an eerie feel to the lake. We could have been in any time, any era, the trees were so old and the flowers so beautiful. Such is England – find a green and secluded spot, and you can lose yourself in the history of the place and our country – the foliage so well established, the area so unchanged….
The hotel has been bought by a chain and seems safe, including the green windy drive up the hill. But for how long I found myself thinking. Building seems to be going on everywhere and it scares me…
On the way back we discussed my friend’s plans for a new home, having sold her current one. She had to sell because she can no longer rely on having house share tenants to help pay the mortgage without getting an extra bathroom and a licence. The law has changed mainly because of all the slum landlords renting out small houses to 19 or more illegal immigrants and I guess the council had to do something – so are now making respectable private house share owners suffer – I’m sure it helps the councils boost their coffers – on the premise of cutting back on the pressure tenants brings to the area’s infrastructure – although strangely if you pay for a council licence that makes it OK…!
We talked about all the new developments she had seen locally and all over London, springing up everywhere. What she told me was an eye opener.… Many contain various different sized properties – and often the largest and better positioned ones are saved for social housing tenants – a prerequisite now for many new developments. Also often the social housing has a separate entrance (strange!).
She was startled when enquiring about empty flats in one development. “No – you can’t have any of those. They are being saved for investment only and are remaining empty.” Now we know this goes on – but seriously? They are taking our green fields and building what they cite as vitally needed housing .. and probably the councils are getting subsidies from the government … and yet…flats are being syphoned off for investment?? How much longer will we walk around with our eyes shut as we are mugged off over and over again?
My house hunting friend saw flats built next to graveyards, on fields, on old industrial estates, on hospital grounds, on car parks, on parks, at the end of roads – you name it – they are building everywhere. Some properties were so new she couldn’t even find them on a sat nav… “I’m amazed,” I said. “So much going on!”
“That’s nothing,” she said. “It’s only just begun… building is being planned everywhere. Let me tell you…” And as we drove home, we took a few detours – there were developments springing up all over where I had grown up – even behind other houses and on every piece of land that could be scraped up. If you look up as you walk or drive around you will see signs pointing to show homes, new developments or building sites where another one is going up. The signs are everywhere, and it is beginning to scare me…
As we sped down a dual carriageway I braced myself – yep there it was – all the old offices and warehouses had gone and masses of flats had appeared. As we drove past some trees something made me look – and yes hiding behind them were again more flats. It became like a game of hide and seek – spot the building signs and the new flats – it was like picking targets off a range – it was endless – a journey through my youth in a sleepy suburb which was fast turning into a concrete jungle.
And as we turned into the main road near my home I looked 
up through my hands – and there it was – the little box that is a house building sign – I groaned – where were they going to keep fitting all these new homes? And worse still – how would our local facilities cope – and the ultimate question – where ARE all these people coming from? England – and the UK – is an old country – we have trees that are hundreds of years old for goodness sake! Beautiful old crumbling houses, wild flowers that have grown and beautified our lives for – well, ever!
Lakes, streams and lanes in places you don’t expect them. And wildlife that has nested, had their families, visited us every year, for what seems like since the beginning of time. Our country has a timeless feel to it in so many simple places…. but for how much longer?
Change is often hard, and building has always gone on… But this is different – we are losing our way of life, and once it’s gone, it won’t be coming back. This is not like the little deer who just wants some roses for lunch, the bulldozers are coming for the very soul of what was once our home…
The government is addicted to foreign money and mass immigration to feed the god, economic growth. Foreign investors of all shapes and sizes are encouraged to buy up properties all over the country leaving the indigenous population scratching around to find one, even if they can afford it. The minimum wage is irrelevant; ever increasing property prices are the main reason of increasing poverty along with the other overheads before a slice of bread can be put onto plate – council tax and energy costs. Most all new houses are now totally reliant on electricity as the plan is to phase out oil and gas heating in the name of saving the planet from global warming. There will be no option to cook with gas anymore. The world has gone completely bananas!
I am also very aggrieved at the building of ‘unsocial’ housing on what was green belt land in my small town where we know troublesome families are relocated from cities where nobody wants them but Councils pay to relocate even though there is no infrastructure to cope i.e 3 weeks usually for a GP’s appointment. There were hundreds of objections within half a mile but they were ignored and at the Planning meeting actually recorded there were no objections. Even though the Councilors concerned will eventually be voted out, it’s too late. They all lied.
Yes, indeed, mass immigration requires mass housing development. The pursuit of population increase economic growth at all costs may be the culprit. Turn on the immigration tap and a Western country can almost guarantee instant economic growth and with economic growth it can also guarantee sale of its debt on international markets. Economic growth can be achieved (in Japan for example) via an increase in productivity through labour saving technological innovation (robotisation etc) rather than relying on immigration.
Until a political party can articulate an economic model whereby productivity growth can be achieved without mass immigration then the concretisation of Britain will continue.
Second sentence should read “The pursuit of economic growth at all costs may be the culprit”.
Janice….your feelings echo mine utterly and completely. I don’t live in London but the same things are happening in my area, despite its “rural” status. Build build build….endlessly. Government dictates, more more more. Many acres of fields I’ve known for over six decades, as pasture-land, now concreted over. Small villages now being forcibly turned into very large villages and then they’ll be towns, as they join up to the next village via a long corridor of bricks and mortar. Rural life has already vanished in many districts, due to the mushrooming of “vitally-needed homes”.
It is said the British are not producing as many children as they used to, so why is there such a huge demand for housing? These homes are not for us. They’re for our replacements, of whom there are zillions. And unless something in this country changes drastically, and quickly, we will lose it to the developers and incomers. If they have their way, the island will be smothered in buildings from Land’s End to John O Groats. We are being slowly exterminated.
The design ‘life’ of many new homes is apparently 25 years, and the design life of many of the fittings around 6 years. All these affordable executive ‘homes’ on greenfield sites, along with apartment blocks consisting of mostly very high density units with bedroom apartments at £250K, and houses at £500k, with hardly room to park the ‘rentacar’ on the drive. Apparently all these people are moving to rural more ‘up-market’ homes for ‘quality of life reasons! At the other end of the scale are terraced 2up2down ‘homes’ with about the same floor area as were built over a century ago. Goodness knows what these developments are going to look like in 25 years when they are on their third or fourth occupier. And for goodness sake never ask about infrastructure , or the environment, wildlife disappearing at an alarming rate where I live , with nets being placed on hedgerows to stop what birds are left from nesting, so that developers can remove hedgerows and start more new homes! Then of course there is the little matter of sewage being added to an already ageing network, which explains the third world ‘stink’ everywhere these days that was hardly ever in evidence (as it was in many countries) before we became one of the most densely populated counties in Europe .