4 January (Part 2) - Censored by Kent Police
There will probably not be a lot of dissent if it is suggested that the lack
of affordable housing is among the most serious issues facing the nation. Even
when a new development is said to include affordable housing -
and there are not
many of those in Bexley - the need to have a £100,000 income to buy in
London is a very bad joke.
On average just over a third of my untaxed income has gone on supporting family
mortgages and associated housing costs for each of the past five years and all
there is to show for it is a 1950s council house. That sort of input goes a very
long way towards driving the wolf from the door and results in a decent standard
of living, but in principle it is all wrong. My father never gave me a bean but
I owned four bedrooms, three reception rooms and two bathrooms on a Civil Service income by
the time I was 32 with less than 50% of it mortgaged.
It is all so very wrong and politicians who fail to recognise it will one day
pay the price. One can argue that it is all the fault of unfettered immigration
if you like but that is not a solution. What is needed is more planning flexibility
and probably lots of other things; I am a long way from being an authority on
planning matters.
Back in the Summer I noticed one of those Planning Notices taped to a lamp post
not all that far from home. It proposed that a four bedroom detached house be
slightly extended and then divided into a three and a two bedroom semi with off road parking.
It looked like a possible win-win situation. Someone makes a bit of money and
two families are housed instead of one.
At a bit of a loose end earlier today I checked Bexley’s planning portal to see
what had happened to the idea. It had been initially rejected, appealed and then rejected again.
Without knowing the details one can only assume that there were valid reasons
for the rejection but it looks like a missed a opportunity to me. I wondered
how may people had similar ideas.
I found a few but all but one had been rejected. I tried to find out why and
started to read the applications. One turned out to be more interesting than the
others, the applicant was a Councillor, the name was clearly stated at the top of the application.
Above the signature was this declaration…
Ordinarily I would be letting you know which Bexley Councillor made this elementary mistake but because of
the perverse interpretation of the harassment
laws by Kent Police I will have to cast doubt on the competence of every single one of them instead.
Sorry about that!
