Julian Morrison

Repeal planning permission, the green belt, and building regs for all DIY home-building (build to occupy, not build to sell or rent).

There are technologies** that allow a good, modern home to be built for less than £10,000 - if it weren't for government interference. Planning permission vastly raises the price of land, interferes with design, forces dismal conformity. Building regs nitpick every detail, turning "modern" houses INTO phpbb_over-insulated unbreathing plastic-and-plasterboard boxes, and always raising the price. And green-belt laws halt urban sprawl at the price of cutting the countryside off from any influx of new blood.

Personally I'm opposed to all the above laws existing at all, but I think their total repeal would presently be unsaleable to the NIMBYs. However, cutting a hole in them large enough for owner-occuper self-build would be politically saleable (no fear of big business running amok) and would free a huge number of people from mortgages, rents and the suburban nightmare of repetitious housing estates.

(** Examples of cheap building technologies: Cob, straw-bale, Segal method.)

doc_cruel

ummm.... not sure about this - I can understand where you're coming from but without planning offices we would end up with a load of houses on dodgy ground, high rises being built without the basic infrastructure, areas of natural beauty ruined forever.

Streamline yes..... ignore at our peril!

Julian Morrison

No, because most of the big problem things are the sort that no DIY builder could do, or afford to hire done. And the things that affect only the house itself, like bad ground and no infrastructure, well, caveat builder. The building regs can become "suggestions" with reasons given. Sometimes there are good reasons to ignore the suggestions. For example, green folks might want to build composting toilets rather than septic tanks. Or, people building with cob might leave out insulation (cob is a weak insulator but provides excellent "thermal mass", an alternative means of keeping a home warm by storing heat).

I can see how cowboy developers need some sort of reining in (although I'd prefer civil liability rather than planning laws) however It's wrong to nanny people in the construction of their own dwellings.

As to ruining natural beauty, it's unlikely. People building for their own use have a huge incentive to improve and appreciate, not to destroy. Trust people a little!