Huddersfield is already
in the clutches of a population crisis
that has now started to affect the quality of life of those living in Huddersfield.
There are simply not enough homes in Huddersfield to house the greater number
of people wanting to live in the town. The burden on public services is almost at breaking point with many parents
unable to send their child to their first choice of primary or secondary school
and the chances of getting a decent Dentist or GP Doctor Surgery next to nil.
Well that’s what the
papers would say.. but let’s look at real numbers, and in particular my
specialist subject of Huddersfield Property, with the housing issue in Huddersfield.
To start with, the UK
has roughly 1,065 people per square mile – the second highest in Europe. The
total area of Huddersfield itself is 18.050 square miles and there are 162,900 Huddersfield
residents, meaning …
9,000 people live in each square mile of Huddersfield,
it’s no wonder we appear to be bursting at the seams!
… but
yet again, newspapers, politicians and property market bloggers quote big
numbers to sell more newspapers, get elected or get people to read their blog (I recognise the irony!). A square mile
is enormous, so the numbers look correspondingly large (and headline grabbing).
Most people reading this will
know what an ‘acre’ is, but those younger readers who don’t, it is an imperial
unit of measurement for land and it is approximately 63 metres square.
In Huddersfield, only 12.86 people live in every acre of Huddersfield … not
as headline grabbing, but a lot closer to home and relative to everyday life,
and if I am being honest, a figure that doesn’t seem that bad.
Yet, the issue at hand is, we need more homes building. In 2007, Tony Blair set a target that
240,000 homes a year needed to be built to keep up with the population growth,
whilst the Tory’s new target since 2010 was a more modest 200,000 a year.
However, since 2010, as a country, we have only been building between 140,000
and 150,000 houses a year. So where are we going to build these homes ..
because we have no space! Or do we?
Well, let
me tell you this fascinating piece of information I found out recently in an
official Government report. Looking specifically at England (as it is the most densely populated country of the Union), all the 20
million English homes cover only 1.1% of its land mass. That is not a typo,
only one point one per cent (1.1%) of land in England is covered by residential
property. In more detail, of all the land in the Country -
·
Residential Houses and
Flats 1.1%
·
Gardens 4.3%
·
Shops and
Offices 0.7%
·
Highways
(Roads and Paths) 2.3%
·
Railways
0.1%
·
Water
(Rivers /Reservoirs) 2.6%
·
Industry,
Military and other uses 1.4%
..
leaving 88.5% as Open Countryside (and if you think about it, add to that the
gardens, which are green spaces, and the country is 92.8% greenspace)
As a
country, we have plenty of space to build more homes for the younger generation
and the five million more homes needed in the next 20 years would use only
0.25% of the country’s land. Now I am not advocating building massive housing
estates and 20 storey concrete and glass behemoth apartment blocks next to local
beauty spots such as Greenhead Park or nearby Castle Hill, but with some clever planning and joined up
thinking, we really do need to think outside the box when it comes to how we are
going to build and house our children and our children’s children in the coming
50 years in Huddersfield. If anyone has their own ideas, I would love to hear
from you.
In the
meantime, if you would like to read other articles about Huddersfield Property
Market, please visit the Huddersfield Property Market Blog https://huddersfieldproperty.blogspot.co.uk/
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