Letter: South East Development Has Sucked the Life Out of the Rest of the UK

Published on: 20 Dec, 2016
Updated on: 20 Dec, 2016

From David Roberts

If “it’s obvious there are better sites to develop”, as David Smith states, in his letter:Who Is Looking After the Interests of Those Who Wish to Buy Their Own Homes?, where are they?

Building over the countryside will simply disincentivise the badly needed regeneration of Guildford town, where most people (especially the young) want to live and which has the best infrastructure base. This happened in London before the green belt existed; since then depopulation has reversed and the inner city has boomed. A lot of the new parts of London shows that higher density urban development does not have to amount to “vandalism”.

Building will not bring lower house prices. 10,000 or 20,000 new homes in Guildford will not reduce demand, which is in effect limitless and is sucked in mostly from London. What is needed is a national rebalancing away from development in the South-East, which for too long has sucked the life out of the rest of the country.