Category: Write to your MP or local Gov. Cllr.

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Petition on The cost-effective way to stabilise housing affordability across the whole of Britain

Building thousands of new houses arbitrarily, without consulting local communities to find out what is most needed and where these should be built would be a derogation of duty when done without due regard to all existing locally drawn up Neighbourhood Development Plans (NDPs), as originally promised by the newly elected Labour government. Enhanced NDPs should also be commissioned, before good taxpayers money is spent and wasted on new housing. Simply building high numbers of new houses cannot solve the current housing crisis because the pricing issue is a market failure problem rather than a supply one. I would happily explain why that is to anyone interested.

If you haven’t already done so please sign the petition link at the bottom of this page if you want changes to stop the present house price crisis from continuing to crash the starter end of our housing markets.

Sadly none of the political parties in Westminster are addressing the housing price crisis properly. This is hurting the nation’s economy by becoming an inflationary drag on the whole of society.

The following three remedies are designed to correct the housing markets by enabling sufficient affordability to be restored and maintained, aimed particularly at those working locally.

Did you know that a substantial part of the price of a house today is based on the value of the land beneath it!

The first and (No1) Although some might brand this next remedy extreme, it could help to resolve the house over-price issue that we are currently experiencing and have become rather addicted to.

The proposal here is to make any land which gains planning consent for residential use become rated as having a nil or a nominal land value. This would help bring house prices back to genuine affordability levels once more. This proposal is based on the valuation knowledge, reasoning, and experience of the petitioner. There are two further proposals in addition to this.

You may well ask, how have ‘I’ (one person or individual), come to know exactly what to do and which way to turn in order to resolve matters of this degree of specialisation? The answer is that I chose surveying and valuation as my career in my 20’s and commenced in a training job back in the 60’s, working amongst a team of qualified surveyors already knowing all of these things and taking five or so years to qualify by examination. As a newly qualified surveyor I could then put such knowledge into use, advising clients and employers throughout the rest of my career. As I’m now retired, I can give commentary to what I have come to know over my career. I am able to diagnose and cure the present housing crisis using my knowledge relating to land, buildings, law, planning, economics and valuation. Crucially, I understand how to use valuation knowledge as the essential tool required for resolving the present house pricing issues, which have becoming a significant problem across society these days. There are two further proposals to set out in addition to this.

To continue …
The second or (No2) proposal here is to change The Town and Country Planning rules so that whilst the regional planning authorities should continue to administer the whole planning process as happens currently, all such decisions relating to residential land use would fall under the jurisdiction of the relevant Town or Parish Council and would be decided by that local Town or Parish Council with reference to the currently adopted Neighbourhood Development Plans (NDPs). These instruments will have been created in liaison with the regional planning authority as now of course.

Such devolution of planning decision procedures are required in addition to the current Government’s ‘New Wave of Devolution’, which essentially proposes to introduce regional Mayors if local planning authorities should decide to apply.

However, demand and supply could more easily and economically be brought to balance within each individual town and village, certainly in Cornwall, by introducing and adopting Enhanced Neighbourhood Development Plans (ENDP). See ‘The house price affordability crisis’ on the web site for more information.

Anyone hoping for more detailed information on these proposals for fully devolving planning decision making to those councillors elected to represent the town or village’s local economy, are invited to request a discussion on this, informally if preferred.
Please email any such request to: phendry22@icloud.com

Balanced demand and supply locally could be achieved for each individual town and village by having an Enhanced Neighbourhood Development Plans (ENDP) fully adopted as being the document to refer to when making planning decisions throughout the validity of the ENDP.

As briefly explained above, the additional change under this petition is to devolve all such decisions relating to the residential use and development of land to the relevant Town or Parish Council to decide subject to and with reference to the currently adopted Neighbourhood Development Plans (NDPs), as explained.

Such extra devolution on residential planning decision-making would have to be included in the government’s current proposals for amendments to the existing National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), also part of the ‘New Wave of Devolution’.

Under this new devolution for residential planning applications there would no longer be a right-of-appeal to planning inspectors nominated by The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) in the U.K. Instead, the local Town or Parish Council would be the authority to determine (to grant or refuse), all such planning applications within their jurisdiction.

If a dispute should arise following a decision made by the relevant local Town or Parish Council, any necessary appeal would be decided by a regulated arbitration process and there would be a formal hearing if deemed necessary. Under this procedure an appeal would be convened and heard locally upon application by the parties in dispute, instead of remotely by The Planning Inspectorate.

In other words, on the question of all applications for residential, or part residential planning approval, the local Town or Parish Council itself would expect to have a proper say, instead of only being allowed to make a formal comment to the regional authority, as occurs at present!

This way, appeals would be dealt with more quickly and appropriately, speeding up the whole planning process for residential planning applications. There would be a significant saving both in the time taken to determine these and in the financial cost of accomplishing the approved development.

The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) in the U.K. should however retain the ultimate right to call a particular planning application in for determination at inception, but The Planning Inspectorate should no longer be involved in determining residential planning applications and appeals in general, because appeals against such decisions would have been fully devolved to the relevant local Town or Parish Council to decide locally.

To reassure petitioners on some of the technical aspects of this change and in brief, all land would still be owned freehold or leasehold but any change of residential user would be treated as development under the planning rules and such development of land would require planning permission as newly administered by the relevant Town or Parish Council. Therefore obtaining formal planning permission for a change of residential user would differ from that which currently happens under the existing planning rules.

The third or (No3) and final proposal, here is to bring better pricing knowledge and advice in, making this available for all buyers and renters, by introducing new buyer-orientated property agencies.

To achieve this there should be a complete change of all the existing marketing methods for housing, by introducing property agents representing the buyer and renter side of the negotiating process in place of the existing seller-led estate agency system. This issue has been failing all housing markets around the whole of our country for a long time.

This proposal would be a considerable improvement for reducing the cost of housing and hinges on shortening the time it takes for sales and purchases to result in becoming successful completions. It would work by improving the way all residential property is marketed, whether going for sale or to let, by replacing the existing estate agent regime with a new and fully licensed buyer and renter orientated agency service called Residential Housing Agents (RHAs). 

These agents would act primarily on behalf of buyers and renters by advising them both upon the market value of the property under consideration and also the condition of such property. This way those purchasing or renting property, especially if it is for themselves and their families to live in, would be directly hiring and paying for the Residential Housing Agent, both to find the best property for them and to deal with the whole of the purchase (or the renting transaction), right through to completion. This would be completely different from (and a reverse of), the existing estate agency regime, bringing significant advantages to the market. Another of the distinctions would be that the sale of the family’s former residence may be dealt with by a different RHA from the one advising on the purchase (or the rental) of the house to be acquired but working on the common ground of obtaining a completion.

If these changes were brought in people moving between houses at the higher end of the market should not be out of pocket as a result, whereas those at the lower end would see considerably lower prices, helping them to climb onto the property-owning ladder in the first place. Lower rental values would also be a spin-off effect from this.

The overall cost of building new houses would also be noticeably reduced as a result of these three proposals.

Sales throughput of all forms of residential property would increase as the affordability levels themselves would simultaneously increase.

These are the very stimuli needed to get housing sales flourishing and get new house building completions increasing once again.

So, here on this web site is the full reasoning explaining what is needed to finally improve all the housing markets across the whole of Britain? If you follow the link below you will find yourself on that very page. Please enjoy this offering and by all means comment if you have thoughts of your own about this.

This site proposes changes to the whole way in which houses are marketed by agents as well as bringing in far more effective planning controls. 

For more information on the necessary house marketing changes, go to:

The House Price Solution

“Introducing The House Price Solution”

Posted by: Peter Hendry, Consulting Valuation Surveyor
Author of:– The House Price Solution

Please sign our petition.
It is about squaring the price levels of housing depending upon the respective level of wealth of purchasers and their ability to afford such property. Unless things change significantly along these lines, countless people will continue to experience considerable financial anxiety and suffering in the process.
The link below opens the petition in a new tab for you to look at.

The cost-effective way to stabilise housing affordability across the whole of Britain

Your action in asking our government to debate this could help bring about all of these much needed changes.

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About The House PRICE Solution

The net cost of housing is an economic negative when it comes to national economic competitiveness.

This is what Britain must seek to improve in order to be more competitive as an independent nation.

The solution to this is therefore, to reduce the net cost of housing.

This will not be achieved by ‘simply’ trying to build more and more houses everywhere. In other words, the true solution is not to build, build, build at all !

The actual answer to the problem comes from recognising that there is too much money sloshing around in profits from housing development and that this has been the case for some decades now.

In addition to this, if you choose to believe that the house builders of today, whom also own most of the land with the planning permissions for new housing, are somehow going to be persuaded to build and build, until their prices (and their profits) drop to marginal levels, that notion is simply not going to happen! They will just trim how much they actually build to accord with the profit levels which they shall decide to set as being their minima.

The real and only solution would be to resolve the ‘market economic’ aspects of the housing problem instead.

This can only be done by reducing the crazy amount of money going into the supplying of all housing as an entity.

For more on this please read our earlier posts on The House PRICE Solution.

The House Price Solution

Posted by: Peter Hendry, a retired property valuer
Author of:– The House Price Solution

Please also note. Unless things change significantly along the lines explained, countless people will continue to experience considerable financial discomfort concerning housing costs. If you agree please sign our petition.
Your action in asking our government to properly debate this would help to bring about these much needed changes.
The link below opens the petition in a new tab for you to look at and sign.

The cost-effective way to stabilise housing affordability across the whole of Britain

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A one-page synopsis of ‘The House Price Solution’, especially for newcomers

Welcome to The House Price Solution. This web site is campaigning for a change to the new government’s policy on having Top Down housing targets.

The purpose of this website is to stimulate debate and help find collectively, the best way to bring house prices back to within reach of a majority of those wishing and needing to buy (or indeed rent) housing for themselves and their families.

This is the alternative to simply trying to out-build housing demand, until prices reduce to lower levels; for that will never work! The full reasoning of these unique proposals can be explained in interview, allowing these proposals and the methods they require to be adequately explained and discussed.

This is a new and comprehensive planning and marketing solution which can resolve both the above problem and the house price crisis as well. I merely ask that this is given due consideration by our new government.

The proposals set out on this website are future generational, based upon a detailed analysis of house price levels by the author as found to exist during historic and damaging economic turbulence in Britain.

The object of these proposals is to replace existing flawed sales and planning methods with new ones, designed to avoid the effects of unwanted future price escalation within all British housing markets. This would be the advantage of deploying The House Price Solution.

Having been in contact with my own MP about it, I am hoping for a referral of my alternative proposal to The Secretary of State at The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. I would like to generate some in-depth discourse on this, important and earnest submission, before very long.

I am also hoping that the Civil Service responsible for advising government on housing policy, together with this considerate Labour government, which has just been elected, will consider and fully examine these special new policy proposals for remedying the present housing crisis.

The first question to ask is, how can my solution help?

There are two aspects. The first is about how to make all local housing markets across Britain work like free-market economic models.

This would involve replacing estate agency as we know it with a new, better and properly licensed service which I am calling Residential House Agents or (RHAs). This is the first radical change. These buyer and renter-advising agents would primarily work for buyers and renters instead of for sellers, as happens at present.

The job of these new Residential House Agents (RHAs) would be not only to sell or indeed let individual owner’s houses but more importantly would find and secure the houses which their contracted client(s) are seeking both for themselves and their families – whether such clients are wishing to buy or to rent.

Individual RHAs working with clients would need to have gained an approved new qualification showing their level of competence. The reason for this is that the existing estate agency service breaks the economic market rules and generally talks prices up. This skews all residential property marketplaces by over-valuing most of the individual houses and flats. This is a fundamental misrepresentation and is damaging all the housing marketplaces across Britain.

What is needed instead is a service that records all genuine offers (whether to buy or to rent), and immediately submits these to the relevant vendor (or the landlord if for rentals), for consideration. After the decision is made and one of the offers is accepted by the vendor or the landlord, the RHA handling this will arrange for a pre-worded lock-out agreement or contract with that vendor as well as with their legal adviser such that they all agree not to accept any other offer for the agreed period of time that it should take for the conveyancing to be concluded (or the tenancy agreement if its a letting). In essence a newly prescribed lock-out agreement.

Once the sale or letting is completed in this way, the RHA would collect their fee from the satisfied buyer or renter, via the solicitor dealing with completing the transaction (or from the landlord if appropriate). See the other articles on the website explaining this in more detail.

One other key advantage of introducing these proposals would be that there would no longer be a need for a Council Tax Revaluation, as this method of valuation would be superseded by the market valuation procedures set down in these new proposals. This, in itself, would save the government a great deal of money as well as civil servant time.

The second radical change, deals with the town and country planning rules relating to residential property. What it proposes is the substantial change necessary to make the best and most efficient use of all housing units, whether already built, or yet to be constructed.

A main reason for this is that housing is in great demand as well as in unprecedentedly short supply. As a result, each viable existing housing unit should be zoned within the local Neighbourhood Development Plan (NDP), such that whenever that property becomes vacant (and/or changes hands), the appropriate NDP zoning for that house or flat must take effect. For example, if the house was previously used as a second home, but it has subsequently become zoned on the NDP for local housing use, then after the vacation of the property, the new use must comply with the current NDP zoning. Enforcement action could follow wherever this is not the case.

Clearly, because it is the local town or parish council that draws up local NDPs, the best organisation to administer this would be that same one. I therefore propose that all residential planning decisions should be devolved to each local town or parish council to have them determined exclusively and in accord with their adopted NDP.

Demand and supply could easily be brought to balance within each individual town and village concerned by introducing adopted Enhanced Neighbourhood Development Plans (ENDPs). See ‘The house price affordability crisis’ on the web site for more information.

Balanced demand and supply locally could be achieved for each individual town and village by having an Enhanced Neighbourhood Development Plans (ENDP) fully adopted as being the document to refer to when making planning decisions throughout the validity of the ENDP.

This would mean the existing arrangements for regional councils to decide such planning applications would no longer be needed, which is a third radical change, one designed to speed up planning decisions a great deal.

As a result, there would no longer be a need for government planning inspectors to deal with residential planning appeals centrally. In other words there would be no need for an appeal process for individual residential planning matters anymore. This would save inordinate amounts of time as well as great expense and bring much needed clarity, as to exactly which use designation each residential property should have, for the vital benefit of the town or parishes’ local housing economy, primarily of course.

This site proposes changes to the whole way in which houses are marketed by agents as well as bringing in far more effective planning controls. 

For more information on the necessary house marketing changes, go to:

The house price affordability crisis

“Solving the affordability crisis”

Posted by: Peter Hendry, Consulting Valuation Surveyor
Author of:– The House Price Solution

Please also note. Unless things change significantly along the lines explained, countless people will continue to experience considerable financial anxiety or pain so, please sign our petition.
The link below opens this is in a new tab for you to look at.

The cost-effective way to stabilise housing affordability across the whole of Britain

Your action in asking our government to debate this could help bring about all of these much needed changes.

Posted on

The best way to solve the shortage of supply of available houses to rent or buy across the whole of Britain

There is a ‘middle way’ between central government trying to coerce local government into granting unwanted planning approvals for contentious residential housing developments and opposition governments becoming elected by saying they would bring back compulsory housing targets!

It is to allow local town and parish councils to determine residential planning permissions and by so doing, manage and maintain the balance of their own local housing supply and demand.

To achieve this I am campaigning for a complete transfer of decision-making powers for the granting of residential planning approvals, which would give local parish and town councils full responsibility to bring forward effective development plans and be able to grant planning approvals in accordance with these without interference by central government.

In other words the responsibility to balance the use of all residential property should be assigned to local parish and town councils in order to meet existing and future demand for the right type of residential development within their area.

This would make such councils active in ensuring that new and existing residential property, within their jurisdiction, would allow for a user-spread which is fully able to accommodate future demand for housing within the local residential property pool under their control.

Enabling this would be enabling real town planning. If given this responsibility, each district and its local planning committees would be expected to balance the demands for each type of residential property user in their area, so that those requiring housing in its various forms should be able to obtain it.

In this way, each area would be empowered to succeed in providing housing for its own residents. This could result in all areas within the Britain becoming able to house its local inhabitants adequately.

What we need is ‘Local’ Democracy, ‘Local’ Accountability.

This proposal would work by completely replacing the current top-down residential planning policies, which are failing and demonstrably insufficient. I ask that this new proposal for root and branch change should be fully examined, scrutinised, debated and after all of that, be inaugurated.

This site proposes changes to the whole way in which houses are marketed by agents as well as bringing in far more effective planning controls. 

For more information on the necessary house marketing changes, go to:

The house price affordability crisis

“Solving the affordability crisis”

Posted by: Peter Hendry, Consulting Valuation Surveyor
Author of:– The House Price Solution

Please also note. Unless things change significantly along the lines explained, countless people will continue to experience considerable financial anxiety or pain so, please sign our petition.
The link below opens this is in a new tab for you to look at.

The cost-effective way to stabilise housing affordability across the whole of Britain

Your action in asking our government to debate this could help bring about all of these much needed changes.

This is a no nonsense solution for housing, by balancing demand and supply in each separate local area within Britain.

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The notion that we can build our way out of The Housing Affordability Crisis is utter nonsense

Politics is sub-optimal at present, especially in regard to housing, which is the last thing people want.
Here’s why:

The notion that we can build our way out of the Housing Affordability Crisis is NONSENSE !!

When you consider that in this country, the total existing number of dwellings is probably well in excess of 30 Million AND …

If you accept that the maximum possible number of new dwellings that could be built in any one year these days is say 250,000, then you must deduce that the percentage of extra dwellings that could in practice be added to the existing housing stock in each year can only be a single digit number of percentage increase in any given year!

Assuming that you understand the economic theory behind house prices, to achieve a material change in such price levels by increasing the overall supply of dwellings, one would have to build in excess of 10%, more dwellings to begin with. If not that number, the effect of pursuing such a policy would be negligible, in actual practice.

In conclusion therefore, you would need upwards of two to three Million new dwellings to come onto the housing market, to even begin to affect house prices sufficiently to bring them down to more affordable levels by these means alone.

Also, as population growth continues, more and further residential development shall be necessary, even though this would be at the expense of the loss of agricultural and amenity land and would further damage our environment in the process.

The mathematical explanation:
Here’s the mathematical proof of why the current policy of building only a third of a million new houses each year, cannot be expected to have the effect of lowering the level of house prices currently prevailing in housing marketplaces all across the United Kingdom.

As explained, the expected proportion (in valuation terms) to have any material affect on current house prices to even begin to take place, would be an increase in the stock of housing of approximately 10% at least initially.

Formula 1:
Calculating the minimum number of dwellings that would be initially required to be added to the existing housing stock, to achieve a 10% increase in stock – i.e. in the first year?

Say the total number of existing houses is (conservatively estimated) at 25 Million.

The original number of houses + 10% = 27,500,000 . This would be the total number required. The total number – original number = number of extra houses required.

27,500,000 – 25,000,000 = 2,500,000 the number of extra houses required. This is far in excess (i.e. approaching ten times the number that our government are expecting to be building i.e. 250,000 on an annual basis) !!

Formula 2:
Calculating the actual percentage, of dwellings which would be added to the existing housing stock, if only say 250,000 additional dwellings were to be added in the first year?

New number – orig. number
——————————————- . X 100 = %
orig. number.

25,250,000 – 25,000,000
——————————————- . X 100 = 1% only.
25,000,000

Formula 3:
Calculating the actual percentage, of dwellings required to be added to the existing housing stock, if supposing as much as 400,000 additional dwellings were to be added – for comparison purposes.
(Note the orig. number of housing stock would increase in each subsequent year.)

New number – orig. number
——————————————- . X 100 = %
orig. number.

25,400,000 – 25,000,000
——————————————- . X 100 = 1.6% only.
25,000,000

Both formulas 2 & 3 disclose the very significant shortfall of sufficient houses able to be added, to gain anything like the 10% minimum increase necessary, as calculated using formula 1, to start bringing house prices down significantly enough for them to be adequately affordable to a majority of current-day potential buyers.

This shortfall is far too large to even contemplate let alone justify a course of action such as the one currently being suggested, in order to attempt to bring house prices down over the relatively short term. The actual affect on price levels themselves would be both marginal and insignificant at best!

Further explanation regarding the proposed/revised selling process advocated under The House Price Solution:
In full response to the ‘lack of supply’ pontificators, whom are rather prevalent currently, the whole rationale or philosophy behind my carefully considered solution for restoring the housing markets around Britain to good health, embraces the wisdoms of bygone days. How so? There was a time when latin was in general parlance and the words: “Caveat Emptor” were in frequent use. The meaning of this should never have been forgotten.

This used to be an express warning which was applied especially where property or real estate was concerned. The words of the warning mean: ‘Let the buyer beware – unless they are covered by the seller’s warranty in terms of quality and worth’. The meaning of this simple latin saying amply describes why the current failures are occurring, manifesting within all housing markets up and down our still great country. 

We should remember this because in actual fact it is the one thing which is required, in order to restore and correct the damaging anomalies surrounding today’s accelerating house prices. As explained, these anomalies arise from our having departed from and forgotten what were previously well-known and established wisdoms, to be relied upon whenever undertaking commercial transactions such as those involving the buying of houses for family use.

The problem of unaffordable house prices today simply isn’t a supply-side matter at all. It is a price-side problem not a supply-side one. A-level students studying economics ought to know this! Once this is understood, the requisite changes to the way in which our housing markets operate across the whole country may be realised so that they may, once again become normality. Central government necessarily would need to take a lead in resolving this current-day house price crisis of course.

In the local area where I live for example, there are clearly more than a sufficient number of houses that certainly could be used to satisfy both present and future demand for residential housing but they are not coming onto the market. Instead they are being used for non-residential uses. It is this that needs addressing most urgently, not the headlong rush to build more houses to satisfy a purely notional lack of supply when in fact, there is a more than adequate supply of suitable property both in our locality and in plenty of other locations all over the place!

Please consider what is being explained here and raise any relevant questions on this for public scrutiny and discussion.

So, here on this web site is the full reasoning explaining what is needed to finally improve all the housing markets across the whole of Britain? If you follow the link below you will find yourself on that very page. Please enjoy this offering and by all means comment if you have thoughts of your own about this.

This site proposes changes to the whole way in which houses are marketed by agents as well as bringing in far more effective planning controls. 

For more information on the necessary house marketing changes, go to:

The House Price Solution

“Introducing The House Price Solution”

Posted by: Peter Hendry, Consulting Valuation Surveyor
Author of:– The House Price Solution

Please also note. Unless things change significantly along the lines explained, countless people will continue to experience considerable financial anxiety or pain so, please sign our petition.
The link below opens this is in a new tab for you to look at.

The cost-effective way to stabilise housing affordability across the whole of Britain

Your action in asking our government to debate this could help bring about all of these much needed changes.

I invite questions and comments regarding this complete new way to restore all housing markets up and down the country, to return appropriate operational housing market conditions once again.
With better prospects for all wishing and needing to move house at any particular time I propose this as being the best and only practical solution to the house price crisis.
Market economics would be substantially improved using these newly explained techniques.