On 11 Apr 2016 at 9:24am MrWhat? wrote:
With the Phoenix complex turning into new housing.. Where are all these newly added population of Lewes going to find/put pressure on already oversubscribed schools, doctors, dentists, etc..???
On 11 Apr 2016 at 9:55am Mavis wrote:
And you think this only applies to Lewes ?
On 11 Apr 2016 at 10:24am Local fella wrote:
The entire likely population increase only merits about 0.7 of a full-time equivalent GP, so that's going to cause the whole town to die, isn't it?
On 11 Apr 2016 at 10:37am Earl of Lewes wrote:
There wouldn't be a need for more housing if we had a sensible immigration policy and curtailed buy to let house purchases, second homes and purchases of UK property by non-dom investors. We have to accept that our current course is unsustainable and will ultimately lead to us being dangerously dependent on food and energy imports.
On 11 Apr 2016 at 2:03pm Bongo wrote:
I wouldn't worry about it - it's likely that 90% of the new dwellings will be used as weekend flats for Londoners.
On 11 Apr 2016 at 2:29pm Land Lordy Lordy wrote:
My buy to let has always had people in it , so how can you compare a btl to a second home ?
On 11 Apr 2016 at 2:43pm Fairmeadow wrote:
North Street Quarter plus South Downs Way plus Old Malling Farm will together add about 700 new houses, less than 10% to the total stock of Lewes housing. Significant, but modest compared to impacts elsewhere, and broadly comparable to the projected national population increase, which is indeed quite significantly impacted by increased immigration, mainly from the EU or to benefit employers who don't want to pay enough to attract English workers.
For comparison Uckfield is scheduled to get over 1,000 houses on one site alone, little Newhaven about twice as many as Lewes and Hailsham to more than double in size, with more than ten times as much new housing as Lewes. There seems to be new housing mushrooming everywhere you look in Mid Sussex & Horsham Districts, and if the Gatwick second runway is approved that will require 40,000 new houses in Sussex. None of this comes with the necessary infrastructure so, yes, queues will be longer and services in shorter supply.
Two options really: put new jobs where you want the people to be, and where there is room for them, or let the market decide where the new jobs and new workers should be. As a bit of a Stalinist, the first option looks more sensible to me. However, we live in a market economy.
On 11 Apr 2016 at 4:30pm xplorer2 wrote:
Earl of Lewes - we're heavily dependent on food and energy imports already. We're a net importer of oil and gas, and our electricity generation mostly belongs to the French already. Our immigration policy contributes a tiny fraction of our population: far more pressure is imposed by more and more people living separately: separated couples and parents who - previously - would have lived together with their grown chlidren. Add to that increased longevity and the number of properties needed grows dramatically. Reducing immigration would have little effect.
On 11 Apr 2016 at 5:36pm Ukipper wrote:
It's true ! The immigrants are all happy to live twenty in a two bedroomed house !!
On 11 Apr 2016 at 8:57pm Jo wrote:
I thought that the Santon proposal includes a new health center being built? And I think Santon have agreed to contribute financially to schools nearby as well?
On 11 Apr 2016 at 10:24pm Fairmeadow wrote:
Xplorer2, I think your data are way out of date. Last year our UK population increased by over half a million, which is quite a lot, especially by European standards. Half of that was due to net immigration. The other half was excess of deaths over births, quite a lot of which was due to the high birth rate amongst other recent immigrants. This continues recent trends, and is likely to continue, especially as the UK minimum wage rises above those in other EU countries.
The government has promised to build 200,000 houses per year between now and 2010. If we increase the population by 500,000 per year, and have 2.3 people per house, that requires more than 200,000 new houses per year, just to keep even. There is no evidence that the Housebuilding industry has any intention of building so many houses - current building rate is nearer 150,000 and they make their margin by restraining production so as to ensure house prices continue to rise. Who suffers? People without an established position in the housing market (which generally means young people) and below average incomes. Especially people who have traditionally depended on social housing, which is right off the present government agenda.
Immigrants are more likely to work than the long-established population, and contribute usefully to our economy, but even a perfunctory analysis of the housing market shows that immigration on the scale of the past several years is one of the two main factors causing the housing crisis. The other is leaving Housebuilding to the market, ignoring the need for social housing. By contrast, foreign spivs squirrelling money abroad by buying London luxury property they then leave empty causes a minor if irritating problem localised to London and those bits of the South East that displaced Londoners ripple out to (like Lewes).
I'm not anti-immigrant, and In my youth I benefitted enormously by being one in another, richer, country, but denying the problems caused by unplanned immigration on the recent scale without creating the facilities all the new people need (schools, hospitals, transport systems, etc, as well as house) is not really helpful.
On 12 Apr 2016 at 9:56am MrWhat? wrote:
I don't suppose any new immigrants would get a new house in Lewes... It's hard enough even if you are a local with a job... These houses will probably go to professionals from London!
On 12 Apr 2016 at 2:56pm Fairmeadow wrote:
But quite a lot of the new immigrants are doctors, university staff, software engineers ..... We didn't train enough of our own doctors even before Jeremy Hunt decided to do his best to get them all to move abroad.
A contact in Wales, where they usually find it hard to recruit junior doctors, and where the contracts are not being changed, tells me they have seen a great surge in applications for the next cycle of training jobs from English doctors.