Housing plans in East Yorkshire will be a blot on the region’s glorious landscape - GP Taylor
There is a little-known road that stretches from the coastal village of Bempton to Bridlington. It drops off the Wolds to give an amazing view of Holderness. On either side are open fields that in winter are scoured by detectorists, who, according to a local legend, are looking for a Roman villa and the treasures that go with it.
Imagine my surprise when I was recently told that the road was going to be closed for a couple of months so that they could build a roundabout costing £1.5m in order that the fields could be developed for executive housing.
Either side of the road would soon see construction traffic as more and more little boxes would be thrown up to join up all the new housing estates engulfing the town. The once luscious greenbelt is being eaten away, habitat destroyed and wildlife threatened.
It is not just in Bridlington that this is happening. All the coastal towns I visit are suffering the same fate. Whitby, Filey, Scarborough are seeing land that was once used for farming and the production of food being built on for houses.
It is so bad in Ayton, that it is only a matter of time before it is joined to Seamer and Scarborough. Once it is gone, it will be gone forever. The landscape will be destroyed only to be replaced by ugly houses crammed together.
Across the county, the identity of villages will be lost as they are consumed into large urban conurbations.
It is not just on the coast that this is happening. Planners appear to have carte blanche approval to build these blots on the landscape wherever they want and hard-pressed farmers appear only too willing to sell off their land.
Frankly, this chaos is only going to get worse when Labour comes into power. They have already appeared to have declared war on the greenbelt.
Back in 2023, Sir Keir Starmer vowed to "back the builders not blockers" by building more homes on green belt land and bringing back housing targets. Speaking to Sky News, Starmer said, Labour will give local authorities more power to build on green belt land to meet their area's housing needs if the party wins at the next general election.
Only last week, the Politico website, quoted a Labour official as saying: “I don't care if we flatten the whole green belt, we just need more houses in this country.”
The Labour promise to build over a million new houses will destroy forever our green and pleasant countryside and Yorkshire will be very clearly in their sights.
The issue is that the metropolitan elite in the upper echelons of the Labour party are totally disconnected with what life is like for those living in villages and small towns. They do not understand how valuable the strips of land between towns and villages really are.
Not only are these areas good for wildlife, they are also good for human recreation. People need open spaces with trees and crops. Mile after mile of ticky-tacky houses can soon destroy the soul.
Starmer believes that he can build the country back into growth and said, "That is also part of our plan for rebuilding the economy, because for every hundred thousand houses that we can build across the United Kingdom, then broadly speaking, that's 1 per cent of GDP that goes up."
Strange for a Labour politician to promote a Tory economic perspective.
I have to ask why don’t we concentrate on brownfield sites and re-housing the high streets? Shop closure is at an all-time high. Surely, it would be better to reinvigorate the inner towns and cities than destroy the Yorkshire countryside.
Yet, will Starmer have a housing market if other Labour policies are put through parliament? It’s not in the manifesto, but I am hearing mutterings that despite denials, capital gains tax will be implemented on all primary house sales and not just second homes.
Imagine that you have saved all your life to buy a house and when you sell it, your profit is taxed at 20 per cent. Just because Starmer says this won’t happen doesn’t mean that in the near future when the government coffers have been emptied it isn’t in a Labour budget. Who will want all these new homes then?
My local doctors have trouble seeing their patients as it is and nearby schools are full. More houses just add to the social crisis the country now faces. It is infrastructure that needs building and not accommodation. There needs to be a specific plan in place to get first time buyers on the housing ladder.
If Starmer really cares to get people into their own houses, then he should be willing to provide state mortgages at low interest rates to pay for them.
Green field building is not the way forward. Our inner cities are in urgent need of rebuilding and the carbuncle housing of the last 50 years should be pulled down and rebuilt with beautiful buildings that are pleasing to the eye and a pleasure to live in.
GP Taylor is a writer and broadcaster who lives in Yorkshire.