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Who benefits from Permitted Development Rights? Not homeless households who will have to live in the crap homes they create for wont of any decent alternative, and not leaseholders, but freeholders. This is a landowner free for all, pure and simple. https://www.mortgagestrategy.co.uk/news/right-to-build-up-gifts-freeholders-42bn-at-leaseholders-expense/
Some say Permitted Development Rights are good for homeless people because "something is better than nothing". But it is not homeless people who need PDR, but rather PDR that needs homeless people.
Many PDR homes are so utterly crap that no one with a choice would live in them. Hence the owners of PDR flats rely on a captive market of homeless households with few/no choices to provide demand for their product, backed up by housing benefit.
PDR actively prevents homeless households from reaching decent, permanent homes. 1. Because PDR flats do not make Section 106 contributions for #socialhousing locally. 2. Because PDRs inflate land values, making it more expensive to build #socialhousing so grant goes less far
This is not a marginal issue. The government's decision to maintain and extend PDRs will inflate land values across the country, making it harder to build truly #affordablehousing, harder for new businesses to find affordable space & harder for leaseholders to buy their freedom.
Still, I spose there are some short-term benefits for GDP reporting, so that's probably worth it.
