Royal
Tunbridge Wells is already in the clutches
of a population crisis that has now started to affect the quality of
life of those living in Royal Tunbridge Wells. There are simply not enough
homes in Royal Tunbridge Wells to house the greater number of people wanting to
live in the town. The burden on public
services is almost at breaking point with many parents unable to send
their child to their first choice of primary or secondary school and the
chances of getting a decent Dentist or GP Doctor Surgery next to nil.
Well that’s
what the papers would say.. but let’s look at real numbers, and in particular my
specialist subject of Royal Tunbridge Wells Property, with the housing issue in
Royal Tunbridge Wells. To start with, the UK has roughly 1,065 people per square mile
– the second highest in Europe. The total area of Royal Tunbridge Wells itself
is 5.452 square miles and there are 57,700 Royal Tunbridge Wells residents,
meaning …
10,500 people live in
each square mile of Royal Tunbridge Wells, it’s no wonder we appear to be
bursting at the seams!
… but yet again, newspapers, politicians and property market bloggers quote
big numbers to sell more newspapers, get elected or get people to read their
blog (I recognise the irony!). A
square mile is enormous, so the numbers look correspondingly large (and
headline grabbing). Most people reading this will know what an ‘acre’ is, but those younger
readers who don’t, it is an imperial unit of measurement for land and it is
approximately 63 metres square.
In Royal Tunbridge Wells, only 15.10 people live in every acre of Royal
Tunbridge Wells … not as headline grabbing, but a lot closer to home and
relative to everyday life, and if I am being honest, a figure that doesn’t seem
that bad.
Yet, the issue at hand is, we need more homes building. In 2007, Tony Blair set a target
that 240,000 homes a year needed to be built to keep up with the population
growth, whilst the Tory’s new target since 2010 was a more modest 200,000 a
year. However, since 2010, as a country, we have only been building between
140,000 and 150,000 houses a year. So where are we going to build these homes
.. because we have no space! Or do we?
Well, let
me tell you this fascinating piece of information I found out recently in an
official Government report. Looking specifically at England (as it is the most
densely populated country of the Union), all the 20
million English homes cover only 1.1% of its land mass. That is not a typo,
only one point one per cent (1.1%) of land in England is covered by residential
property. In more detail, of all the land in the Country -
·
Residential Houses and Flats 1.1%
·
Gardens 4.3%
·
Shops and Offices 0.7%
·
Highways (Roads and Paths) 2.3%
·
Railways 0.1%
·
Water (Rivers /Reservoirs) 2.6%
·
Industry, Military and other uses 1.4%
.. leaving
88.5% as Open Countryside (and if you think about it, add to that the gardens,
which are green spaces, and the country is 92.8% greenspace)
As a
country, we have plenty of space to build more homes for the younger generation
and the five million more homes needed in the next 20 years would use only
0.25% of the country’s land. Now I am not advocating building massive housing
estates and 20 storey concrete and glass behemoth apartment blocks next to local
beauty spots such as Dunorlan Park or Calverley Grounds, but with some clever
planning and joined up thinking, we really do need to think outside the box
when it comes to how we are going to build and house our children and our children’s
children in the coming 50 years in Royal Tunbridge Wells. If anyone has their
own ideas, I would love to hear from you.
