Doctor Drivel wrote:
"John Cartmell" wrote in message

If you're thinking of gas, electricity and building - I'd probably agree;

What? Have you seen the state of the crap the developers turn out? I would
incraese it in building


The main reason our current buildings are so poor is overregulation,
for 2 reasons.

1. The excessive regulation has driven prices to many times the free
market price, so we cant afford decent. Expalined more further down.

2.. All the creative ideas I came up with: nope, not permitted.
Sometimes for fair reason, but in most cases not at all. Too often the
regs are leading clearly and drectly to lower quality stock.


Look at our building history before planning. We have a wealth of
creative innovative quality buildings from then: but not today. Just
about all of our very finest buildings would be illegal to build today!
Look at Ben Law's house, a lovely piece, yet it took a vast effort just
to get permission to build it. AND it has to be pulled down when he
dies. What a farce.


In the 1800s, with nearly zero regulation, anything went, and
everything was built. The free market addressed quality issues as
usual. Generally the good stuff survives, and the bad is almost
entirely erased. The result was the country gradually built up an
increasing stock of quality builds.

Realise that today we have way more resources than 100-150 years ago,
yet are living in houses of similar quality. Instead of affording much
better, we afford the same because the cost has risen excessively.

Today with more resources, more information, and the existence of
voluntary quality schemes, the mistakes of the 1800s are simple and
easy to avoid. The same process could be done today without the sort of
errors made then - not that they were in reality especially
problematic.

But today one mostly can not innovate, and one mostly can not afford
luxurious touches because the costs of even basic buildings are pushed
astronomically high by anal planning laws, illogical building regs, and
silliness from start to finish.

Yes there are good reasons for build regs, but they fail in so many
ways as to end up being counterproductive. In numerous cases cutting
one very trivial corner can bring a gain of far more value than the
loss of value entailed. I dont mean occasionally, old houses especially
are like this. Time after time improvement work would be seriously
beneficial, yet can not be implemented because some completely trivial
point doesnt meet current OTT practice.

Not always, no, but our build regs have gone so far that this sort of
problem is an every day occurrence, with stupid decisions resulting
again and again. Build regs once seemed a good thing, wiping out some
poor practices. (This could be done today just as well with todays easy
access to information.) But they seem to have forgotten their purpose,
and now be leading us by the nose, making building today very much more
costly, causing problems routinely, and preventing most competent
diyers from constructing their own houses, a process which in itself is
not especially difficult.

Build regs fail to take this weighing up, or putting into perspective,
into account in any way, stopping serious improvements over trivial
non-issues. Theyre fair enough as a quality benchmark for new builds, a
standard that may be met when chosen, but not fine as a requirement for
new houses, where they can escalate costs unnecessarily, and prevent
self build, and they are hopelessly inappropriate when applied to
improvements of older houses. For example it is common to find one
would have to demolish an existing 70s/80s 1 storey bathroom extension
to add an extra room on top, because the rules on foundations require
deeper. Even though the existnig extension migth have foundations
measured in feet, while the whole road full of original houses, all in
good condition, have only 13" foundations. BRs just dont make good
sense far too often.

Dont even get me started on the requirement for sockets high up even on
3rd floor flats, paper pushing just to replace your hot water tank, the
requirement to draughtproof then add ventilation, the requirement for
DPCs based on dodgy science, the requirement for deep foundations
instead of lime mortar, the upcoming requirement to air pressure test
houses, ad nauseam.

In a free market there would be competing standards companies, each
with its own set of requirements and inspectors, and buyers could
choose what they wanted, or specify for themselves if they wish. With
todays level of comms technology this is easy to do. There would also
be much less restricitve planning, the end result of these being that
first time buyers would see prices nosedive, and those with more in the
bank would be able to afford some very nice houses, instead of another
small airtight box.


We're now unhappy about our legal right being taken away to do our own
plumbing, for reasons that really make no sense, but rarely is it
mentioned we've lost the basic human right to build (and improve) our
own house. If we wound the clock back 100 years, most of us on this
group would have done exactly that, built our house, just as we want
it. How many of you would like to be able to extend, yet are prevented
from doing so? How many would like to build a 2nd house on the
property, but cant? How many here would rather have bought land and
built for 6 months, at a fraction of the cost, than pay through the
nose for 25 years for a restricted houses on restricted land?

Rip-off Britain is a term each of us earns by working 25 years just to
buy a house. Even Africa has 8-10 year mortgages!


NT