Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by on Wednesday March 29 2017, @01:10AM   Printer-friendly
from the if-it-can-fit-a-bed,-it's-fine dept.

Hundreds of tiny studio flats, many smaller than a budget hotel room, are to be squeezed into an eleven-storey block in north London as its developer takes advantage of the government’s relaxation of planning regulations.

Plans for Barnet House, used by the London borough of Barnet’s housing department, reveal that 96% of the 254 proposed flats will be smaller than the national minimum space standards of 37 sq metres (44 sq yards) for a single person.

The tiniest homes will be 16 sq metres – 40% smaller than the average Travelodge room. [...] In the surrounding area, studio flats of a similar scale to most planned at Barnet House sell for around £180,000 and rent for around £800 per month.

[...] Office buildings in Croydon have also been converted into studios with floor areas of as little as 15 sq metres under the Tory deregulation. Housing experts have attacked the relaxation of planning regulations as a “race to the bottom”, but ministers insist the measure is helping to deliver vital new housing, and point out that more than 10,000 new homes were created from office buildings last year.

Under the “permitted development” system, developers who convert offices into homes do not have to meet minimum floor area standards, considered by researchers to be important for health, educational attainment and family relationships. Neither do they have to include any affordable housing.

Source: The Guardian


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @03:16PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @03:16PM (#485940)

    You must not be familiar with London.

    London has terrible traffic, a hideous street plan, big natural barriers (such as the Thames), a very high cost of living, a terribly oversubscribed housing stock, and very high wages (compared to most of the rest of the world).

  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday March 29 2017, @04:08PM (1 child)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday March 29 2017, @04:08PM (#485984)

    and very high wages (compared to most of the rest of the world).

    Really? Maybe that excludes engineers, because everything I read says that software engineers there get about half of the pay of non-Silicon Valley software engineers here in the US. Why anyone would go into that field in the UK is beyond me.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @04:11PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @04:11PM (#485988)

      thats why i asked.

      i was offered a job there; to move from the US. It would have been cool except for that I would have lost money even in the short run. the standard of living seemed to circle around being close to areas one can drink at and safely return to bed from before having to return to work in a few hours.

      i dont know how people graduate out of a life like that, but it seems there is little discussion about housing for middle aged people, just smaller rectangles for the growing amounts of young people.