Flats

[lily]

Has anyone else noticed a recent trend whereby a largish house is sold with planning permission to demolish and replace with a block of flats? There are several examples of this around me, the flats are built irrespective of whether they fit in with what's around them. An example is a large block on the northern approach to Plymouth, completely dwarfing everything around . Someone cynically said that it maximises council tax, so maybe this is the reason.I wonder if this is happening countrywide?

[Oola]

I think it's probably seen as a good solution to our 'housing problem' - less land but maximising use of space I suppose. And yes, I would not be at all surprised if the council tax angle was partly why they get through.

[sunflower]

It's happening around where we live too. Beautiful houses, which could last another 150 years are being pulled down for ugly blocks of flats. The thing that angers me most is, that they are all luxrury flats, way beyond the price of first time buyers.

[Serenity]

I think its a nationwide thing although in a couple cases not for from where I live the houses have been kept and converted into apartments but then these seem to command even higher prices. We have lost many, many of these beautiful houses since the interwar years you would think that now we should be looking to preserve them. Developers would rather start from scratch though - they can claim the vat back on a new build but not on a renovation!

[Oola]

On the flipside, I know that there's been a spate of people buying up old Victorian townhouses that were flats and turning them back into family homes. Although not a solution for the housing crisis, at least in some way the buildings are being brought back to their former glory and preserved.

[Redstart]

Recently, where we used to live (in the Alps) a beautiful 19th century stone house was demolished and is being replaced by a block of luxury flats (and yes, there is a shortage of cheaper housing). It was sacrilege! There were a lot of objections and the objectors got a stay of demolition. So the owner hadthe property vandalaised and appealed, and the planning officer (a builder) gave the go-ahead. And no, the new building is not in tune with the local environment it's a "look at me I'm modern, I'm ugly and I'm expensive" building. Instead of an elegant stone built house with a portico.

So we don't feel guilty at turning what was originally one house back into one house, even though it had been two flats for the last hundred years. Apart from anything else the size of the two flats would not be acceptable nowadays - people managed with a lot less in the past. Interestingly when we decided to combine two small rooms to make a farmhouse kitchen we found we'd put it back to the original size! And when he climbed up the scaffolding to paint the gable my husband found a scrap of original paint - exactly the same colour as he was about to put on. Perhaps the house has been talking to us in our sleep!

We have different conservation grades here. Ours wasn't like a grade 2 listing but was in a conservation area in the "worth keeping" category. This means we are freer to do things than a grade 2 listed house but cannot put in picture windows or paint it bright red, or knock it down to build a block of flats; this area's timbered houses are creamy white plaster with grey or a soft-grey green timbers. In the Zurich area they are dark red, while in Britain the timbers are black- I do wonder why different areas and countries go for different colours.