On seeing the UK BBC Web News Headlines, I knew who That YouTuber would be......

[MK14]

Yes, lord only knows what could happen if plebians were allowed to build their own homes on any private land.  I mean, won't someone consider the inflated property prices?  I shudder to think of a drop in house prices - it shall ruin the character of the entire street.  Harrumph.

Yes, but what would things end up looking like, then......

[RJSV]

   You need the permit, so the local city Planning Dept. can check; if any neighbors have ALREADY been tunnling under there (and paid up on bribes...if they have any corruption in local gov.)

[coppice]

Yes, lord only knows what could happen if plebians were allowed to build their own homes on any private land.  I mean, won't someone consider the inflated property prices?  I shudder to think of a drop in house prices - it shall ruin the character of the entire street.  Harrumph.

Yes, but what would things end up looking like, then......

That place has VERY strict planning and building controls.

[MK14]

That place has VERY strict planning and building controls.

If that is the case, then it could be lack of enforcement, corruption, negligence, etc.

[coppice]

That place has VERY strict planning and building controls.

If that is the case, then it could be lack of enforcement, corruption, negligence, etc.

Nope. They come down really hard on people not complying with the rules.

[MK14]

Nope. They come down really hard on people not complying with the rules.

I don't know for sure, about that particular location.  But in general, as I understand it, there are places, with a serious lack of planning regulations.

[coppice]

Nope. They come down really hard on people not complying with the rules.

I don't know for sure, about that particular location.  But in general, as I understand it, there are places, with a serious lack of planning regulations.

Most planning in the UK, is a dismal failure, leading to horrible results. On the other hand, the building regulation control is reasonably effective at producing safe buildings.

[MK14]

Most planning in the UK, is a dismal failure, leading to horrible results. On the other hand, the building regulation control is reasonably effective at producing safe buildings.

I suspect that is a matter of opinion.  As I see it, sometimes it is good, and other times bad, with some of the planning decisions.

I suspect, that as the UK is relatively crowded, it makes strict/careful planning control, more important.  Than somewhere with lots of wide-open space, and plenty of room to build stuff, without affecting others.

Over building in places in the the UK, could cause terrible traffic situations, badly over-load services, such as Doctors surgeries, Hospitals, Schools and other facilities.  Make the place over-crowded, possibly crime ridden, and perhaps make it horrible, for most people, living in that area.  Not to also mention, potentially increases in pollution, littering, street-crime, traffic-queues, road accidents, and many other nasties.

[Kyle_from_somewhere]

Planning permission is more important than "it's my land and I can do what I want", which itself is a sentiment from an era much newer than most land law is from.

You might think "it's mine, I can do it if I want to, you can't stop me", but if the thing that you want to do is say, build a massive amazon warehouse on top of greenbelt land where deer live and the motorway is the opposite side of the village... then your actions would fuck everything up for a lot of people and you should be stopped.

For ordinary people who want to build one house for themselves or put a garage up or whatever, getting permission is easy. They just want to make sure you're not going to do something bad.

[tom66]

Planning permission in itself isn't bad,  but it's too restrictive and the process allows too many objections and delays.  It has deliberately been made more obtuse year on year by governments with policies that favour those who already own property.

Additionally, it should be pretty easy to build infrastructure where the benefit to others is greater than the small cost to those e.g. living within a few km of a rail line. 

Recently, a plot of land next to a rail station near me was bought by a developer.  The station has a 40 minute train to London, so you would have thought it's a perfect spot for commuters to live.  (There are already quite a few houses near the station.)  NOPE, because the council won't grant permission, it's being turned into a car park.     You could fit about 10-15 two bed apartments there or something similar, but instead it will be a place for cars.  Terrible land use policy.

(Car parking itself isn't bad - we need it.  But we don't need it to be immediately next to prime infrastructure like this, as it encourages car dependency.)

[bd139]

There’s a lot of corruption in planning as well. The developers are well known for throwing money at local councillors. And when they do that policy suddenly appears in favour in the planning departments.

There was a hilarious backfire on this near me. One of the local rat runs goes past the road where all the rich councillors live. So they used their power to force through a highways change to block the road against public vote so they didn’t have cars going past. Two huge concrete blocks arrived and signage was erected at each end saying that it was No through roads. Within a month the concrete blocks turned into a well known fly tipping and shooting up heroin location which devalued the local houses considerably 

[coppice]

There’s a lot of corruption in planning as well.

Its hard to see how it could be otherwise. Parts of the UK planning system are objective. For example, there are geometric rules about the ability of your new structure to block natural light to your neighbours windows. You can nit pick over fine details there, but the rules are pretty solid. The rest is subjective, and anything subjective is wide open to corruption.