I wish the Scottish Parliament to rectify the blindness of past governmental bodies by ensuring value for money housing by ending the building firm monopolies and begin providing decent sized houses for human beings.
If we have larger houses, we can have both a higher quality of life and more children who will stay in the country and pay tax due to said higher quality of life. It could also keep talented workers here (as housing will compare more favourably when compared with the USA, Canada and Australia) and could help to start and reward a fledgling industry while punishing what I believe is an old and crooked industry, that for generations sought to give us garden sheds that they called 'houses'.
Our current, small housing is hurting our quality of life, our population, our finances that we could instead use to raise our children, our ecology that we do not have garages enough for two cars - perhaps one electric, one petrol/diesel. At present you have to choose which one, so everyone goes for the one they know will work. With bigger, cheaper housing people could have two cars, using the electric to get about in town and the petrol/diesel for long journeys.
Small housing contributes to unemployment in two different ways, one; low motivation to get a job due to the poor quality of life reward involved, e.g can't have a big house unless millionaire, can't have lots of children that I can't look after. And two; talented people who would be entrepreneurs in Scotland move away for better quality of life and so take jobs with them, or talented people who would support a business and make it into a success move away and so that support from that worker/s in that company by that talented person is not there and the business fails.
To do this, I would like to see housing regulations significantly changed, in a specific manner including the removal of planning permission requirements and taxes/fees for private landowners and in its place, licenced regulation of companies providing prefabricated homes. A new regulatory framework would cover maximum selling prices; building materials; minimum room dimensions; minimum sizes of plots; and a safety inspection regime which includes unannounced and anonymous inspections post-sale.
These regulations could encourage the building of larger but also cheaper homes, made out of wood (brick houses are not eligible for any of this scheme, except storm walled wood houses). Regulations would set:
- a maximum cost for the houses to minimum square footage and room count e.g £150K to 6 bedrooms, living room, kitchen, en suite bathrooms and main bathroom, garage, basement, attic;
- Minimum rooms sizes would also be set, with each room at least 20ft by 20ft and 9ft tall, with the garage being 30ft by 30ft and 10ft tall); and
- The maximum and minimum size of a plot of land - 3 acres, anything greater and you would be considered a 'business', with a minimum size which would be the size of the house + 1/6th of an acre garden (including a full-sized garage).
As part of the new framework safety inspectors would routinely check on the quality of houses built by the prefabrication company anonymously, speaking with homeowners (who cannot be penalised) to ask what they think of the quality of the house built. If the pre-fabrication company is found in breach of safety regulations, they will most likely have their licence revoked and be forced to pay another company to rectify any faults in their work.
There should be a land tax to encourage smaller plots to be sold by effectively cancelling out profit from selling to companies to build up a land bank, with sales of individual plots being tax free, 1 acre plots attracting a tax of £5000; 2 acre plots £10,000 and 3 acre plots £15,000.
Changes should be made to Council Tax so that any payment is based on: Rural location, size of plot and how many children in the house. The more children, the lower the tax, to encourage bigger families.
I wish the Scottish Parliament to begin a Libertarian style of private land ownership, for people who own less than 4 acres with no fees or taxes and only the normal housing tax applicable once everything is done. The individual need not apply for any planning permission, as it is the prefab company that is regulated by the Scottish Government.
For more, you can look at this article: https://scotspol.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-domino-effect-of-tiny-housing.html