🚀 go-pugleaf

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/britains-bad-housing/

Earlier this month, Prime Minister Gordon Brown
placed housing firmly at the top of the government’s
agenda, unveiling plans to build three million homes
by 2020 – possibly the biggest building programme in
Britain for 30 years.

But in this edition of Dispatches,
reporter Andrew Gilligan investigates
the private house builders charged
with solving Britain’s chronic housing shortage.

Gilligan raises serious concerns about the
way in which house-builders currently operate.

He exposes the business tactics which are
used to manipulate the planning process,
questions the quality of houses and shows
how public authorities have allowed
developers control over housing policy.

Gilligan uncovers the underhand ways in
which some developers seek to gain
planning permission.

He reveals the dirty tricks used by one lobbying
company on behalf of a developer in London to
influence the local planning committee and
discovers cases where developers have made
donations to local political parties which
control the planning committees –

around the same time their applications
for profitable developments are being
considered.

With housing in three-quarters of the
country now too expensive for first-time
buyers, Gilligan examines one of the government’s
key solutions to the astronomical pricing –
building more ‘affordable’ homes.

But he discovers that previous attempts to build cheap,
good quality homes in the past have failed dismally with
prices for flagship schemes inflating by more than three
times the original target price. (Excerpt from channel4.com)