The Rydons Exeter - building a community

[Mufinman69]

The Rydons Exeter - a gentle warning.

Clearly, building a brand new estate of houses particularly a large mixed estate of private and social housing, is also building a community, and comes with its very real responsibilities.

There will be a mixed bag of comments about our estate I am sure, which deserves a thread all on its own, but this thread is about the community failures which were so unavoidable.

It is so important to provide facilities for the young if you don't they will get bored and cause a nuisance. We are told by the developers that it is in hand, but by the time it happens some of the youngsters will have grown up and become hooligans.

All it needed was a small part of the estate set aside from the start as a play area, a few swings maybe or a small skate board area and for most part they would be content. Putting up signs say keep off and don’t play hear or there is not the way to build a successful community.

I have a private dwelling on the estate and hope that we can keep it peacefull and harmonious along side the young people, if they are given the right facilities. RD

 

[NewHomeExpert]

As with all large developments of this kind, the developers need to build the estate roads and sell quite a few of the new homes in order to fund the community benefits for the site.

These are normally required as part of the planning approval. the developer does not undertake to provide these for the good of the community.

Your experience would indicate that in the current muted property market, Persimmon, like many other house builders, has built a majority of the social housing first, as these already have a built in buyer, the housing association.
Unfortunately social housing can bring anti-social elements of society.

No matter how you feel, it is not, this time the developer's fault.
The fault lies with a planning system that requires social and private housong on the same developments and does not require community facilities to be built ahead of new homes being occupied.

There was a similar thread on here about a school which had been paid for and advertised by the developer, but which the council is now not going to build as they deem it is no longer required.

 

[Mufinman69]

Thank you for that reply.
We have now created a Residents Association and will begin work on applying pressure where it needs to be applied to create facilities for the young. Prevention is far better than cure and we believe it is in all our best interests to prevent anti social behaviour, rather than waiting for it to materialise before trying to deal with it.

 

[NewHomeExpert]

Residents Associations are a good idea on new developments.

You have power in numbers and are difficult for anyone to ignore or brush off.

It can also coincide with the setting up of a Neighbourhood Watch scheme so you all can benefit from cheaper home insurance too.

And any problems with your house builder can also be dealt with by a combined "class action"

I am surprised all developments don't set up resident's associations.