{"id":2151,"date":"2015-07-07T13:36:41","date_gmt":"2015-07-07T12:36:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/abbeylandsresidents.org.uk\/?p=2151"},"modified":"2017-11-24T13:31:56","modified_gmt":"2017-11-24T13:31:56","slug":"pressures-on-dunbar-conservation-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ourlocality.org\/abbeylands\/pressures-on-dunbar-conservation-area\/","title":{"rendered":"Pressures on Dunbar Conservation Area – where to put new housing"},"content":{"rendered":"

We are told there is a housing crisis, and I don’t necessarily disagree. It depends on your perspective and the local context. Housing problems differ across the country and indeed the county, and cannot be seen in isolation from other social, environmental and economic problems. If you read the Daily Mail it all is the fault of immigrants taking away our homes or rich people speculating on asset values going up. Well neither of those 2 are going worry us around here, as there’s little\u00a0work locally to attract immigrants and you can be guaranteed that your home is worth pretty much the same as\u00a0it was 10 years ago, as property prices continue to stagnate especially in the old town. Migrants, like me, should have known better and heeded the warnings from friends and family.<\/p>\n

The problems locally? On top of demographic factors, land supply and ownership, nimby attitudes, and a continuing exodus of people to idylls of suburbia (or dystopia if you believe Will Self)?<\/p>\n

1. Chronic underinvestment in the old town.<\/p>\n

In a well kept Conservation Area you could achieve a premium price for your home of 25% over the average, which you could view as a small compensation for the significant additional constraints that such a designation\u00a0imposes, on top those\u00a0of a\u00a0listed building, repair and maintenance\u00a0of\u00a0which will cost you your\u00a0arm and your\u00a0leg.<\/p>\n

But not in Dunbar. Many\u00a0people that buy into listed buildings here perhaps don’t realise they are going to be making a loss. Admittedly some\u00a0home owners know that\u00a0and\u00a0\u00a0happy to spend their hard earned cash on a property that has a rich history, a unique character and in the knowledge that they are passing it on to future generations to enjoy, perhaps in a much better state than they inherited.<\/p>\n

Speculators definitely\u00a0don’t. They\u00a0see their flats as cash cows. They\u00a0don’t care if their Buy to Let\u00a0doesn’t make a capital gain on selling. \u00a0They bought for a song or are just paying off the interest only. And\u00a0there’s a steady stream of the desperate and the dispossessed ready to take on even leaky freezing garrets. An argument for more decent social housing or affordable housing, if ever there was one.<\/p>\n

2. A failure to maintain the public realm in the Conservation Area.<\/p>\n

Too much money is channelled into prestige projects (some of these are admittedly very good, but gold plated) and\u00a0play parks. The basic fabric of the old town feels not just worn out and tired, but is too often decrepit, redolent of its\u00a0medieval past. There are amazingly wide cycle paths over in Gullane and new trees planted in North Berwick, but here the pavements are sticky with ice cream \/ fizzy drink discards and chewing gum, the cobble sets loose and the planters half heartedly maintained. Half baked schemes and a tendency to\u00a0indulge in\u00a0crowd pleasing gesture politicking hasn’t yielded great improvements in the public realm lately.<\/p>\n

Play this game with your kids on a street near you in the Conservation Area. Get in the car. 2 teams. Pick a side Left or Right and count the number of satellite dishes\u00a0which decorate the buildings on your side. There is no winner, of course, as\u00a0almost all are illegal. The Council stands by powerless.<\/p>\n

3. Chronic poverty.<\/p>\n

Many old houses require significant investment over and above that which many are likely to be able to sustain, not just the poor or struggling. Energy efficiency in many\u00a0tenements is dreadfully poor, and would be punishingly expensive to redress, hitting the poorest hardest. I am not even sure that our politicians are smart enough\u00a0to\u00a0make serious\u00a0inroads into decoupling social\u00a0class\u00a0and chronic poverty. The structural difficulties are usually deeply embedded and intergenerational. Poverty\u00a0seems to be hard wired<\/a> into sections of the old town, whether you’re a social or private tenant. Its all relative – for sure – we’re not as poor as some towns, and like Naples we have the sea don’t we?<\/p>\n

All this\u00a0despite a healthy influx and vibrant community of left bank migrants, a doubling of the overall Dunbar\u00a0population through new housing on the Southside and pretty good local schools.<\/p>\n

4. Lack of local\u00a0opportunities for employment.<\/p>\n

We\u00a0are\u00a0a long way from health and support services, and tertiary education, not to mention\u00a0a barely adequate transport infrastructure that\u00a0is too costly for many. \u00a0Creating employment seems like the priority to me. I am no fan of the current Government, but creating homes where there’s work\u00a0is actually not a bad idea. It also begs the question why on earth build more homes for the disadvantaged\u00a0in a town \/ area\u00a0classified as a “remote rural” if there is no work.<\/p>\n

5. Lack of understanding.<\/p>\n

Listed buildings are probably being decimated as I write, because a great many us have a limited\u00a0understanding of what is valuable about our\u00a0homes. Too\u00a0often the building’s listing \/ status is sketchy to the point that the average owner is likely to be clueless as to what is covered and what isn’t. How many times have I heard that its only the front that is listed, isn’t it? The Government\u00a0would not get away with this if your home was\u00a0designated an SSSI, but for bizarre reasons listed buildings area bit of a Cinderella.<\/p>\n

Supporting homeowners to manage protected listed buildings could be a good thing, as they (owners) are currently doing it for altruistic reasons rather than private gain. Perhaps some encouragements for works that require co-operation between owners and occupiers (I believe you get support in Edinburgh). An owner occupying community is more likely to take better care of older buildings, which often require traditional and more expensive treatments. A\u00a0better built environment would have effects beyond the households and leak into the public realm.<\/p>\n

6. Insufficient collaboration.<\/p>\n

In order to deal with many of the old town problems there is a need for people to get together to solve problems jointly. Some tenements have got together to deal with insurance issues, maintenance and common repairs, which is a good thing. 60 High Street and 18 Church Street come to mind, in mixed tenure I believe, and I am sure\u00a0there are others.<\/p>\n

However, there’s more\u00a0that seem to be stuck in a mindset that prevents co-operation, perhaps because the economic circumstances make it a non starter, but as often as not it will be the mixed tenure, owner occupiers at loggerheads with a reluctant landlord.<\/p>\n

7. A plethora of new housing and the affordable housing formula.<\/p>\n

Many new homes are ill served by public transport and place transport pressures on the old town, which has adapted to the demands of the “convenience economy”, which creates demand for (very)\u00a0transient parking. So\u00a0where to put the affordable homes? In the old town, a derelict site near you, and\u00a0as close to the\u00a0(expensive) convenience stores as possible. It is regrettable that we are reduced to these formulas, as it seems no one likes them. But it is worse to apply them uncritically. I would much prefer mixed solutions, rather than ghettos on the one hand and pseudo gated communities on the other.<\/p>\n

Dumping social obligations on the old town just adds to the\u00a0pressures that make it less likely that other families are willing to invest in old town living, families concerned about\u00a0traffic, pollution and noise, litter,\u00a0ASB and other inconveniences like drug taking, rowdy pubs and malodorous takeaways.<\/p>\n

8. Backland infilling.<\/p>\n

The backlands of Dunbar are an important asset for the town. With limited public greenspace in the old town, a triangle here and a dog shit strip there, the remaining gardens need more explicit protection from insensitive development.<\/p>\n

We cannot and should not build here, without creating associated gardens (private) and with signficant\u00a0compensatory\u00a0public and civic greenspaces, but no more playparks please.<\/p>\n

9. Ghettoisation.<\/p>\n

Many of our town centres are effectively ghettoised by local planning policies that are predominantly skewed to favour businesses, who have unbridled access to advice and warm words, but trample over the interests of owner-occupied residents, who just have to put up with bad neighbours. A\u00a0flourishing of the rental sector aimed at transients – no discrimination round here, DSS welcome, amplifies the effect. This is not a caricature, and you’d get my point if you’ve had teenage neighbours partying all night that really should be still living with Mum and Dad. I am sure that most landlords are fit a proper persons, as required by legislation, \u00a0but the rental sector is now\u00a0tarnished and is having disastrous consequences on neighbourhoods all over the country, not just\u00a0Dunbar. Such\u00a0policies – even if not explicit –\u00a0without doubt shape\u00a0decisions about people’s investment and motivations – or in our case the lack of \u00a0it.<\/p>\n

Let’s be clear. I am not against new housing, nor social housing, nor even renting for that matter. Other countries and economies seem to get on just fine with a strong rental sector and there are economists who will argue that home owning is actually bad for the economy (too much capital is tied up and the workforce immobilised). But it is a fact that the rental sector in Britain is on the one hand inadequately\u00a0regulated\u00a0and has skewed where people want to live. And I am not really against\u00a0shopkeepers plying their trades, only those that do so inconsiderately and ignore the boundaries of good neighbourliness.<\/p>\n

Readers may\u00a0recall my exasperation, hardly\u00a0politicly inspired, that a car park should NOT\u00a0take precedence over social housing at Abbeylands. Our far-sighted\u00a0politicians demanded that\u00a0football was the game to play and that there were\u00a0more votes\u00a0and political points in\u00a0car parking than in helping “state scroungers” – when old labour invokes toxic tory\/Daily Mail striver \/ shirker rhetoric you know its is the end of the line. A housing\u00a0development was more in tune with the location, though perhaps\u00a0a private development would have been more fitting still, nestling as it does between 2 rather fine listed buildings, rather than the pokey flats anticipated by the planning permission originally granted.<\/p>\n

In response to the Main Issues Report, I was pretty supportive of new housing locally provided that transport links were improved and upgraded, which on reflection is a massive\u00a0ask. The logic of my response was that most of the development would necessarily have to take place nearer to Edinburgh, where there is work. Unless of course ELC were to hatch a new plan to attract serious inward investment. I can’t remember whether I suggested that it should be easier for individuals and self builds to create new homes, but that would be highly desirable and create diversity, but also seems unlikely given the hoops that planners make them go through at present. If new homes are to be built on infill and derelict sites, or backlands, I strongly recommend that these are private owner occupier\u00a0developments, not speculative ones or of the socially engineered variety.<\/p>\n

Those of us that brave High Street living may be\u00a0regarded as an underclass, or just plain daft, but it is substantially down to us that your High Street still has a pulse, doing most of our shopping locally and doing our bit to hold back the decay. Preserve us or your High Street will die along with the Conservation Area.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We are told there is a housing crisis, and I don’t necessarily disagree. It depends on your perspective and the local context. Housing problems differ across the country and indeed the county, and cannot be seen in isolation from other social, environmental and economic problems. If you read the Daily Mail it all is the … Continue reading Pressures on Dunbar Conservation Area – where to put new housing<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":155,"featured_media":1921,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ourlocality.org\/abbeylands\/files\/2014\/03\/poor-repairs.jpg?fit=1470%2C985&ssl=1","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1547,"url":"https:\/\/ourlocality.org\/abbeylands\/bedlam-in-dunbar\/","url_meta":{"origin":2151,"position":0},"title":"Bedlam in Dunbar?","author":"templar","date":"November 24, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Those in the know, will have heard of the special relationship that exists between Dunbar's Abbey Church and its big sister the\u00a0Bedlam Church\u00a0in nearby Edinburgh,\u00a0both built in the mid 1800s by the architect Thomas Hamilton for the Free Church. \u00a0More elegant and refined, and altogether much better loved, Bedlam is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"https:\/\/ourlocality.org\/abbeylands\/topics\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"IMG-20130912-00040","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ourlocality.org\/abbeylands\/files\/2013\/11\/IMG-20130912-00040-300x198.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":550,"url":"https:\/\/ourlocality.org\/abbeylands\/east-lothian-news-parking-and-the-voice-of-the-people\/","url_meta":{"origin":2151,"position":1},"title":"East Lothian News: Parking and the Voice of the People","author":"templar","date":"July 13, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"As the posse of official-looking individuals marched down the High Street, it was clear they were on a mission. Suits are pretty uncommon in Dunbar and it usually means official council business or a funeral. The huddle headed headlong into the Abbeylands cul de sac and peered through the fence\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"https:\/\/ourlocality.org\/abbeylands\/topics\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Posse of officials consulting with the weeds","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ourlocality.org\/abbeylands\/files\/2012\/07\/DSC_0051-300x200.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":515,"url":"https:\/\/ourlocality.org\/abbeylands\/the-greater-good-the-case-for-convenient-parking\/","url_meta":{"origin":2151,"position":2},"title":"The greater good: the case for convenient parking","author":"templar","date":"June 30, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"There are 2 stakeholders whose views won\u2019t be heard very loudly in this minority debate about parking versus social housing at Abbeylands. \u00a0The people who could occupy the accommodation that may now not be built, whose voice usually goes unheard. When it is, there\u2019s always an unhealthy voyeuristic angle to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"https:\/\/ourlocality.org\/abbeylands\/topics\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"The problem with parking","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ourlocality.org\/abbeylands\/files\/2012\/05\/DSC_0288-001-300x201.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1190,"url":"https:\/\/ourlocality.org\/abbeylands\/create-a-community-garden\/","url_meta":{"origin":2151,"position":3},"title":"Create a Community Garden","author":"templar","date":"January 22, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"this article, first published in September 2013 has been updated The vacant backlands of the old Empire Cinema are calling out for a sensitive regeneration, having remained derelict now for a number of years. It is a great shame that such a large amount of money was invested in assessing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Opinion"","block_context":{"text":"Opinion","link":"https:\/\/ourlocality.org\/abbeylands\/topics\/opinion\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Preston Tower and Garden Prestonpans","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ourlocality.org\/abbeylands\/files\/2013\/09\/DSC_0020.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ourlocality.org\/abbeylands\/files\/2013\/09\/DSC_0020.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ourlocality.org\/abbeylands\/files\/2013\/09\/DSC_0020.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ourlocality.org\/abbeylands\/files\/2013\/09\/DSC_0020.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ourlocality.org\/abbeylands\/files\/2013\/09\/DSC_0020.jpg?resize=1050%2C600 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ourlocality.org\/abbeylands\/files\/2013\/09\/DSC_0020.jpg?resize=1400%2C800 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1081,"url":"https:\/\/ourlocality.org\/abbeylands\/battling-to-save-britains-high-streets\/","url_meta":{"origin":2151,"position":4},"title":"Battling to save Britain’s high streets","author":"templar","date":"July 10, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Throughout July to mark\u00a0Independent Retailer Month\u00a0some shops are offering discounts, others running competitions and still more putting on live music in a bid to get mre custom. 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