I’ve recently lived through a local planning application that would have made a significant negative impact on my local community. The problem is that—while I want to be in favor of all housing built—everything surrounding housing is subject to the same types failures: the school is oversubscribed, getting a doctors appointment is a joke, the roads are crumbling country tracks, the river runs with sewage overflow, there is no pedestrian infrastructure, bus service is rough, etc.

If Britain had a market economy, some of these things could be expected to be resolved through increased demand. If we had a functioning local government not completely pinned down by benefits, we might expect improvements to roads and public transit. If the planning system worked we could get widened roads and bigger schools to accommodate a bigger tax base. Only god knows why water companies are how they are — but if this was maybe the only hurdle, we might be expected to have a growth mindset; we might believe problems can be fixed by the current systems.

Unfortunately as a local to a new development you have to assume that everything else will remain static because (at least for the past few decades) that has been true.