Housing in this country is so fucked!

If it was down to me I'd look around for a few acres of agricultural land for sale, somewhere nice and build my own fully off-grid house. The problem is planning, even if I own the land I have zero right to build my home on it and limited right to live on it until the planners make their decision. I could buy a plot with planning pre-approved but then I'd pay at least ten times more for the same plot limiting my build options. The planning approval process is opaque everything you read suggests it's often down to the individual planner's taste and sensibilities and that's assuming all the neighbours are onside so there's no Nimby rearguard action.

Perhaps I'm being defeatist, certainly some people achieve it. Wales is also one of the best places to try, it encourages projects like the Lammas eco village but even there, in a country as sparsely populated as Wales the hoops they've had to jump through and rules they must adhere to are significant.

Now I'm not totally starry eyed about this, we do need some restrictions on building particularly around cities or national parks and I understand that if we suddenly loosen the laws the landowners will become overnight millionaires as agricultural land suddenly jumps in value and farming is no longer worthwhile anywhere near a city as land is more profitably sold off for development. There must be a middle ground.

Much as the number of full time residents on narrow boats in London has increased exponentially with the crazy rise in house prices, there has also been a big rise in full time residents on wheels. At the festival, while some of the vans were weekend/festival/short breaks vans, there were also a number that were definitely full time homes. While from the outside it can seem a romantic life, the realities of waste disposal (particularly), but also cleaning, running repairs, safety at night, heating in winter and limited choice of stopover locations can make it really tough. While not every full timer would want to stay in one place, most I suspect would love to own a place of their own to build on, or at least where no one can tell them to move on.

Some people like these: https://www.change.org/p/north-devon-district-council-save-the-round-house-in-the-woods Just decided to build on their land anyway and now face losing their home. While I know far too little about their specific case, isn't it better off for us as tax payers, them as people and for local government budgets that they continue to live in their off grid roundhouse rather than living off the state in a flat in some town somewhere? Wouldn't it generally better for councils to make land available for self builders particularly any willing council tenants?

It certainly makes me appreciate how fortunate we are to have options. With less resources we'd definitely be looking at continental Europe where there are saner house prices or looking more deeply into the Welsh government' one planet development policy that the Lammas eco village used.