The Curious Case of the Crowded Village
Now pay attention, dear reader, for I have a tale to tell,
Of a housing crisis growing, where the British people dwell……
Image created by Bluepencil with Adobe Firefly
One fine day, a minister dressed in a suit,
Decided to give our planning rules a reboot.
He eyed a line, with quite a frown,
On "density" (that means how close houses are in a town).
"Aha!" said he, "Let's give this one a snip!
Why worry about spacing? Let's just let it slip!"
And snip! went the scissors, away went the rule,
Leaving the townsfolk baffled and fooled.
"What's this?" cried the builders, with glee in their eyes,
"No limit for housing? What a lovely surprise!"
So as they piled on the homes like a big chocolate cake,
They forgot that in living, it’s the space that you take!
They thought, “If we pack them all close like sardines,
We’ll solve this great crisis, or so it now seems!”
But oh! What a bother, what a curious mess!
For cramming more people brought chaos and stress.
"Density is the answer!" the minister cried,
For he hadn’t noticed that the charm had all died.
The people all grumbled, “It’s not quite the same,
This town’s overstuffed, now who is to blame?”
But up in his tower, with a grand little grin,
The man in the suit gave a rub of his chin.
He snickered and snorted, “How funny to see,
What happens when planning is left up to me!”
So please think, dear reader, and object to the removal from the NPPF of this paragraph concerning density:
Significant uplifts in average density of residential development, occurring as a result of minimum density standards, may be inappropriate if the resulting built form would be wholly out of character with the existing area.
For rules may seem tiny, just words in a row,
But pull one away—and oh, what a show!
Style inspired by Roald Dahl.
Roald Dahl (1916-1990) was a British author of popular children’s books, poems and short stories. Their unsentimental, macabre, often darkly comic mood, feature villainous adult enemies of the child characters.
