Basement Wars - be glad you live in Sheffield!

[aliceBB]

Did anyone see this?

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b05r86yg/millionaire-basement-wars

 

The world's gone mad.

 

There are people in Westminster and Chelsea who are having two or even three storey basements dug out under their homes, at huge expense, significant structural risk and to the endless misery of their neighbours (some streets have six such hellishly noisy and disruptive excavation projects going on for up to 12 months at a time), so they can add a couple of million to the value of their properties, or not have to be 'so squashed up...the children can't live like this'. ('This' being a 4 bedroom Georgian terrace with a footprint of twice or three times the average family home in the UK. Of course they could live like that, spoilt brats!).

 

For the same money, they could buy another, larger home elsewhere, but no...the children would 'never forgive them' if they moved out of London.

 

Then there are people with disabilities living in council flats being stung for a bedroom tax, which means their carers cost them even more each week.

 

Great Britain, eh.

[tzijlstra]

For a second I thought you were dearly upset for the sake of the neighbours, but then I realised it was because these are rich people, surely their neighbours are rich as well? Who cares whether they dig out their caves? Seriously...

[Obelix]

I'm wondering if any of them have dug into the Tube yet. Theres all manner of unexpected things under London from forgotten rivers to undocumented bits of the rail networks.

[aliceBB]

For a second I thought you were dearly upset for the sake of the neighbours, but then I realised it was because these are rich people, surely their neighbours are rich as well? Who cares whether they dig out their caves? Seriously...

 

Well...I did feel slightly sorry for the old couple who had lived peacefully and quietly in the street for 25 years and now had to run the gauntlet of builders' trucks, JCBs and skips of earth every time they set foot outside...not to mention the pneumatic 'dentist's drill' noise 8 hours a day - it was horrible. And the people whose houses are endangered by all their neighbours' 2 and 3 storey deep excavating.

 

You could say, Why don't they just move, but tbh I can't see anyone wanting to buy in those streets until all the excavations are complete - which could be decades. Not at the market rate, anyway.

 

Actually, the thing which provoked the most outrage in me was the conviction manifested by some of the property owners that they needed to provide another two floors of living space in already commodious townhouses, or life would be 'unbearable'.

 

Just plain greedy!

 

---------- Post added 15-04-2015 at 22:54 ----------

 

I'm wondering if any of them have dug into the Tube yet. Theres all manner of unexpected things under London from forgotten rivers to undocumented bits of the rail networks.

 

Perhaps that explains the hole the loaded skip collapsed into, in one of the streets featured in the programme...

Edited April 15, 2015 by aliceBB

[Obelix]

 

Perhaps that explains the hole the loaded skip collapsed into, in one of the streets featured in the programme...

 

I've not had chance to do more than skim through it but I shall look for that with interest

[The Joker]

It's true, money can't buy you friends, but it does buy you a better class of enemy.

 

Deep concerns: the trouble with basement conversions

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/aug/18/basement-conversions-disputes-digging-iceberg-homes

Joan Collins told a Belgravia residents' magazine she found it shocking that "people are digging down to put in swimming pools and bowling alleys when they only live here for two or three months of the year".

 

 

Billionaires' basements: the luxury bunkers making holes in London streets

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/nov/09/billionaires-basements-london-houses-architecture (with a diagram of a typical "iceberg" home)

"It is an absolute disgrace," says one elderly resident, out walking her freshly coiffed miniature poodle in between the rows of hoarded-off skips. "It feels like they've turned Kensington into a war zone."

 

 

Iceberg homes: how basements of the rich cause hell for their neighbours

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2013/mar/25/iceberg-homes-basements-rich-hell-neighbours (with an even better diagram of such a home)

Excavation work under Goldman Sachs director Christoph Stanger's mansion has caused shifts in the foundations, forming cracks and trapping neighbouring residents in their flats behind doors that no longer open.

 

Of around 1,000 planning applications for basement extensions made in the last five years, more than 800 have been accepted and – as of November – only 90 refused. Planning laws prohibited building upwards, but, as one architect put it: "There was nothing to stop us from drilling all the way down to the south pole."

 

Canadian TV tycoon David Graham, for example, has produced plans for a four-storey basement bigger than his house itself.

 

 

Real neighbours from hell? They're the stinking rich

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/feb/10/neighbours-from-hell-kensington

[aliceBB]

Apart from anything else, why would you want two storeys of artificially lit and ventilated 'living space' in the bowels of the earth beneath your house? It would be like being buried.

[The Joker]

Apart from anything else, why would you want two storeys of artificially lit and ventilated 'living space' in the bowels of the earth beneath your house? It would be like being buried.

 

Maybe that's what the owners are actually building, a mausoleum.

[Harleyman]

Did anyone see this?

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b05r86yg/millionaire-basement-wars

 

The world's gone mad.

 

There are people in Westminster and Chelsea who are having two or even three storey basements dug out under their homes, at huge expense, significant structural risk and to the endless misery of their neighbours (some streets have six such hellishly noisy and disruptive excavation projects going on for up to 12 months at a time), so they can add a couple of million to the value of their properties, or not have to be 'so squashed up...the children can't live like this'. ('This' being a 4 bedroom Georgian terrace with a footprint of twice or three times the average family home in the UK. Of course they could live like that, spoilt brats!).

 

For the same money, they could buy another, larger home elsewhere, but no...the children would 'never forgive them' if they moved out of London.

 

Then there are people with disabilities living in council flats being stung for a bedroom tax, which means their carers cost them even more each week.

 

Great Britain, eh.

 

They are the people in the know. Armageddon is finally about to happen.

[loraward]

Did anyone see this?

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b05r86yg/millionaire-basement-wars

 

The world's gone mad.

 

There are people in Westminster and Chelsea who are having two or even three storey basements dug out under their homes, at huge expense, significant structural risk and to the endless misery of their neighbours (some streets have six such hellishly noisy and disruptive excavation projects going on for up to 12 months at a time), so they can add a couple of million to the value of their properties, or not have to be 'so squashed up...the children can't live like this'. ('This' being a 4 bedroom Georgian terrace with a footprint of twice or three times the average family home in the UK. Of course they could live like that, spoilt brats!).

 

For the same money, they could buy another, larger home elsewhere, but no...the children would 'never forgive them' if they moved out of London.

 

Then there are people with disabilities living in council flats being stung for a bedroom tax, which means their carers cost them even more each week.

 

Great Britain, eh.

 

Don't blame the people doing the digging, blame the council for allowing them to do it.