Quote Originally Posted by Andy_Faber View Post
I really wasn't trying to turn a discussion on Green housing policy into one on immigration, but the ONS states 'The UK has grown (by3,7m) between 2016 and 2024 primarily driven by high levels of net international migration'. So it might not be the only issue but it IS the big issue.

rA, the percentages are interesting but its the absolute numbers that matter - take your 775,000, that means 'room' has to be found for that number of souls, lets guess 500,000 household units, in a telve month period, and no way can the building industry keep up with that, no way can social housing keepup with that, no way is it sensible to make matters even worse by adopting a policy that removes entirely private rentals when that market would just disappear into the residential market (at a slightly reduced, but still unattainable to the same people, price). A sensible policy would be to encourage an INCREASE private rental to relieve the mess we have now and reduce rents through supply and demand

Swale, your comment about Gt Yarmouth is clearly made without you having been there - in the period 2009 -2025 I visited for three days at a time three times a year, the increase in immigrants and the impact on the town (apart from the Golden Mile) was stark

Just my observations.
Mm I'm in Great Yarmouth roughly twice a month and have been for the last 8 years, so yes I have been there and do know the town. It has a deprivation score which is in the middle for England and Wales, so not one of the most derpived areas of the country, I agree parts of the town, like many UK coastal towns is certainly run down, but that is not as a direct result of immigration. There is an issue in that some towns, Blackpool being an example, have higher levels of already low income people going there due to cheap rents etc and yes, some placement of certain groups including asylum seekers and immigrants which exacerbates an already existing problem.

The Great Yarmouth constituency is predominantly White, with the 2021 Census indicating that 88.9%
of the population identifies as White British.

An additional 5.7% fall under the "Other White" category.

Minority ethnic representation is lower than the national average, with 1.6% identifying as Mixed/Multiple ethnic groups,

0.2% as Chinese,
0.1% as Caribbean,
0.1% as Gypsy or Irish Traveller, and 0.8% categorized within other ethnic groups

Between the last two censuses (held in 2011 and 2021), the population of Great Yarmouth increased by 2.5%, from just under 97,300 in 2011 to around 99,700 in 2021.

The population here increased by a smaller percentage than the overall population of the East of England (8.3%), and by a smaller percentage than the overall population of England (up 6.6% since the 2011 Census).

The population of Great Yarmouth has a higher proportion of older people, again common in coastal towns, people with low levels of education and health issues. Great Yarmouths socioeconomic problems are due to its location, aging population and lack of skilled well paid employment, though ironically given Reform's opposition to green energy, offshore wind farms are actually creating a significant number of well paid skilled jobs.

Hard to see how immigration has had an impact on the decline of the town unless one prefers to believe a certain view point rather than look at the facts.

I'm not saying immigration hasn't had an impact in some places (though that impact hasn't been necessarily all negative) but Great Yarmouth certainly isn't one of them.