zoning / rural house control

[SSSharon]

Can anyone give me info on the above and if any changes will be made soon to make country living more accessable. stamp duty is turning us off second hand property so would like to buy land to build but zoning is making it impossible. Please help !!!!!

[buildersmate]

Happy to be shown wrong, but I don't think anything new is currently happening on this front. Where did your info come from? By zoning, I assume you are talking about the partition of land into 'settlement areas' and areas outside settlements - i.e. countryside. In England this comes about from policies driven out of the ODPM - similar independent bodies in Wales, Scotland (and NI). Country living is accessible to agricultural workers through the agricultural tie system on dwellings but this is no good for people trying to start out to live and work in rural areas but don't actually work on the land. ODPM is trying to develop policies to help first time buyers in both towns and rural areas where housing costs are preventing people to live in the area they were brought up in, but this is unlikely to mean that you can expect to buy a piece of land in the country and get Planning Permission to build. Such initiatives will be small groups of smaller-style houses adjacent to existing rural settlements. Stamp Duty is surely the least of your problems.