Market failure

Small, tatty building

Something over three years ago a derelict two storey building in East Street burned down, a building which had, as I recall, been used by some branch of Epsom councils social services department for the delivery of support. The fire being described at references 1 and 2.

The badly damaged building was demolished and there is now a small block of flats, quite smart looking, mostly off the snap above, to the left, but shown in Street View below.

Next to the derelict building was a small, rather tatty looking building, something to do with one of the motor car operations on the Kiln Lane industrial estate behind Sainsbury's; perhaps left over from some ancient use of the site, before the arrival of the industrial estate. As is shown in the snaps above and below.

The flats

At the time, I thought that it was a pity that the developer of the flats had been unable to buy out the small building - more an advertisement than a place to conduct business - and incorporate the site into his plans. Not only would more flats have been built, but the result might well have been more attractive than what we have now, or are likely to get in the near future.

This to my mind is an example of market failure: the tatty building is up for sale anyway, but three years too late to be of any use to the flats. The market, more or less left to its own devices, did not come up with a particularly good result.

Maybe the reason was that the developer was greedy. Or that the owner of the small building was greedy. Or that the owner of the small building was old and decrepit and unable to attend to business. Any of which could have blocked achieving a better result. But whatever the reason, it is not clear that we would want an all-powerful council which could knock heads together - at least not for a relatively minor planning matter such as this. My point is simply that market forces are not that clever, they don't always deliver the goods, whatever some of the strange beasts inhabiting the right wing of the Tory party might like to think - or at least say. While I say that what they are most worried about is the possibility of governments interfering with their right to make excess money out of the rest of us, and making a shibboleth out of market forces is a good way for them to push back on that front. An argument that I am sure Shaxson of reference 3 would agree with.

PS: a counter argument might be that small is beautiful. That small might be messy, but it is better than a string of more or less identical blocks of flats. One needs this sort of thing to bring a bit of attractive diversity to the scene. It is what gives our old market towns their tatty charm. And while East Street, a lot of which was redeveloped fifty years ago, may lack charm, it does have diversity.

Reference 1: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-surrey-31532023.

Reference 2: https://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/11803788.

Reference 3: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/11/city-boys.html.

Reference 4: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/11/city-boys-episode-1.html. Market forces at work again.