Separate kitchens
October 5th, 2011
Clearly I’m not the only one who bemoans the loss of the separate kitchen, here’s an example of thinking along the same lines taken from the comments section of Building Design magazine.
Valerie Paynter | 15 September 2011 1:22 am
It was Boris Johnson who mainstreamed the call to “bring back the Parker Morris standard for room sizes” but getting the architecture profession to shout the same thing has perhaps needed a recession when there would be no work to lose by speaking out. Even so, it isn’t architects speaking; its the professional body.
I emailed MP Mike Weatherley with a call for him to speak out against the loss of separate kitchens in newbuild flats along with Amy Kennedy of the new Green Administration in Brighton & Hove. Amy Kennedy agreed with my room sizes and actual, functionally sized separate kitchens plea. My MP did not reply but his assistant asked where there were flats without kitchens he could look at (!).
I’ll send them a link to this article as well as our local press, the saveHOVE supporters and anyone else I can think of.
When planning applications are out for consultation, people look at the computer-generated lie and listen to the PR spin and only really judge a development on how high it will be, how much traffic it will generate and – most of all – how it will affect parking locally. If a famous (Frank Gehry) architect has his name stamped on a development people go “OOOH ERRR” i’nt we lucky to get this “landmark architecture” that will “put the city on the map”.
This country has no future worth having if this kind of deeply mean and Scrooge-inspired designer warehousing of people continues. The proposed changes to Planning in favour of developers are about stamping out
resistance todemands for properly sized homes and instead lining the pockets of developers. Perhaps they make the best donors to political parties.https://www.bdonline.co.uk/news/riba-launches-housing-space-standards-campaign/5024450.article (subscribers only)
Right to buy III
October 5th, 2011
I’ve written articles on the subject of right to buy in the past. They are Right to buy II, Right to buy and Why sink estates exist. They have been part of a journey towards understanding what’s gone wrong with council housing since Mrs Thatcher was elected in 1979.
Adam Gray has written a short article that encapsulates the reasons for the demise of public housing provision in the last thirty years which covers all the reasons I’ve found and more and is well worth reading.
Right to buy 2 damaging policy
UPDATE: 6/10/11 This today from Inside Housing
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/home/home/right-to-buy-sales-hit-rock-bottom-28995
Old link
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/ihstory.aspx?storycode=6518252
UPDATE: 18/10/11 This very relevant article today from the Guardian