Housing standards
June 5th, 2010
This week brings some good news winging its way into my inbox from CABE about raising housing standards . . .
2010 will be a pivotal year for housing standards. We know from our work around the country that many local authorities are looking at setting their own standards for their local area.
. . . as a direct result surely of their very public spat with the HCA over funding Kickstart schemes known to have scored poorly on the Building for Life criteria.
Since the deletion of the ‘Parker Morris Standard’ as a benchmark for the public funding of council housing in 1980, there has been growing concern over the decline of space in new homes and the potential problems this creates for households. Put another way, there has been concern for the ‘loss of benefits’ that reduced space in homes brings.
https://www.cabe.org.uk/files/space-standards-the-benefits.pdf
Despite Richard Simmon’s comments below Grosvenor Waterside resulted in poorer quality flats for the social rented and affordable scheme than did the flats for private sale. However this was the fault of the housing association’s inferior specifications and not the architects, a tricky situation where the S106 money was presumably not sufficient to build the rented flats to the same standard as the private flats for sale. The non-private block flats have a smaller floorplan than the private ones owing to the method of construction of the block, (see D&A statement).
He also suggested section 106-style agreements be used to keep architects on the project to the end, as with Make at Grosvenor Waterside in Chelsea.
However, I can agree with him here:-
Projects which won funding but failed to meet minimum Building for Life scores “should not even have received planning permission, never mind public money,” he said.
The same news item is covered in Building Magazine here:-
Prince Charles had something perfectly reasonable to say about modern housing design standards in the two articles linked below:-
‘First of all is: would I live in or next to the development? I keep saying to house-builders and developers, where do you live? Would you live next to, or in view of, the places you build? Not a bad test at the end of the day.’
All in all a good week for housing standards but sad perhaps the pendulum has had to swing quite so far in one direction before it will be stopped and sent on its return journey.