Build more crap – Grant Shapps MP
November 26th, 2010
Cringleford Norwich – look at the size of the windows
As if “toy-town estates” on the edge of almost every UK town were not enough the coalition housing minister Grant Shapps wants the developers to continue in the same vein, unregulated. What else would you expect from the party that dropped the Parker Morris standards? Only Boris has housing standards at heart now and I’ll be interested to hear his London response to this latest unwanted intervention by a cabinet minister someone in charge of a portfolio not considered sufficiently important to warrant a seat in the cabinet.
In an article published in today’s online Architects’ Journal . . .
RIBA attacks government over housing standards u-turn
RIBA president Ruth Reed has voiced ‘serious concerns’ over the government’s decision to abandon the Homes and Communities Agency’s (HCA) core housing standards for all new publicly-backed homes
. . .
She added: ‘UK house builders have delivered the smallest homes in Europe, and have built homes which have been consistently judged to be of a poor quality by the Government’s own design watchdog. The Government should be putting the interests of communities first.’
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Read full article here . . .
Building Design has the first article publicly available read it here:-
Inside Housing covers the same story here:-
Building Design has more news on this today:-
. . .
Housing minister Grant Shapps, who backed BD’s campaign while in opposition, welcomed the publication of the data and claimed it demonstrated the government’s more open approach.
“Openness may be uncomfortable for some,” he said, “but we know that proper public scrutiny will lead to far better decisions – and save money as well.
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[read the rest of the article by following the link below]
More from the AJ here . . .
Anger over ditched standards
Architects have hit out at the government’s ‘regressive’ decision to ditch national standards for UK publicly-funded housing
2 December, 2010 | By Amanda Taylor
. . .
Alex Ely, of Mæ Architects (pictured, Mæ’s Hammond Court housing scheme), described Shapps’ decision as a ‘regressive step [which] undermines years of work trying to raise the quality of housing.’
Ely said the standards should have been extended, rather than ditched, and rolled out to cover all new private housing. The decision amounted to ‘affordable housing being dumbed down to the regulatory minimum’, he said.
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Read full article here . . .https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/daily-news/-anger-over-ditched-standards/8608750.article
More from Communities and Local Government here [my comments in italics]
Shapps: We’re lifting burdens from the backs of builders
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He invited the industry to come forward and help develop a new system for local standards so new development meets the needs of local communities, without placing an unnecessary strain on developers.
Recent reports suggest Government plans to put the lunatics in charge of the asylum.
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“There’s no good reason why homes built on public land should be built any differently to those of high quality on private land.”
Yes there is. This entire blog is about poor standards of house and flat design built by private developers sometimes on behalf of a housing association. It is the proposed standards for public housing we need to be applied to the private developers not the other way around.
. . .
“House builders are the experts at building homes, so I’m inviting them to be in charge of developing a new framework for local building standards – one which enables communities to get the high quality homes they demand, but without causing unnecessary costs and delays for developers.”
As I said above, lunatics in charge of the asylum.
. . .
Mr Shapps confirmed in the longer term, the standards that apply to private and public housing should be the same.
I entirely agree. The proposed housing standards in the Interim London Housing Design Guide ought to be imposed on the private sector instead of which another four years of housing is going to be crap.
. . .
There’s a man who wants his cake and eats it too. On the one hand he is happy to deregulate housing standards and on the other apparently celebrates the revelation of poor housing schemes from Kickstart. I wouldn’t trust him and his friends as far as I could throw them.
Let us never forget . . .
Discussion Note Concentrations of deprivation.pdf
and should they ever remove them from that server, you will still be able to find them . . .
Discussion Note Concentrations of deprivation.pdf
Guess whose name appears in the list of those attending at the bottom of that document? Grant Shapps.
Continuing the windows theme
Let’s take another look at those windows. Here’s Highpoint 1 from the documentary From Here to Modernity
Plenty of light flooding in there. Now let’s take a look at Alexandra Road.
No shortage of light there either.
Why is it then that modern house builders can come up with what’s in the photo below?
I think the simple answer is don’t buy it, because if that’s what more people did the builders would be forced to reconsider their poor design.
More here . . . https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8052470.stm
Here’s Rob Williams in the Guardian:-