ROOF Blog

A consultation on future core housing design and sustainability standards has been published by the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA). It aims to stimulate a debate on how to prioritise the quality of new housing in a challenging financial climate. It seeks views on a series of options for how the national housing and regeneration agency might design and phase in new standards and apply them to its programme. Partners and other interested parties are asked to comment on the proposals and help shape further development of the HCA’s core design and sustainability standards.

The latest generation of pod-like homes is hoping to inspire anyone concerned with sustainability and affordability and is now being touted as the newest solution to Britain’s housing shortage. Modular housing is common in Australia, the USA and Germany, but British examples have mainly been limited to one-off, self-build projects. More recently though, organisations such as the Peabody Trust have commissioned several large modular developments such as London’s Murray Grove and Baron’s Place. As well as preserving communities, flexible living negates moving costs and mortgages are available thanks to approval from National House-Building Council and CLG’s Code for Sustainable Homes scheme.

The lack of mobile phone reception and broadband coverage in rural areas has become the number one issue in dissuading young people from staying on in the countryside, according to the chair of the Commission for Rural Communities. In a report to the prime minister, Stuart Burgess, the government’s rural advocate, said that the long-term future of the countryside is in jeopardy because so many young people are being forced out of rural areas to find homes, jobs and support.

A new website - data.gov.uk - allows people to access 2,500 sets of official data, some of it never released before, from across Government departments. They include everything from crime rates, house prices and tidal predictions, to the numbers of people issued with antisocial behaviour orders living in people’s areas. Its creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who is credited with founding the internet 20 years ago, admitted the scale of the information available, which will eventually be searchable by postcode, will mean that social inequalities between different areas will quickly become apparent. There was a risk that some areas would seem like ‘ghettoes’ compared to others, he said, although this was not necessarily a bad thing as it would create pressure on politicians to spend money on improving the worse-off areas.

Older people should be offered accommodation in bright, purpose-built communities instead of the shabby and cramped care homes where many now reside, according to a new report.

The provision of desirable retirement homes would encourage pensioners to sell their current properties, giving young families a greater chance of raising their children in suburban homes with gardens, it says.

The Housing our Ageing Population Panel for Innovation (HAPPI) was commissioned by Communities and Local Government and the Department of Health to come up with creative proposals to improve housing for older people.

After visiting ‘model’ retirement communities in European countries including Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden it has called for a local authorities and housebuilders to radically rethink their approach to elderly accommodation.

The best developments all had ‘space, light, accessibility and a shared sense of purpose’, with large communal areas where residents could socialise, it found.

The panel said there was no reason why homes in the UK could not be architecturally interesting and built in desirable neighbourhoods.

The national homelessness charity Emmaus is marking the 60th anniversary of the Emmaus Movement by launching a campaign designed to allow the stories of homeless people to be heard. A newly launched website is asking people to tell their stories of significant moments in their lives and to add their voices to the stories already posted by the residents of Emmaus Communities. Contributors will receive a story in return and will play an important part in helping to make people who are often ignored to have a voice. The site has already attracted some high profile contributors such as Cherie Blair, Terry Waite and Fern Britton.

The locations of four new eco-towns were announced yesterday – Rackheath, Norfolk; north west Bicester, Oxfordshire; Whitehall Bordon, east Hampshire; and China Clay near St Austell in Cornwall. Communities and Local Government said the government would provide £60 million in funding to provide infrastructure to support the towns and a further £5 million would be made available for councils to work on proposals for a ‘second wave’ of six more towns. Construction is not expected to start until 2016.

Figures from Communities and Local Government show that house prices fell 12.5 per cent in May. London saw the biggest decline in England with prices falling 16.3 per cent, while Northern Ireland suffered the largest drop with prices down 23.2 per cent between April and May. Howard Archer, an economist at HIS Global Insight, said he believed a further decline of 10 per cent was possible.

Communities secretary John Denham has announced a £70 million migration impact fund, funded by a levy on migrants, that will be used to tackle illegal working practices and reduce local pressure on public services. Nearly 200 projects will receive funding with every region benefitting, but the amounts each receives will be weighted towards areas where migrants have had the greatest short-term impact. Funding in housing is being targeted on cracking down on rogue landlords.

The Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) has claimed that designing eco-towns to be more inclusive would cost no more if it was factored into the planning process early on, and has produced guidance on how to it. It says that eco-towns should provide for all inhabitants regardless of age, disability, faith or gender, and avoid creating barriers that prevent them from becoming part of their communities. A spokesperson for TCPA said it was essential for each town to be socially as well as environmentally sustainable.