ROOF Blog

New publicly funded homes built in the London will have to comply with minimum internal space standard major Boris Johnson said. The London housing design guide established six key areas of design that new development will have to incorporate from 2011, including minimum space standards around 10 per cent higher than the Parker Morris benchmark, better integration of developments with the space around them and to reduce crime; and a greater mix of dwelling types to care for London’s diverse living needs.

Communities and Local Government will reveal before 21 July which of its programmes’ budgets are to be cut to help fund the £1.5 billion housing package, and has suggested the Homes and Communities Agency may bear the brunt. Director-general of housing and planning at the department has insisted that reports that the Decent Homes programme would be plundered are not true. He said he would give details before the summer recess of parliament starts.

The Conservatives have warned that equality legislation could stop government plans to give local people greater priority for council housing. Shadow housing minister Grant Shapps said the measures would be illegal and questioned if funding for the £1.5 billion cost of the programme would be diverted from the Decent Homes initiative, which aims to take every council and social property in the country to a decent standard. The government has denied this.

No eco-town will make the government’s shortlist unless they meet the highest standards, Margaret Beckett has insisted. She said that they still all need work to meet the green standards set by the government. She added she was hopeful that 10 schemes would make the mark but that if they do not they would not be approved.

Meanwhile a report has found that poor quality housing is holding back the economic potential of the North. The report says that northern towns and cities have a poor range of housing, in particular a lack of high quality residential homes which is limiting the potential of the region. Greater diversity of stock is needed to attract key workers to industries in the knowledge economies – a ‘vital area of growth for the North’. The report calls for the Homes and Communities Agency to switch its funding from the decent homes programme to a more broadly focused decent neighbourhood programme.

The Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) has published guidance on how social landlords can bid for part of the additional £84 million funding package to cover cavity wall insulation. The scheme aims to cover the properties which would not normally have been filled under the decent homes programme because they were hard to treat, and expects to deliver on 130,000 homes across the country during the next two years.

The Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) and CABE have announced they are teaming up to improve the design quality of new homes, following the publication of a survey into the design of new affordable housing. The Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) and CABE have announced they are teaming up to improve the design quality of new homes, following the publication of a survey into the design of new affordable housing. The findings showed nearly that 61 per cent of housing schemes were average and 18 per cent good or very good, compared with 21 per cent assessed as poor including a ‘lack of distinctiveness’ and having design that ‘does not correspond to its context’. The report recommends closer working between registered social landlords (RSLs) and local planning authorities, and enforcing minimum design standards. In a joint statement the HCA and Cabe said: ‘The HCA will continue to promote high standards of quality in all the housing it funds… CABE will continue to support the HCA and RSLs across the country to make this a reality.’

The Office for National Statistics has released its annual snapshot of life in Britain. It found there were 25 million households in the UK, with the average household numbering between two and three people, although the report highlights an increase in single-person households from 6 per cent in 1971 to 12 per cent last year. Almost a third of men and a fifth of women aged between 20 and 34 still live at home with their parents, but a third of families are living in non-decent homes and almost one in 10 are exposed to excessive cold due to a lack of heating or insulation.

The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) has written a building design guide to improve standards when the market recovers. It argues that the recession can offer new models of house building based around longer-term investment, a stronger role of the public sector and more variety of tenure.

Housing associations who inherited council housing have been ‘highly successful’ in delivering improvements to tenants, new research by the Joseph Rowntree Association has found. More than one million tenants have switched from local authority to housing association tenancies during the 20 years stock transfers have taken place and the research found that housing associations typically upgraded estates to standards ‘appreciably higher’ than originally promised – almost half implemented upgrades to standards much higher than the English decent homes standards or Scottish or Welsh equivalent, while generating procurement and other efficiency savings which were then ploughed back into unplanned works such as environmental improvements.