Delivering New Homes

Planning, Processes and Providers

Nick Gallent, Sarah Carmona

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• eBook ISBN: 9781134467495
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

This book examines the processes and relationships that underpin the delivery of new homes across the United Kingdom, focussing primarily on the land use planning system in England, the way that housing providers engage with that system, and how the processes of engagement are changing or might change in the future.

Planning, market and social house building - the three key processes - are first dissected and explored individually, then brought together to study the key areas of interaction between planning and the providers of social and market housing by way of the range of tensions that have consistently dogged those interactions. Extensive illustrative case study material provides a platform to the consideration of developing more integrated, realistic and proactive approaches to planning.

Proposing evolutionary, and sometimes radical proposals for change, Delivering New Homes makes a bold contribution to finding a better way of delivering the new homes that the nation increasingly needs.

Part One: Processes

Following a general introduction in Chapter 1 – which sets out the housing-planning context and looks more widely at the parameters of England's current housing problems – the first part of this book focuses on the three key processes behind the delivery of new housing. The intention is to provide the necessary context for understanding how the planning system works and how development occurs. It also provides some immediate appreciation of how tensions can arise between different groups and particularly between the providers of new homes and those operating the English planning system.

Chapter 2 explores the planning system itself, focusing on current policy and practice but also casting an eye over the changes that may emerge during the next few years on the back of the government's 2001 Planning Green Paper and 2003 Planning Act. Emphasis is placed on the nature of planning, why we plan, and on the mechanics of planning processes and procedures. Discussion extends to the policy context for planning for housing, and to the scope and limitations of the current and future systems.

Chapter 3 looks broadly at the development process, paying particular attention to the nuances of residential development. It examines how the housebuilding industry operates and places this analysis in the context of theoretical models of the development process. In particular the issues of risk and reward and certainty are explored, and how the housebuilding industry has typically reacted to the challenges they face, the particular nature of the speculative house, the housebuilders themselves and the new house buyers they target. The emphasis throughout is on the engagement of the housing development process with the planning system.

Chapter 4 extends the development process overview into the arena of social housing provision. After explaining how housing associations (Registered Social Landlords) have come to occupy centre stage in the delivery of new social housing (provided with capital or land cost subsidy), the chapter relates the way RSLs are funded to the general development processes. It focuses on both the direct provision of housing by RSLs (funded through a mix of private borrowing and grant support), and the way in which social housing development may be part funded through developer's contributions. This second means of delivering new affordable homes is returned to in Chapter 9 which looks more broadly at the issue of extracting ‘gain’ from market housing development.

These three ‘process’ chapters build into a comprehensive account of some of the theory and frameworks behind housing development in England (and with some variation in the rest of the UK).

1: Introduction

Delivering new homes

Housing has and always will be important. The quantity, quality and location of new homes are major factors in determining how people live their lives, the opportunities they enjoy and the contribution they can make to a wider society. The way in which new homes are delivered has an impact that extends far beyond the physical environment. New housing in the wrong place may, on occasion, mean the unwanted consumption of greenfield land, but it is equally likely to mean that people are locked out of social networks, are unable to secure employment and, through no fault of their own, contribute to unsustainable living. Poor quality housing – whether poorly planned in the wider sense, or badly designed – has been the hallmark of a commodity culture where housing has sometimes been seen as nothing more than a demand good, to be thrown up wherever the price is right. This does little to enhance quality of life or to meet the aspirations of a population whose needs constantly change.

The tendency in the past has been to focus on the issue of housing quantity; location came in a close second and quality trailed some way behind. In planning-speak, this pecking-order was enshrined in the philosophy of ‘predict and provide’, described more recently as a rather blunt numbers game where housing numbers were predicted at the national and regional level and authorities at the local level were required to deliver their allocation in advance of demand. Its replacement by a less-than-clear ‘plan, monitor and manage’ system anticipated a more local and responsive approach to planning for housing. It also conveniently took the pressure off national government in the act, but relied on an under-resourced and unresponsive local planning system to ensure that the planning and monitoring was actually taking place.

This simple overview of the UK's housing problem suggests that difficulties which have developed – and that remain unresolved – are largely down to planning: if only the planning system could deliver, then a fairer, healthier and happier society would quickly follow. But planning is only one part of the equation. It certainly has a capacity to help or hinder the providers of housing, setting up a strong or weak framework for location decisions, signalling – through development and design control – the type of housing that should be built, and (through site identification and land release) systematically removing the legal constraints to new development. But its culpability for all housing problems is limited. National policy makers, with remits extending beyond land-use planning into the realms of economic strategy, public finance and general housing policy, must share the burden of blame. So too must a housebuilding industry that has traditionally shrugged off social and environmental responsibility and prioritised the pursuit of profit. Blame can also be cast in the directions of the successive national governments who have under-invested in public services and steadily withdrawn from social housing provision, and to the local providers who have pushed for the wrong housing in the wrong places.

If it is the case that the blame for past failures must be shared around, then it seems logical that a solution should be based on all parties (those listed in Table 1.1) striving to improve first, what they do individually, and second, what they do together. This book begins with the premise that housing of the wrong type and quantity is all too frequently built in the wrong location, and at the heart of this problem is the consistent failure of the various interest groups – principally planners and housing providers (the key stakeholders) – to address the problems collectively. In the remaining part of this introduction, the intention is to provide an approximate sketch of Britain's housing failure as it exists at the present time by focusing on the three issues of housing quality, quantity and location, and in so doing offer a statement on some of the problems that planners and housing providers must face.

Table 1.1 Key and other stakeholders

The book aims:

1. To critically examine the way land is developed for housing, and how market and social housing is currently delivered (Part One).
2. To identify the critical junctures at which planners and housing providers come together (sometimes, actual stages in the planning process), and how their different motivations or the constraints under which they operate can negatively impinge on the way housing is delivered (Part Two).
3. Through case study material, to show how better practice can be developed and therefore how housing of the right type and quality can be delivered in the most sustainable locations (Part Three).
4. To separate out what can be achieved under the current system from what can only be delivered following a fundamental overhaul of Britain's planning policy framework. This issue is addressed throughout the book and especially in Chapter 16.

Housing quality, quantity and location

The failure to provide sufficient homes of the right type and in the right locations has been a recurring theme within a range of social science disciplines throughout the twentieth century. The social consequences of poor-quality housing, including its links with health, crime and deprivation have been outlined by countless commentators since Edwin Chadwick's pioneering work of 1842. In recent sociological literature, for example, Somerville and Sprigings (2003) focus attention on the various linkages between housing (quality) and broader social policy, including the relationship between physical and social regeneration. Similarly, the locational mismatches between the supply of and demand for housing have occupied geographers for decades. The nature of the relationship between population movement, births, deaths and patterns of household formation has in particular been the subject of intense academic and political debate at least since the 1950s, with, again by way of example, Holmans (1970, 1987, 1995; Holmans et al., 1998) work on forecasting techniques and the future geography of housing demand across the UK spanning much of this period. Housing studies therefore exist across several different specialisms and within each of these a different focus is prioritised. Sometimes the focus is on housing and social welfare, sometimes on housing and (natural) environmental change. Other studies offer analyses from a purely political or economic perspective, treating dwellings as consumer goods, existing to win votes or absorb demand.

Kemeny (1992) has argued that the compartmentalised way that housing is studied is a consequence of its lying across a number of pure disciplines. He argues that it lacks any natural home, and despite the growth in the number of ‘housing studies departments’ at British universities, those engaged in the study of housing tend to have a background in a separate discipline: they are economists, political scientists, sociologists or architects. Or, failing that, they hail from one of the hybrid disciplines, for example geography or town planning.

Nevertheless, despite the apparent complexity of the connections between housing, society, the economy and the environment, the importance of housing – across all these disciplines – remains inexorably linked to questions of quality, quantity and location. The basic challenge for the providers of housing, and those who plan its provision, is to ensure that these concerns are given equal attention.

Housing quality

A number of factors influence the quality of a new dwelling; these may relate specifically to the dwelling itself or more broadly to its local setting. Quality is most straightforwardly determined by the utility value enjoyed by its occupant(s) and therefore, to meet the most basic quality threshold, the dwelling must satisfy need. This means that good quality housing is provided with the user in mind and offers a healthy and safe living environment. At one level, it provides basic amenities – water, heat, light, cooking facilities, sewage removal – and at another, it meets the longer-term aspirations or needs of a household: i.e. to grow or to age.

In the past, housing quality was often narrowly defined in terms of a small number of quality measures. These included access to an inside toilet and, in later years, the existence of gas central heating. The physical dimensions of a dwelling were also seen as contributing to quality, and were measured according to ‘Parker Morris’ standards (Parker Morris, 1961). Hence, the main criteria against which housing quality was judged related to the characteristics, and particularly the internal layout, of the dwelling. Improvements in quality were therefore to be achieved through changes to the Building Regulations and then enforced via planning and building control.

Today, assessments of quality are linked more closely to the different needs of housing occupants. This means, for example, that more detailed assessments of housing needs, undertaken in many instances by local authority housing and planning departments, are concerned less with simple dwelling numbers and more with understanding the profile of housing types required by the cross-section of local households. Authorities are keen that any new housing provided – or converted from existing stock or non-residential buildings – will reflect the particular needs of single person households, of families, of older people or of those with physical or mental disabilities. Moreover, needs are not simply defined in the here and now, but are projected into the future. For example, high-quality housing that meets the needs of families today may not be appropriate for an ageing population that will display a very different demographic profile in 20 years time.

So the definition of quality has become much broader; it is about tailoring housing to changing needs and about ensuring that dwellings retain their utility value as society changes. Dwellings must provide a high quality of accommodation over the long term. This type of thinking on the quality issue is reflected in the concept of lifelong homes (which can be adapted to an occupant's changing circumstances during different life stages) and is part of a wider rationale of creating sustainable communities. In recent years it has become a key part of the household growth debate, with questions focusing on the type of housing required by a society that looks set to be dominated by older and smaller households in the coming years.

The design issue is also becoming critically important as policy moves in the direction of higher density living (see Chapter 8). In this context the issue of quality extends beyond the individual dwelling units to the wider residential environment – its urban design. Thus many of the recent housing needs studies have fixed not only on the issue of individual unit quality, but also on the quality of surrounding open spaces, the look of buildings, the amount of greenery, the layout of roads and walkways, and the way all these factors contribute to the ‘feel’ of a place (see for example, Karn et al., 1998). Quality in this sense is about creating appealing residential environments where people will want to live.

So what are the consequences of low-quality housing? It is difficult to isolate the quality issue from concerns over the quantity and location of housing supply, as most of the great housing failures of the past have resulted from a combination of these different factors – low-quality housing, sited in out-of-the-way disconnected locations, or housing over-supplied in areas with few job opportunities. For example, the abandonment of houses in the North West and North East of England in recent years has been linked to the low quality of housing provided (Power, 1999), although in that instance the problems of location (in areas of economic decay) and oversupply have probably been the most critical. The consequences and characteristics of low housing quality might include:

At the dwelling unit level:

• Overcrowding – homes unsuited to the present or future size of occupant households. Whilst the proportion of overcrowded households has fallen off nationally in recent years, numerous studies continue to demonstrate that particular sections of society continue to live in homes that are too small. Recent figures show, for example, that black and minority ethnic households are still more likely to endure overcrowding or other housing stresses than their white neighbours (DTLR, 2001b). Using an indicator based on overcrowding, sharing, and children living above the ground floor, some 180,000 black and minority ethnic households in London are estimated to be in housing need (Housing Corporation and London Research Centre, 2000).
• Poor building standards – can take various forms but include problems such as inadequate sound or heat insulation. The neighbourhood disputes arising from noise pollution have been vividly highlighted by Gurney and Hines (1999) and this is an issue of heightening concern in relation to the question of density. On the whole, basic construction problems pre-date the current building regulations and are less prevalent in new homes, but recent research in Austria has revealed that relatively low levels of background noise can raise blood pressure in children and lead to learned helplessness syndrome (Evans et al., 2001), thus emphasising the importance of even detailed design considerations.
• Lack of basic amenities – like the issue of building standards, a lack of basic amenities – private open space, light, air – is less often a problem in new housing but still affects older stock, particularly in many inner city neighbourhoods that escaped the slum-clearance programmes of the mid-twentieth century. It also remains an issue in the light of the higher density agenda.
• Inappropriate internal layout standards – although the problems of poor construction standards and basic amenity provision may be less significant today, the layout and design of new homes remain standardised, and homes can easily be mismatched to local needs. The reduction in householder size (see below), for example through greater numbers of people living by themselves, may not necessarily imply that such households aspire to lower space standards, although assumptions in policy often make this case.

As basic constructional standards have improved, the debate over housing quality has refocused away from internal layout and standards, to neighbourhood design – although the former still remain major concerns.

At the area level, the major concerns revolv...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Part One: Processes
• Part Two: Tensions
• Part Three: Solutions
• References