The Thinkhouse Review: the tension between housing targets and design standards

Thinkhouse is a website set up to be repository of housing research. Its editorial panel of economists, chief executives, consultants and academics critiques and collates the best of the most recent housing research (scroll down for more information).

This month was another bumper one for the Thinkhouse editorial panel, with 16 reports to evaluate.

One of the highlights was a report that has already garnered a fair amount of media coverage: A Housing Design Audit for England, authored by the University College London Bartlett School of Planning, the Campaign to Protect Rural England and Place Alliance. The media attention so far has focused on findings that:

• Of the 142 new housing developments reviewed, 75% should not have gone ahead due to ‘mediocre’ or ‘poor’ design
• One in five of these developments should have been refused planning permission outright as their ‘poor’ design was contrary to advice given in the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF)
• A further 54% should not have been granted permission at all without significant improvements to their design having first been made

However, the report contained other significant findings which have received less attention, but which are just as damning. They also chimed with the findings of other reports we have reviewed this month:

• House builders are capable of creating good-quality housing development in England, as the majority had attained audit scores ranging from ‘good’ to ‘poor’ in various locations
• This variance in design quality was not due to viability issues
• It was the developments by the largest house builders that had the greatest variance in quality

I also found the fact that the ‘middle’ of the three performance brackets used in this report was labelled ‘Solidly Mediocre’, a shameful indicator of current performance for a nation which in GDP terms currently sits within the global top 10.

In summary, the Housing Design Audit report concludes that some house builders – especially the larger ones – are simply choosing not to build better-quality housing in England.

And even worse, the report found some evidence that some were using the planning appeals process to force through schemes with the lowest design quality.

“The Housing Design Audit report concludes that some house builders – especially the larger ones – are simply choosing not to build better-quality housing in England”

So how is the English planning system being used to enable what appear to be repeated obvious departures from the NPPF? The clues lie in the report’s recommendations, for which there are three sets for each of the three key stakeholders in delivery of housing: housing developers, local authorities and central government.

The report asks for housing developers to invest in improved skills and quality standards within in-house design teams and ‘ethical design leadership’ (especially from the big market players); a more comprehensive and community-level approach to measuring resident satisfaction; and an end to the opacity of the economics of housing design quality.

Local authorities are recommended to use independent design reviews (of which the author has positive experience and on both sides of the fence) for housing development of a significant scale or impact; to have closer integration between planning and highways functions; and to have the courage to refuse applications which don’t meet local design guidelines.

“The competing – and sometimes contradictory – demands of meeting housing allocation targets and maintaining design standards are already a challenge”

It’s this latter point that seems to crux of the matter.

At a time where resources (and morale) within local authorities are at rock-bottom, the competing – and sometimes contradictory – demands of meeting housing allocation targets and maintaining design standards are already a challenge in an environment where “house builders [which] have little incentive to improve when their designs continue to pass through the planning system… and highways authorities which rarely recognise their role in creating a sense of place for communities”.

This challenge has been made even harder by a lack of continuity at ministerial level, with the 10th housing ministers in the past 10 years just announced (only two of whom have held the role for more than 12 months). It is disappointing that this housing audit only happened at all because the three co-authors were able to assemble partners to work on a voluntary basis (as detailed on page 18 of the report), rather than it being core funded by England’s dedicated housing agency.

The fact that they have produced such a robust, fact-filled, easy-to-read report make it all the more commendable.