New Housing Design

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2017 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) on securing this debate on new housing design, a very important issue in my constituency. I declare an interest as chair of the all-party group on healthy homes and buildings.

I would like to concentrate on health as well as design. The ramifications of poorly designed and constructed buildings are felt by my constituents and by constituents throughout the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I believe it is incumbent on us to act to deliver a built environment that is healthy and safe. Everyone loves moving into a new home, whether it has been freshly built or is just new to the owner, but it is important that we live in safe and healthy homes. The all-party group was established to highlight the health and cost benefits that can be achieved by constructing our buildings and homes to the highest quality and standards.

Given that we spend 90% of our time indoors, it is important that we look at these issues clearly. Our homes should be fit for purpose and should not exacerbate or cause ill health. The costs to our health services of poorly constructed homes and buildings are monumental. Perhaps some figures will illustrate why it is important to get it right: the Building Research Establishment estimates that poor housing throughout the UK costs the health service £2.5 billion every year. Getting the homes right will address some of the issues associated with ill health and its costs. Poor insulation, poor indoor air quality, damp, and poor light quality have all been proven to cause or exacerbate a variety of health problems, including respiratory ailments, child and adolescent development problems and mental health problems. Those are the issues that failure to design homes to a safe standard leads to.

I encourage all hon. Members to read the all-party group’s green paper, “Building our Future: Laying the Foundations for Healthy Homes and Buildings”, which was recently put out to consultation. If the Minister and the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton do not yet have a copy, I will make sure that they get one. The green paper makes a number of key recommendations to ensure that our homes are built to promote good health and wellbeing.

First, leadership on health and housing issues has been disjointed, with responsibilities spread across multiple Departments. This undermines the Government’s ability to tackle the problem. We want a cross-departmental committee for health and buildings to champion change in the sector, recognising the interaction between buildings, health, education and the economy.

Secondly, we ask that the Government continue to support and expand projects such as NHS England’s “Healthy New Towns”, which promise to rethink how health and housing services are delivered, as well as building a solid evidence base for the dynamic between health and housing provision. It is quite clear that the two have to work together.

Thirdly, a recent report by the UK Green Building Council estimates that four out of five homes that will be occupied in 2050 have already been built, so it is insufficient to talk only in terms of new housing design. The retrofitting and renovation of existing homes to acceptable health standards must be a Government priority. My constituency of Strangford in Northern Ireland has a lot of small construction firms of the kind that have been referred to by other Members. They build lots of individual houses, but also do lots of development. We in Northern Ireland have invested in training and upskilling in our construction industry. That must be one of the first steps in moving forward. It is not simply about training our young people in new methods of building but about engaging, upskilling and retraining older members of the construction industry.

I am conscious that you are giving me the eye, Sir David, so I will conclude. We have had various initiatives in Northern Ireland, such as the warm home scheme, which funded insulation and part-funded new safe boiler heating systems. These schemes really made a difference to the quality of homes, but it is surprising how many homes in Northern Ireland did not have a 10-year warranty. There has been a lack of insulation, among other things, which shows that not every home has been built even to the bare minimum standard. More needs to be done, and I do not believe that it can be achieved merely through regulation. We must also look at skills training, for the safety and benefit of families throughout the UK.