New Housing Design

John Penrose Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2017 Westminster Hall

[John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)]

I join the chorus of congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) on organising this important and timely debate. He nearly put me off my breakfast this morning as I woke up to his dulcet tones on Radio 4, but he made some very important points, in particular about the commitment in the Conservative party manifesto to higher-density urban housing—mews houses, mansion blocks and the like.

I join him in emphasising the importance of this matter. I thought his speech rather neatly summarised the slightly schizophrenic approach that we have in this country—it does not matter where on the political spectrum or what part of the country someone is in—to taller buildings, if I can put it that way. If high-rise living is mentioned, people automatically picture some sort of brutalist, 1960s tower block and their hackles start to rise. They get concerned about the quality and design of the build and the impact not only on the people living in that particular development, but on the surrounding public realm, which is influenced because everyone can see it from a good distance around.

But mention mansion blocks, terraced streets or mews houses, built altogether on a more human scale—four, five or six storeys tall; the sort of thing that can be seen in many long-established city centres such as London, Bath, Bristol and the prosperous Victorian cities of the midlands and the north—and people take a different approach. They are much more welcoming, because those designs have stood the test of time. My hon. Friend’s comments about ensuring local buy-in are particularly important. There may be a local vernacular style, often using local materials, but such houses can be built using modern building techniques to a high modern building standard, allowing them to deliver at the same time some of the other things mentioned by colleagues in interventions, such as greener buildings, energy efficiency and so on.

[Rebecca Pow]

My hon. Friend is making a good point about higher density, but is it not right that green spaces must be included, if not in properties—not everyone needs a garden—then nearby? Royal Horticultural Society surveys indicate a direct link between our health and wellbeing and green space.

[John Penrose]

My hon. Friend and near neighbour in Somerset makes a tremendously important point. The advantage of building up, not out—if I may paraphrase the manifesto commitment to higher-density living—is precisely that it can preserve, and in some cases enhance, available green space. We could increase the density of existing urban centres—not necessarily city centres; they could be the centres of market towns or seaside towns such as Weston-super-Mare, which I represent—while working within existing street plans and plots.

Many of our town centres are an average of two or three storeys tall. Walking down the main streets of most towns and looking up, one can see large amounts of fresh air, which could be incredibly economically valuable if only it were developed, providing that it were developed in a modern style—not necessarily a modernist style, but with modern materials—in keeping with the local style. Many of the problems mentioned by the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), who immediately preceded me—problems to do with value engineering and the difficulty of ensuring economic value—would go away.

If there is an existing plot on which a couple of extra storeys can be put, taking it from two storeys to four or five, there is no need to trip over the problems with high-rise living that my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton discussed. People will accept it. We need only walk through town centres, such as the ones near where we are standing now, to see that people will accept it. It is extraordinary to consider that Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster, where we are currently debating this issue, have some of the highest-density housing developments in the entire country, and they are hardly bywords for inner-city and urban decay. They are good examples of designs and systems of living that have stood the test of time.

I want to sing a hymn of praise to building up, not out. It attracts new investment into our existing towns and city centres, helping urban regeneration. It also reduces urban sprawl, helping to preserve green spaces by increasing the density of existing urban spaces and reducing the need to build out on the fringes, eating into green belts. As we heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), it also breaks the stranglehold of the established housing developers, who are often not keen on building on small plots in town centres. Small local developers and builders are much more keen to do so. That is greener. It cuts commuting times, as people can live closer to work, and allows building to be done in an energy-efficient fashion.

My query to the Minister is, how we can make the manifesto commitment—to build up, not out; to increase urban density—move much faster? He will be aware, I am sure, that I made a submission after the White Paper for permitted development to allow people to build up, not out. I hope that he will take it seriously. Will he also consider whether we can increase the level of credit that local authorities, in making their local plans, get for local development orders so that people can build up in the middle of towns? Housing inspectors, when considering whether local plans are acceptable, should give credit for extra building that might happen. They do not currently accept as part of the assessment of local housing need whether plans will provide the necessary local incentives to local communities so that people will want to build beauty in their back yards.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) on securing this important debate. Much of what he said would create a consensus across this Chamber and, indeed, across these nations of ours. There have been creditable contributions all round and a wealth of experience from the Members who spoke. I will not run through every constituency at this stage, but serious points were made for the Minister to take on board.

No serious debate can begin without our recognising that we are in a bad place at the moment. Every Member who spoke has illustrated the fact that things are not going in the way they should be. It is important to recognise that, because we look to the Government to institutionalise significant change. Houses are not simply bricks and mortar, as Members have said. They are homes and parts of the communities in which people make their lives, and we must do better than we are doing now.

I will add some words of caution. First, it is worth recalling that almost everything that has been said, particularly about the environmental impact of homes and noise insulation and so on, applies just as much to the existing built stock. The bulk of homes that will be around in 20 years’ time are already in existence. Probably some 80% of them already exist. We have got to do something about retrofitting to improve existing homes. Even if we are to see the building boom that we await—I hope the Government’s ambitions are brought into reality—there will be some real impacts, one of which we have seen in the past: when there is a housing boom, unfortunately the quality of the build does not always keep pace with the scale.

One issue in the construction industry that the Government are not addressing is the ageing workforce and the lack of adequate training places for young and not so young people coming into the construction industry. We must deal with that if we are to have construction workers to deliver quality homes of the future and retrofit the homes of the past.

I join my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad) in saying that unless we have adequate funding for our local authorities, including the funding of building control and planning, which have been cut across our nations because of the austerity budgets, we will not see the type of ongoing control that we need to guarantee that the build of the future avoids the mistakes of the past. To make an obvious point—bearing in mind the experience of Grenfell Tower—we have first class and second class housing in this country. Social tenants’ housing must be of exactly the same quality of design and build as we would expect for anybody else. So that is the background to the debate.

The Government face real challenges. On issues of design and high quality homes, clearly the Government have a central responsibility to assess standards and provide a framework. Good design is aesthetically pleasing. I agree with the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with building up, although, like everything, it is a question of whether the design is of an acceptable standard. My hon. Friend the Member for Kensington is right: let us not be so concerned with replicating the past that we fail to take advantage of what the future can offer. Amazing buildings are going up all around this country because new building technologies allow more experimental and more interesting buildings than some of those in the past.

[John Penrose]

I think the hon. Gentleman is saying we should not allow awful tragedies such as Grenfell Tower to sway us against the advantages of greater density and building a little higher, provided it is done in a sensible way and with the right standards and design.

[Tony Lloyd]

Indeed. If I can repeat the point, we already have a building stock of homes in the sky. I am old enough to remember when we were told we were going to build vertical streets. I give away my age when I say that. People live in vertical streets. Whether built in the future or existing stock, we have to make sure they are fit and proper homes. Let us agree on that.

We have to face the challenges of new builds. I was involved when Greater Manchester was looking at the spatial framework for the future. There were a lot of objections, some inevitable. There was some nimbyism in people’s objections, but people have legitimate objections if they see that a new development is not accompanied by the kind of infrastructure investment that is fundamental to making communities work. It is not simply about the new community that is being built, but whether it is compatible with the existing community. Transport links, local schools and local medical facilities, and access to the world of work are legitimate concerns because such things make real communities work properly.

Along with local infrastructure, people need to be able to move homes as their lives change. The right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) made the point about people’s circumstances changing with age. Sometimes an ageing couple have an issue with disability. It is not impossible to adapt existing homes, but nor is it impossible to keep people within their own community where they may prefer to make a move. So it is sensible to design communities around people’s progressive needs.

An issue raised already is the question of space. The Government have a real challenge. When the former Brent Council building is now seeing homeless single persons offered 16 square metres of floor space, we have a real issue. That is way below the national space standards for housing design, which the Government introduced. I say to the Minister it is time those space standards were implemented nationally and made mandatory, because they are an acceptable minimum. In any case, there is always the capacity to use adequate design as a reason for eroding that standard, but that should be firmly lodged with the local planning authority as the guarantor of the safeguard, so we do not see developers overreaching themselves.

Often when space standards have been eroded, it is consistent with offices and retail premises being converted into homes. The Minister needs to look hard at blocking such loopholes if we are to prevent ridiculously small homes being built.

On section 106, I was bemused rather than amused to see an advert by a company called Section 106, which tells would-be developers about affordable housing. It talks about its own performance and references a development in Gloucester Place in London where an affordable housing contribution of £646,000 demanded by Westminster Council was reduced to a nil contribution. It goes on to tell would-be developers that they can go on a holiday with the money they have saved. That is simply not a responsible use of section 106; it is not what it is there to provide. The Minister must look again at making the section 106 process transparent, so there can be public tests, and enforceable by local authorities. If we are to have the homes for the future that the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton is demanding—and he and other colleagues are right to demand them—our local authorities must have the capacity to say to developers that developments must be of an acceptable standard, and that they have the power to control the rogue builders and developers.