New Housing Design

Robert Courts Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2017 Westminster Hall

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I join the chorus of congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) on securing this essential debate. I have been interested in the topic ever since childhood, when my father, who worked for a house building company—I declare an interest—took me to see Poundbury, the village in Dorset designed under the auspices of the Prince of Wales. It is a model village, and the whole point of it is that the houses are built to look individual, with detail and architectural merit.

I draw attention to that project because it seems to me that, as many Members will have seen in the objections of members of the public to planning applications in their constituencies, people object, broadly, on two grounds. The first is practical: how can I get to work? Will the doctor’s surgery be able to cope? Sir David, you will forgive me if I do not address that in any detail during my limited time, given the topic of this debate. The second is: will it wreck the nature of the place that I love and call home? Housing design is critical to that second aspect, but the issue is how we square the circle.

Most people’s attitudes to development are entirely reasonable. They do not want to see all the fields near them concreted over, but they understand that there is a need for housing because our young people need somewhere to live. That is the challenge we face in housing: we need to ensure that numbers are not unsustainable, but it is critical that as politicians we do not develop an obsession with the numbers. It is to that issue that I wish to address my brief comments.

I urge all members of the public and all Members, when walking down the streets of any market town—particularly those around London, but we all have examples of such towns in our constituencies—to look up. If they do, they will see all sorts of features that used to be commonplace in the days of Victorian or Georgian housing and that are still built abroad today. There is no reason why we cannot continue to create such features: Flemish brickwork, work on chimneys, crown mouldings or details, guttering that has design merit, door surrounds—there are so many possibilities.

Developers will always say that the cost implications are prohibitive, but that is simply not the case. CABE, which has already been mentioned, has produced a report that states that cost implications do not necessarily increase. Taking this approach means that a new development is not about vast amounts of numbers being put on the outside of an attractive village and fundamentally changing its nature. In my constituency, for instance, Cotswold stone and slate roofs are particularly important. Ensuring that buildings complement their area is one of the ways to get public consent for the buildings we need. Unless people are satisfied that they will be able to get to work, but that the nature of their village and their homes will not change, we will not have public consent for the housing that is required.

The planning process is particularly important. The local planning process is essential, as my constituents realise, because it is one of the ways to combat speculative development. Developers who come in, impose housing on a village that may not want it in that form, and then leave, are part of the problem. Part of the solution is to use local small builders, of which there are some superb examples in my constituency. Someone who was born locally, who works locally, whose company builds houses locally and whose children go to the local school and stay in the area long after the houses have been built and have weathered into the environment will ensure that their housing and their development complements the area instead of blighting it. That is critical, as is self-build, which has been referred to; I wholeheartedly agree with it, but given time constraints I will not go into it in detail.

My last point is about cost. Timber frame is used in many other countries, but for many years it was absolutely forbidden in this country. Happily, that taboo is starting to be lifted. Timber frame offers speed of construction, lower cost and environmental benefits—again, I have outstanding examples in my constituency—and we should look into using it a great deal more. The same is true of prefabrication, which was used after the war. It seems to have a dirty name, but it should not, because outstanding examples that have all those benefits are available.

In conclusion, the White Paper on housing, to which I made a detailed submission, was an excellent start, but I ask that it be the start of the conversation, not the end. I welcome its focus on local communities having a local say and on design quality and architectural merit. When we are building houses, we must have public support and we must not be obsessed purely with numbers. We need the infrastructure, but the built environment is crucial. We are building homes, not houses. We must always remember that we are building places, not just filling spaces in our countryside.