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4 NEWS


Managing Editor James Parker jparker@netmagmedia.co.uk


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FROM THE EDITOR


I recently attended a Westminster Social Policy Forum seminar headed up by Sir Oliver Letwin MP, who has chaired an independent review of housebuilding delivery, a particularly hot topic given the scale of the current housing crisis. His comments were surprising for a couple of reasons.


Surprising firstly because the mentions of Brexit were at a bare minimum (although it was of course the ‘elephant in the room’). You do wonder whether he has been briefed to try and avoid saying anything negative about the current diplomatic crisis, especially given he was one of the leading Tory rebels attempting to ‘take back control’ of the process from an increasingly hopeless-looking Government.


His talk was also surprising however because the key focus was not just the commercial factors around ‘build out’ of large sites – the extent and speed of which residential sites are being built on by developers, in light of the dauntingly huge target to build 300,000 homes per year. Yes, he did talk about the problem of ‘absorption rates,’ (i.e. the rate at which homes will be sold in a new development), as being the main reason that sites are not built on quickly enough: “The reason why it takes so long is nothing to do with how fast you can do it in technical construction terms, but whether there are people, who at the prices at which they are being sold, want to buy more houses in that place at that time or not.”


Letwin gave reasons why it might be a bad idea to reduce prices, in the context of the fact that the market rate is not set by the developers, but by the secondhand market. He advocated realising far greater value from sites for tenures like social housing, so that it isn’t just ‘lottery-winning’ landowners who get all the spoils.


But he also talked very passionately about design, and what he saw as a severe lack of quality and variation, hinting that this may be another reason which homes are not fetching the prices that might make sites viable. From visiting many ‘open market’ UK housing developments, Letwin said he had reached the view that “almost all of the homes that the very large builders build are astonishingly, and to my mind appallingly predictable.” And this isn’t a maxim of housebuilding in general; he said it was “quite unlike what we saw in various other countries that we visited, where large sites are highly various in many respects.”


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Letwin believed that the solutions lie partly in “addressing untapped demand” for a wider variety of house design. There was a key need to “vary the product, because there are different kinds of people and different people have different desires,” he said. He added that while some buyers will accept the homes that are currently on offer from major housebuilders, that’s simply represents the current level of demand, which is not producing adequate build-out rates.


He said the variations in design seen in many EU housing developments, such as being shown via wide adoption of custom build, is one area where we are lagging behind the Continent. Letwin’s key recommendations include that the planning system is changed so that large sites can’t be built out with ‘lookalike’ open market housing, and local bodies are set up to oversee this – as happens in other European countries. While we stumble around trying to leave the EU, we still have much to learn from our European neighbours.


James Parker Editor


02.19


ON THE COVER... Heatherwick Studio’s Coal Drops Yard forms the heart of the King’s Cross regeneration project, combining old and new in a unique composition created from two reconstructed Victorian roofs.


COAL DROPS YARD, KINGS CROSS, LONDON Heatherwick Studio transforms and brings together two Victorian coal warehouse roofs, for a high-end retail scheme


DUNDEE RAILWAY STATION Nicoll Russell Studios’ curved new hybrid concourse and hotel


For the full report on this project, go to page 56 Cover Image © Hufton+Crow


WWW.ARCHITECTSDATAFILE.CO.UK


ADF FEBRUARY 2019


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