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itting zero carbon in 2050 depends on the housebuilding industry embracing effi ciency, including offsite, which in turn depends on some other key things changing, notably planning. Of course, the housebuilding industry is riddled with confl icts – such as local pressures against development versus the need to build in the right locations for amenities, transport and sustainability. There is the suggestion that developers making large margins might only build out sites as fast as they need to in order to serve their demand, while at the same time blaming the planners for not giving them the sites.
A recent Radio 4 show, The Bottom Line, nailed the key problems, particularly factors like housebuilding being increasingly dominated by big fi rms because land is such a fi nancial risk, which relies on a certain level of headroom. This Government would have to intervene way beyond a level it’s normally comfortable with in order to change that particular symptom of business doing what it does.
The Future Homes Standard doesn’t effectively kick in until next year, but the energy uplifts of 31% will be put into the shade by the removal of gas as an option for the 2025 standard. Peter Trustcott, chief executive of Crest Nicholson, was heard on The Bottom Line saying that going wholesale for heat pumps ran the risk of “betting on Betamax” when there might be better technologies currently under development. But arguably, there isn’t time to wait for them to materialise.
The local authorities are under fi re again for not granting planning to sites quickly, but also for “constraining” developers putting in heat pumps – until recently. That’s the view of Rico Wojtulewicz, of the National Federation of Builders, who bangs the drum for SME fi rms. Planners are perceived as the gatekeepers of not just sites, but wider sustainability it seems, and it’s hard to believe that can be totally true. However, Trustcott says that 300,000 homes is never going to happen, because of “land supply,” which does have the paradoxical benefi t that the skills crisis isn’t actually as bad as it’s made out to be.
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Create Streets is campaigning for beauty in housing (as DLUC has also tried to do), but their contention that better-looking developments will mean less opposition from locals was refuted by both Crest Nicholson and the NFB as a “cop out.” Trustcott defended housebuilders’ aesthetic record, and said that local objection was in fact about “Governments abdicating responsibility” for freeing up sites.
There was a depressing conclusion from these key voices on the ability of offsite to deliver, because it relies on a planning system that gives certainty, and also which “allows repetition.” Currently, said Trustcott, the system wants “everything to be different.” DLUC’s plan for ‘street votes,’ in the context of factory built homes, was “fantasy world – you can’t have both.” If planning is the main problem for unlocking MMC, it needs a dynamic solution, quickly.
Offsite has to be the way forward for housebuilding.
James Parker, Editor 08.22 ON THE COVER...
Charle Ratchford Court in Camden is an extra- care later living scheme with a difference – PRP’s design provides a high degree of spatial quality for wellness and connectedness
For the full report on this project, go to page 22
CHARLIE RATCHFORD COURT, NORTH LONDON
How architects PRP found their HAPPI place with a healthy, connected alternative to traditional later living accommodation in Camden
ADF08_2022
Covers.indd 1 28/07/2022 12:29
FROM THE EDITOR
WWW.ARCHITECTSDATAFILE.CO.UK
ADF AUGUST 2022
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