Three quarters of newly built British homes are below the standard we deserve. The government’s housing agenda needs not only size, but sustainability, says Phineas Harper
There’s no such thing as a sustainable house. A solitary home, however energy efficient or responsibly designed, is always part of a wider context.
You can insulate walls, orient windows to maximise thermal gain, locally source bio-based carbon-sequestering construction materials, and plant only indigenous species of garden shrub. But a house is only as socially and environmentally sustainable as the neighbourhood it is part of.
In July 2024, after the election of a new government boasting the most ambitious housing agenda of the 21st century, the Design Council Homes Taskforce formed. We set out to develop policy to support the delivery of 1.5 million homes within the UK’s 1.5°C climate commitments, drawing ideas from across the design sector, and in particular from architects.
Over months of round tables and site visits, the taskforce has developed Design for Neighbourhoods – 10 core neighbourhood-scale policy recommendations which could enable the delivery of far more, far higher quality, well-designed, environmentally sound homes supporting thriving communities.
The challenge facing the future of UK housing isn’t rare amphibians – it’s that 74 per cent of newly built British homes are poor or mediocre
From common-sense legislative tweaks such as counting derelict homes returned to use towards national housebuilding targets, to better regulating high-embodied-carbon materials, Design for Neighbourhoods is a game changer for British housing policy. Central to the paper is the concept of a strategic whole-stock approach, embracing the economic and social opportunities of refurbishment and housing upgrades alongside new construction.
‘We cannot afford to repeat past mistakes,’ my fellow taskforce member Sadie Morgan of dRMM says. She’s right: bad design always costs more in the long run, shoring up eye-watering remediation bills and baking in car dependency.
There’s been a lot of chat in the media about newts, bats and tearing up red tape. But the challenge facing the future of UK housing isn’t rare amphibians. It’s that 74 per cent of newly built British homes are poor or mediocre. That is not good enough – either to meet our climate obligations under the Paris Agreement, or to foster thriving communities.
The government must match its ambition for quantity with genuine and holistic quality. Design for Neighbourhoods sets out how.
Phineas Harper is an architecture critic, artist and founding member of the Design Council Homes Taskforce. They are an opinion writer for the Guardian, former CEO of Open City, and a trustee of the Twentieth Century Society.