Spaces standards for homes

Luke Tozer

The current space standards provide a good baseline for all new dwellings, are clear and easily understood.

Space above these minimum standards should be provided for everyone to live in and enjoy. It is akin to a basic human right. It should be provided above these minimums universally by a well-functioning housing market. Currently it clearly is not.

Luke Tozer
Image: Nat Priem

Although the standards themselves are OK, it is the implementation on a voluntary basis and the decision of each local authority that is the Achilles' heel. The market responds best to legislation and regulation where it is imposed nationally, rather than where it is voluntary and localised. They will only have impact if they are adopted by local authorities. But sadly in an era when they are all facing severe budget cuts, it seems unlikely that all or many local authorities will have the resources or skills to implement the change.

Space standards are easily quantifiable, obligatory and nationwide. If you couldn't get a Building Regulations Completion certificate - hence mortgage - unless you had met them then everyone would suddenly be building to them. This also solves the resources and skills' gap in local authorities, as Building Regulations can be administered by the private sector through Approved Inspectors.

Luke Tozer, Director, Pitman Tozer Architects

Ben Adams

A set of space standards for all is a great idea, and making them simple to understand and implement is essential. The London Plan enshrines such standards for that city, sets planning policy at the city-wide level, and is understood by consultants, clients and other stakeholders. Voluntary space standards will easily be overridden by market forces and so the standards need to be mandatory, but who will police them?

Can we expect planning officers or Approved Inspectors to get the tape measure out when large apartment buildings are finished, or will we see scandal after scandal as the press exposes yet another building with rooms that are too small? I suspect the planning system could be a better guardian than Building Control as the overall scale of a building is unlikely to change much once consented, and therefore the rooms inside should add up to the right amount of space in total.

Ben Adams

Then there is the potential downside to mandatory space standards: we face a national housing crisis because homes generally are too expensive, and larger ones will be more so. There are two ways we might combat this: by persuading a UK government to invest in new affordable housing, or by decoupling house prices from land values by leasing land rather than owning it.

We explored the second idea in proposals to New London Architecture for the Disco Housing Trust, in which homes are rented or leased from a trust that builds genuinely affordable homes on borrowed land. Space standards are critically important, but form one part of a larger and escalating housing crisis with conflicting pressures.

Ben Adams, Founding director, Ben Adams Architects

Martyn Evans

What is important to understand is why we are talking about space standards at all. Our simple ambition as housebuilders should be to create beautiful, inspiring, useful and practical places for people to live in. In that regard, to borrow a phrase, size isn't everything.

In the myriad responses to the housing crisis there are some very creative ideas out in the market right now. Companies like The Collective, working on an innovative co-living brand that takes the student accommodation model and up-scales it for young professionals, is offering a solution that might deliver well-designed affordability in a complete rethink of how we live.

Martyn Evans

More and more developers will be testing out the idea of micro flats. Pocket Living is developing apartments at the very lower end of the guidelines, at around 38 sq m, but I have seen proposals for individual living spaces, augmented by very beautiful communal living, at sub-30 sq m.

The idea here is that the distinction between affordable and... what...? Non-affordable (?) becomes academic. It's all affordable. To move the debate along we have to ask questions of the role that planning regulations play in the delivery of affordable, inspiring homes. When does regulation simply get in the way of designers and developers driving innovation?

Martyn Evans, Creative director, U+I

Daisy Froud

I welcome the standards, but as a remedial measure it's like an emergency dressing applied to a gaping wound. A pressing problem has been addressed, but the same painful underlying logic will continue to drive procurement - that of housing as an investment commodity. Setting aside whether standards will be implemented where they are most needed, due to the possibility of opting out if they affect 'viability', and to the failure to incorporate them into Building Regulations, it's unclear how much they can actually achieve in terms of quality.

Even the London Housing Design Guide, which is more in the spirit of Parker Morris, with its qualitative focus on 'social encounters' and real 'usability', tends to get applied unthinkingly as a target rather than a minimum standard.

Daisy Froud

There's a nice bit of research done by UCL for CABE in 2010 on the history of space standards. It discusses Italy, where development culture prizes long-term usability and adaptability. When legal minimums were introduced in 1975 these were confidently set lower than the average home size, merely introduced to eradicate bad practice in a market that was otherwise functioning well.

Introducing properly enforced UK space standards may prove a step in the right direction, but it would be great to see some other 'Italian' features actively promoted here by any government that really wants to provide better housing for its citizens, such as support for smaller local housebuilders and continuing reduction of the appeal of 'buy-to-let.'

Daisy Froud, Independent community engagement strategist

Sarah Wigglesworth

It's depressing that we have to have a debate over space standards at all. Generous space provision should be a fundamental requirement - not an opt-in - of all new housing regardless of tenure. It's utterly depressing to observe the Government propose the rebuilding of so-called 'sink estates' on the one hand, while encouraging the construction of thousands of poor-quality new homes as part of a dubious long-term plan, and doing absolutely nothing to break that cycle of failure.

At the root of it all is the monetisation of housing in pursuit of an ideological dream of mass ownership. Add to this the appeasement of volume builders, whose price for delivering the Government's Starter Homes has been minimal regulation and huge subsidies.

Sarah Wigglesworth
Image: Timothy Soar

It doesn't have to be this way. We are working with PegasusLife on a new retirement development, where generous space standards are just the start of an inspired brief from an informed client that prioritises wellbeing, health and social lives for its residents. I am also working with colleagues at the University of Sheffield, together with Sheffield City Council and local housing providers to research how the design of houses and neighbourhoods can facilitate mobility and wellbeing. Holistic thinkers are out there - it's time we forced the rest to step up to the mark.

Sarah Wigglesworth, Director, Sarah Wigglesworth Architects

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