A former office block in North London converted to flats - where residents experience overheating in the summer and excessive cold in the winter
All new homes must be healthy homes, says the Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA)‘s Rosalie Callway.
Much of the recent debate about the housing crisis has focused on the undersupply of homes and sought to blame planning as a barrier to delivery. The TCPA has always been quick to point out that planning consents nationally have regularly exceeded the 300,000 annual housing target. However, over the last decade, the former government has sought to increase the number of homes by ‘cutting red tape’ and deregulating planning.
Deregulation has happened through the extension of permitted development rights (PDR). PDR was originally intended to simplify the process of making small household changes, such as minor extensions and loft conversions. However, the previous government extended this policy to allow high street shops, former office-blocks and buildings in industrial estates and agricultural sites to be converted into housing, without needing a full planning application. Over 100,000 homes are estimated to have been produced via this route since 2013.
Whilst the TCPA is not against the conversion of empty buildings to produce the homes many people urgently need, we don’t want to see people housed in conditions that are making them unwell. Normal planning policies and scrutiny don’t apply to properties converted into homes under PDR. In fact, they don’t even have to meet minimum rules on structural safety, damp, accessibility, or overheating.
Health impacts of poor housing
Research, led by UCL, is examining the health impacts of PDR changes. Whilst not all PDR conversions are necessarily poor quality, emerging accounts from residents – especially those placed in temporary PDR housing – can be harrowing and upsetting. Women, placed in PDR housing with their children to escape domestic abuse, have described feeling exposed to new threats to their safety. They experience the heavy surveillance from their private landlords, witnessing drug dealers and prostitution just outside their buildings, with little to no access to any safe play space. Other residents have talked about feeling trapped in noisy, isolated and polluted locations – alongside major roads or out of town industrial estates – in prison-like and poorly insulated, mouldy studio spaces.
However, it is not just the homes produced through PDR that are a cause for concern. The English Housing Survey found that over one in 10 homes across all tenures (social, private rental and owner-occupied) are failing to meet the Decent Homes Standard (DHS). New homes are not legally required to meet national space standards and over 91% don’t have basic accessibility features. This is despite clear evidence that people living in sub-standard housing are twice as likely to have poor health, costing the NHS and wider society at least £18 billion every year.
To address these issues the Campaign for Healthy Homes, led by the TCPA and funded by the Nationwide Foundation, is calling for regulatory change for all new homes, including PDR-converted homes. We hope that with the new government, there is now a real window of opportunity to improve standards and the resources underpinning them, with the aim of promoting better health outcomes. The King’s Speech indicates a welcome shift, including on improving building safety regulation and extending the scope of the Decent Homes Standard to the private rental sector.
Focus on quality
The TCPA hopes the government will go even further, by setting health promotion as a core statutory obligation of planning and housing development. We think it is a false economy to focus on numbers while overlooking the strategic role of proper planning can play, with sufficient resources and clear standards, in ensuring the good quality, location and affordability of those homes. As Lord Nigel Crisp recognised in a recent House of Lords debate – ‘good quality, safe housing is the foundation of a good life’.
As part of the campaign, the TCPA has been working with the built environment sector to encourage organisations to sign up to a Healthy Homes Pledge. The Heathy Homes Pledge is inviting organisations to commit to going beyond bare minimum housing protections and promote better outcomes for people and the environment. It requires signatories to adopt 12 Healthy Homes Principles as a broad benchmark for new housing developments to secure higher quality homes, designed with the intention of supporting residents’ health and wellbeing.
Several organisations have already pledged their support, including Alliance for Sustainable Building Products, the Chartered Institute for Housing, CPRE: the countryside charity, David Lock Associates, the Good Homes Alliance, Housing LIN, the Quality of Life Foundation, Renters Rights London, Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), Tibbalds, TrustMark and Wates.
We invite all organisations involved in housing development to sign up to the pledge and take the lead on ensuring all future homes are healthy homes.
Sign up to the pledge here: tcpa.org.uk/healthy-homes-pledge
Further information: tcpa.org.uk/collection/campaign-for-healthy-homes
