A rationalisation of local policies could help give us better homes, says Eleanor Young
How big are your bedrooms? How often have their design dimensions resulted in triggering rules on additional car parking? Take one real example: an architect designing their own house; a tight site of backland garages; a local authority on the cusp of declaring a climate emergency.
As James Grayley discussed his modest three-bedroom house in a pre-app meeting with planners, it emerged that the room sizes on the schedule of accommodation, and the plan’s neatly delineated double beds, triggered the requirement for four car parking spaces – despite being on the local bus route and a mere 15-minute walk to the city centre. The house was submitted for planning with smaller bedrooms and just two spaces. It is not the only time Grayley has seen the quality of a home diminished to circumnavigate unhelpful regulations.
For many architects, interrogating and mastering local authority planning requirements is a significant part of design. And that is once you have found where the core strategy, placemaking plan and all the policies sit on the council’s website.
Grayley estimates days rather than hours at the start of each project spent listing out the relevant policies in each new area the practice works in. There is not even a standard format. Pre-app meetings may or may not even include a design to discuss. They always centre around understanding local policy and whether a project would, or could, be policy compliant.
I am a great believer in local decision-making. Local authority plans have allowed adaptions to local conditions and sometimes been more radical – say on energy-saving requirements and sustainability standards – than central government would dare to be.
I am also a great believer that originality is born from constraints.
Can more regulations help make better buildings? Looking at the bulk of buildings completed in the first half of the decade, the answer seems be no
But there can be too many constraints with a disproportionate impact. Each design tests if policies and regulations can operate together to make better buildings and places. Looking at the bulk of buildings completed in the first half of the decade, the answer seems be ‘no’.
There is a deadening effect from the time and ingenuity spent navigating an extensive and varied national landscape of regulations. Think of almost any new-build block of flats you know. Does the site lift your spirits? Does the plan spark an enthusiasm for life within them? Combined with concerns for net-to-gross and the complexity of contracting, it takes a superhuman effort not to follow the path of least resistance.
In December, we had the government announcing the reintroduction of mandatory housing targets and confirming the definition of grey belt with immediate effect. Perhaps a directive standardising how local policies are navigated could be one more small and decisive action from the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government, giving us not just more homes but also better ones.