The theme for Abingdon Town Council’s Green Forum for the period from October to December is the impact of new housebuilding. We have designed a survey to find out what people are thinking about the need for new house building locally and nationally and the houses that are being built.
Completing the survey will take no more than ten minutes. Responses are anonymous. Closing date for the survey is 13 December, results will be analysed and published on our website.
There are about 27m households in the country and 28m houses/dwellings. But due to the levels of empty houses (about 5%) and under-occupation (about 50% of bedrooms are not being used as such) there are wildly different estimates of the need for new building: from 4.4million down to zero. New housebuilding is being proposed on previously developed land in urban areas, urban extensions, new settlements, green belt and greyer bits of green belts. Without new building new supply could come from the change of use of existing buildings and sub-dividing existing dwellings.
New housebuilding is compromised by the upfront or embodied carbon emitted in the current method of building (ie concrete, bricks and mortar) and the associated services and infrastructure. The carbon emitted from building the Government’s stated target of between 300,000 and 370,000 houses per year, and that from the energy consumed by running existing houses, would exceed the carbon budget for the whole economy, as calculated by the Climate Change Committee consistent with the trajectory to net zero by 2050. The High Court has rejected two Government carbon reduction plans as inadequate . The new Government has until May 2025 to produce a compliant plan. Building mostly if not entirely out of wood could actually sequester and store carbon; and this possibility is attracting increasing attention. Meanwhile, 20 plus million houses need a deep energy retrofit; and meeting housing needs from the space and fabric currently being heated and insulated would require dwellings to be shared or physically subdivided.
It is claimed that a shortage of housing is a cause of the unaffordable cost of buying or renting. It is unlikely that adding a few per cent to housing supply would have a meaningful impact on prices, either locally or nationally. A more compelling argument is that residential property is being treated as an investment by those who have the capital, and as a hedge against the cost of social care in the absence of a national social care scheme.
Under-occupancy is being encouraged as new building is being skewed towards larger houses without close regard being paid to the size, and to the reducing size, of households. The national birth rate is about 1.5 children per woman compared to a rate to sustain the population of closer to 2 (the average age of at which mothers give birth is also important).
There is also the issue of biodiversity. Building houses, roads and services results in the loss of flora and fauna; and people are sceptical of regulations intended to reverse this impact through ‘Biodiversity Net Gain’.
New development outside and on the edge of existing urban areas is likely to give rise to traffic that continues to be dominated by the use of the private car.
1. Holiday homes, second homes and students accommodation (private rented houses/flats and University owned student accommodation) take up huge amounts of housing stock not available for families/local people to buy or rent a home.
2. All new builds should, by law, be at least carbon zero, preferably carbon negative.
3. All existing builds should, by law, be brought up to a decent/high standard of insulation (eg loft insulation) especially relevant for private rented houses/flats.
These issues/ideas might seem radical/impossible to put into action (and will need tax payers money/govn investment) but measures that we would not previously have considered in rich countries, are now needed to tackle the climate crisis. (Read ‘Heat’ by George Monbiot – First published 2006)
There is a huge amount of housing being used for student accommodation. I am not sure that this is the case in all countries. Maybe students should study at their nearest University, continue to live at home and travel by train/bus or have the first year on campus and then do distance learning. Courses that require labs etc should be prioritised for accommodation on campus. Student accommodation is often in privately rented houses that are in very poor condition and they cannot afford to heat the homes sufficiently.
New build housing should be one bed/two bed terraced and designed to allow a central space where all can make use of a community garden. They should have all the latest technology in terms of full solar/air or ground source heat pumps and the highest standard insulation(ie passiv haus). Government could subsidize some of the first builds in order to get this quickly underway and provide an incentive for house building companies.
There are plenty of four/five bedroom homes already in existence, many with only two people living in them. There needs to be more one and two bedroom homes for starter homes as well as people downsizing once their families have left home. We will ALL have to use housing considerately, up sizing and downsizing to make full use of bedroom occupancy or sharing with family members, if we do not want more new housing to be built.