Leading architects hit out at 'soulless' cut-and-paste housing developments

Developers have "played the need for housing" as a reason to build "soulless" new estates, according to a leading architect.

Speaking about the state of Britain's housing, academic and president of the Royal Institute of British Architects Alan Jones said: "You can't tell one road or one development from another and that does create these really boring, really anonymous, soulless places.

"I think the copy book of what we see so often now, with the same thing just being rolled out across the country, is really damaging in terms of creating a sense of belonging."

As a result, Mr Jones believes there is now "a lack of trust between developers and communities".

"It is too easy for developers to actually sidestep quality. It's very clearly demonstrated that those companies have used and played the need for housing as a reason to not build to higher environmental standards, which we think is terrible, and they should really be held to account."

Later today, the government will consider fast-tracking planning applications for well-designed properties.

The proposal, contained within a review of the planning system carried out by the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission, could make planning applications progress more swiftly for well-designed properties.

Government design adviser Sadie Morgan says developers don't necessarily need to be spending more.

"I don't believe good design costs extra and, in the end, we can't overestimate the importance of improving people's quality of life," she said.

By the mid-2020s, the government wants to be building 300,000 homes a year.

In the last few years, the rate of building has increased. At the last count, the number of new homes created in England hit its highest level in almost 30 years.

Mark Southgate, chief executive of the Ministry of Building Innovation and Education (MOBIE), says entire estates are being constructed without the involvement of architects.

"One of the interesting things about some of the volume house builders is there would have been some architecture in the design to start off with, but once you've got a standard house type then actually you're just repeating that house type."

An audit carried out by University College London of over 140 housing developments built since 2007 found 75% should not have gone ahead because of their "mediocre" or "poor" design.

Architect Matthew Carmona's team frequently found schemes "dominated by large areas of tarmac for parking and roads that weren't very easy for people to walk around".

"Most developers make very healthy profit margins, but they don't always take nearly serious enough the responsibilities they have to the communities they create," he said.

Then there are the new homes coming on the market that are not built from scratch.

Changes to permitted-development rules introduced in 2013 have meant that developers are able to convert offices into residential properties without planning permission.

According to Dr Ben Clifford, associate professor in spatial planning at University College London, it is creating homes that frequently fall far short of national space standards.

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"In some of the interviews I've conducted, people were describing them as slums of the future and I think that's quite a reasonable description for some of the schemes I've seen."

Of more than 240,000 homes that were finished between 2018 -19, 12% came from "change of use" conversions.

"The principle of reusing vacant office spaces isn't a bad one," said Mr Clifford.

"But one of the good arguments for planning controls is that sometimes the market fails when you leave things entirely to the whim of the market."

Andrew Whitaker, planning director of the Home Builders Federation, insisted the majority of new home buyers were happy - and that builders were committed to putting up energy efficient homes.

He said: "Evidence shows that the people living in new homes, who are the commentators that ultimately matter the most, feel that in the vast majority of cases, builders are getting it right."