Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Identikent:
There are few topics more likely to turn normally docile, law-abiding citizens into banner-waving, placardcarrying protesters than the prospect of a housing development in their neighbourhood. But with fewer houses being built than ever is the problem mor
Is Kent becoming more and more homogeneous? Are developers churning out repeated patterns of identikit housing so that it becomes impossible to tell whether you are in Sevenoaks or Suffolk?
In their election manifesto, the Conservatives pledged to build 300,000 new homes each year by the mid-2020s. They haven’t quite got there yet.
In 2019, the last pre-covid year, a total of 213,770 new homes were built.
Historically that is low; the highest year for new housing was 54 years ago in 1968 when 425,830 new homes were completed.
In fact, in every one of the 20 years from 1960 to 1979, Britain built more homes each year than the 300,000 target which the government is now struggling to achieve.
Many councils are trying to address this shortfall in amenities by proposing the creation of garden villages at Lidsing, Capel, Ebbsfleet, Chilmington Green and Lenham Heath for example.
They argue it is only by amalgamating large numbers of housing a new ‘community’ can be built with the requisite village hall, school, new road links etc.
It is often such garden sites that seem to incite the greatest amount of opposition.
But it could be that the whole focus on housing figures is wrong.
People would be far more willing to accept development if only the homes were nicer.
That at least is the view of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).
It said: “The focus of the current planning system is skewed in favour of increasing housing numbers at the expense of good design and creating sustainable, liveable places.
“This has inevitably perpetuated an environment of resentment towards development among local residents.
“Communities feeling locked out of the decision-making process is symptomatic of the wider problem where development comes forward only in the context of numbers of homes supplied.
“We should be measuring quality and outcomes as well as quantity.”
The Bartlett School of Planning based at University College London went further.
After carrying out a national audit of 140 housing developments built across England since 2007, it concluded that new housing design was overwhelmingly ‘mediocre’ or ‘poor.’
Professor Matthew Carmona, who led the research, argued that better design would actually reduce local opposition and speed up the provision of new homes.
He said: “Research has consistently shown that high
quality design makes new residential developments more acceptable to local communities and delivers huge social, economic and environmental value to all.”
One of the study’s observations was that “poor housing developments scored especially badly in terms of character and sense of place, with architecture that does not respond to the context in which it is located.”
So are new housing developments too “samey”?
If shown an old photograph of a terraced crescent of fivestorey Victorian boarding houses, another of white, weather-boarded homes and a third of small terraced homes with no front gardens you would be able to tell if you were looking at the sea-front at
Folkestone, a Wealden village or the cloister district of the city of Canterbury.
Can the same be said if you looked at photographs of new housing developments in these districts?
It must surely be easier (read cheaper) for housing developers to work from a few stock template designs rather than start from scratch at each new location.
The Americans have an expression for it - they call it cookie-cutter housing. The image being one of identical houses stamped out like biscuits from a sheet of rolled dough.
Naturally, housing developers deny that is the case.
The KM Group invited a range of Kent developers to
Readers must judge whether these Fernham Homes properties suit a location “drenched in British history” submit photos of their recent housing developments.
We stressed we were particularly interested in developments that used local materials or designs in some way.
Ten firms replied from which we have picked a few to highlight.
Fernham Homes’ Hillside Park development of 13 homes at Linton, near Maidstone sits in an area used for quarrying ragstone since the Roman times and the company has designed the houses with a mix of ragstone, brick and render work.
Clarendon Homes’ three developments at Weavers Park in Headcorn, Churchfields in Harrietsham and Woodside Court in Maidstone each provide more than just a nod to traditional materials or character of the area.
Redrow is in the process of building 140 apartments on the former industrial site of the Whatman paper mill in Maidstone and is retaining the mill’s Grade Ii-listed chimney and its Rag Room, which was a condition of its gaining planning permission.
Bellway has just won permission to build on the 11-acre Eastern Quarry site
at Ebbsfleet to be known as Whitecliffe, with the firm’s land director Dan Merriman promising to ‘reflect the unique architectural character of the local area and draw on its rich farming and industrial heritage’.
“Terraced and semi-detached houses will be built using yellow brick inspired by the Swanscombe workers’ cottages, while the detached houses will be built with red brick in the farmhouse style in a nod to the neighbouring
Alkerden Farm,” he added.
David Wilson Homes’ two recent developments, Perry Court at Brogdale Road in Faversham, and Dickens Gate in Staplehurst have both been built to reflect their orchard or village setting with homes in a ‘local Kentish vernacular’, the firm said.
Hedgers Way in Ashford is the setting for Barratt Homes’ Chilmington Green - Ashford’s first Garden City.
The area will see 5,750 homes built over the next
20 years - plus supporting infrastructure. Barratts says it has designed “striking” town houses, amid a wealth of green space.
The company is also building Aylesham Garden Village, a new development totalling 1,200 homes around the existing village between Canterbury and Dover. Construction is being shared with Persimmon. The development brief promises: “Each home planned has been designed with facades in keeping with the character of the village.”
Clarus Homes’ 24 oneand two-bed apartments in Maidstone Road at Paddock Wood are called The Hop Pocket to reflect the town’s long-standing connections to the hopping industry, though the design is distinctly modern.
Finally, Sunningdale House Developments’ award-winning development of luxury apartments called Sandgate Pavilions, at Sandgate near Folkestone, offer a futuristic style with enough glazing to resemble a Californian beach pad. The apartments with their sea-views and balconies are certainly distinctive, so too are the prices, which range from £665,000 to £1.75m.
Based on 16 submitted examples, I would say the jury is still out. Several of the developments had a unique and distinctive style. Others seem fairly interchangeable.
Where the developers scored less well in my opinion was in reflecting traditional local building styles, though clearly some had tried.
RIBA has argued that all matters relevant to “placemaking,” - how a development fits in with its environment - should be considered from the outset and subjected to a democratic or co-design process.
Its solution is the use of Local Design Codes, where beauty, not quantity, is the key consideration.
A few years ago, the government created the Building Better Building Beautiful Commission.
It has since been disbanded but in its final report in January 2021, it said the best chance of convincing people of the need to increase house-building was to build developments that people would like: “beautiful buildings gather support; blank ubiquity garners protest and resentment.”
Professor Carmona believes: “Planning authorities are under pressure to deliver new homes and are therefore prioritising numbers in the short-term over the longterm negative impacts of bad design. At the same time, house builders have little incentive to improve when their designs continue to pass through the planning system.”
The design audit also suggests the use of proactive design codes – with local parameters established for each site.
And it seems that finally the government is listening.
Stuart Andrew MP is the new Government Housing Minister – the 20th person to have held the post in the past 25 years, which perhaps indicates one part of the problem.
As Mr Andrew was only appointed in February, it seems unlikely he can have initiated the new thinking, which must have begun with his predecessor Christopher Pincher, but nevertheless Mr Andrew announced in March £3m in grants for its new Local Design Code Pathfinder Programme.
Twenty-one local authorities and four residents’ organisations across the UK will receive grants ranging from £30,000 to £160,000 to help them draw up a Local Design Code.
Medway Council is one of the 25. It will get £120,000 to “help residents set their own standards for design in their local area, which could include architecture, building materials, standards for sustainability and street layout.”
The code will be aimed specifically at Chatham.
Mr Andrew said: “We want to give people in Medway power over what their neighbourhoods look like and to make sure all new developments enhance their surroundings and preserve local character and identity.”
If successful, the design codes produced will be used as examples, when the scheme is later rolled out across the country, hopefully banishing cookie-cutting back to the kitchen.