24th April 2009
By Neil Merrick
One in five homes built by housing associations with government grants are poorly designed, a survey has revealed.
The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment study rated 21% of homes built since 2004 as poor, with just 18% good or very good. The remainder were judged average.
Cabe was commissioned by the Housing Corporation — since replaced by the Homes and Communities Agency — last year to assess the quality of 218 schemes in its 2004/06 and 2006/08 investment programmes.
According to the Cabe study, published on April 17, poorly designed schemes were difficult for people to find their way around. Many had poor access to local amenities and lacked flexibility to allow them to be adapted.
The majority of the homes assessed were built before 2007, when the corporation adopted the Building for Life standard. But Cabe is still calling on associations and the developers they work with to improve.
In a joint statement, Cabe chief executive Richard Simmons and Sir Bob Kerslake, chief executive of the HCA, promised that public housing would ‘blaze the trail’ for good quality and sustainable design.
‘Too much social housing has not been good enough in recent years,’ they said.
More time should be allowed at the start of the development process to ensure that homes and their immediate surroundings meet the Building for Life standard along with the Code for Sustainable Homes, said the report.
