Search results

This paper discusses the crime‐specific problems that may arise with regard to potential solutions that have been provided to achieve the projected housing need of 4.4 million new homes by 2016. The development of “brownfield” land in this regard is briefly discussed and the urban‐rural housing dilemma raised. Central to this paper is the issue of the criminogenic capacity of new‐built housing designs, which, it is contended, has been largely ignored. The Social Exclusion Unit’s report entitled Bringing Britain Together: A National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal has highlighted the problems experienced on 3,000 run‐down neighbourhoods in England and it is posited that lessons can be learned by analysing why such designs failed. In recent years, the concept of “sustainable development” has been adopted enthusiastically by town planners, surveyors, urban designers and environmentalists. However, the social malaise of crime has been largely ignored within this concept. The creation of “unsustainable” housing estates such as those discussed in the above report, are testament to the potential problems that can arise in the design, siting and tenant‐allocation policies that may be applied to new‐build housing developments. Oscar Newman’s “defensible space” theory (1973) is discussed, with particular reference to two of his concepts that have not been extensively discussed within criminology, let alone within the echelons of town planning. The “image” and “geographical juxtaposition” of new‐build housing represent important elements to Newman’s theory, which has only been studied in relation to modifications to existing designs. New‐build developments provide the opportunity to evaluate empirically certain designs and contribute towards a broadening of our understanding of the criminogenic capacity of residential housing design.

In this paper, we identify the relationship between (local) housing supply and (local) house price developments, especially in The Netherlands.

We measure the influence of new building on house prices by comparing areas designated for concentrated new building (main Dutch cities) with areas where no large housing projects are developed. On the basis of classical economic theory, if the housing market is functioning as it should, then supply will soon respond to a shock in demand and restore stability in house prices.

For the main Dutch cities, we found that an increase in supply triggers a fall in prices. In other areas the correlation coefficients are more or less zero, which can lead us to conclude that the expansion of the housing stock is market‐compliant.

The housing market is not functioning, as it should: new supplies depend on the complex decisions of the suppliers, thus making it difficult to express statistically the causality between the house price developments and the new supplies.

Most studies suggest that macro data are unable to measure the true dependency between the house prices and the new building and claim at the same time that micro data sets are incomplete. Also our research was hampered by a shortage of usable data.

New building can push up the value of the surrounding housing because it is associated with a qualitatively better housing stock. We conclude that in regions where new building has been concentrated in designated areas, the relationship between housing production and price development is inverse.

The purpose of this paper is to present an analytical summary of UK housing policies. It aims to evaluate UK government's housing policies, before and after the publication of the Barker Review, to tackle affordability issues in the owner‐occupied sector. It examines the extent to which housing policy contributes to or alleviates the problem of the affordability of owner‐occupied housing.

This paper evaluates the impact of UK government housing policies since 2000 on housing affordability by analysing their impact on the dynamics of housing demand and supply.

The Barker Review, which applied simple economic ideas and techniques in analysing the owner‐occupied UK housing market, argued that increases in new housing supply would help to improve housing affordability. The second Barker Review suggested that changes to the planning system were needed in order not only to increase new housing supply, but to make housing supply more sensitive to changing demands. The Barker Reviews brought about a major re‐think in government policy towards housing, particularly relating to new build and the planning system. However, the heavy reliance on the private sector to provide additional housing has reduced the effectiveness of policy changes. In addition, the adoption by the government of “demand‐side” housing policies has done little to negate the volatility of UK house prices or to raise the overall affordability of owner‐occupied housing.

This paper reflects on government failures in UK housing policy in addressing the affordability of owner‐occupied housing. The findings will be of interest to policy makers and housing researchers.

Taking its cue from the UK government's declaration that every new home should be ‘zero-carbon’ by 2016, this paper explores how close a flexible, prototype-housing model might come to meeting this target (accepting that there is currently some ambiguity between the respective official ‘zero-carbon’ definitions regarding off-site renewable supply). The prime aim is to design economically (affordable by housing associations) to the European ‘passive house’ standard of no more than 15 kWh/m2 for space heating and a maximum total consumption of 70 kWh/m2 adding in hot water and electricity. The model also prioritizes generous access to sunlight and daylight, as well as realistic levels of air change in a low-volume, intensively occupied scenario. Associated aims are: a) to meet thermal loads without use of fossil fuels such as gas or oil; and b) to employ architecturally integrated active solar thermal and electrical arrays to respectively meet at least one third of the water heating and electrical loads. Micro-wind generation is excluded from the study as too site-dependent. A subsidiary agenda is to achieve a flexible plan in terms of orientation and access, and to provide utility facilities that support the environmental strategy (e.g. drying clothes without compromising energy use or air quality). The paper goes on to address equivalent prospects for retrofit, briefly discusses institutional and other barriers to achievement, and muses on how much of the balance of the electrical demand can be met renewably in Scotland in the near future.

To apply path dependence theory and analysis to the regulatory framework for private-rented housing in Britain, especially affecting houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) and addressing the increased involvement of the planning system through planning use classes, permitted development rights and Article 4 directions.

This paper identifies critical junctures in primary and secondary legislation for housing and planning and analyses individual local authority responses in planning policy documents and tribunal decisions.

The rise of the HMO reflects wider changes in society leading to new forms of household and inter-generational inequalities. Local authority discretion and locked-in responses have resulted in different regulatory regimes for housing and planning, recently favouring existing communities of owner-occupiers against HMO residents, seen as transient populations not committed to the neighbourhood.

Potential for further research on demographics and household formation, and on reviewing planning and appeal decisions involving HMOs.

The research is apparently the first specifically addressing planning regulation of the HMO from a path dependence perspective, in the context of planning protection of the single-family dwelling house and marginalization of other forms of housing.

Climate change means that buildings must greatly reduce their energy consumption. It is however paradoxical that climate mitigation in Denmark has created negative energy and indoor climate problems in housing that may be made worse by climate change. A literature review has been carried out of housing schemes where climate mitigation was sought through reduced space heating demand, and it is shown that extensive problems with overheating exist. A theoretical study of regulative and design strategies for climate mitigation in new build housing has therefore been carried out, and it is shown that reducing space heating with high levels of thermal insulation and passive solar energy results in overheating and a growing demand for cooling.

Climate change is expected to reduce space heating and increase cooling demand in housing. An analysis of new build housing using passive solar energy as a climate mitigation strategy has therefore been carried out in relation to future climate change scenarios. It is shown that severe indoor comfort problems can occur, questioning the relevance of passive solar energy as a climate mitigation strategy. In conclusion, a theoretical study of the interplay between climate adaptation and mitigation strategies is carried out, with a cross-disciplinary focus on users, passive design and active technologies. It is shown that the cumulative use of these strategies can create an adaptation buffer, thus eliminating problems with overheating and reducing energy consumption. New build housing should therefore be designed in relation to both current and future climate scenarios to show that the climate mitigation strategies ensure climate adaptation.

Maximising the benefit of learning from defects is regarded by UK housing associations (HAs) as a key opportunity to meet their challenges of building more homes with reduced government funding and rent incomes. Despite learning from defects being a frequent recommendation to reduce defects in the construction literature, there is scarce empirical evidence into how HAs actually learn from defects. The purpose of this paper is to better understand how HAs learn from past defects and induce change to reduce defects.

Guided by organisational learning (OL) as the theoretical lens, a 21-month action research (AR) project explored one HA’s defects management and learning processes.

OL has the potential to reduce defects in new homes but is a secondary task which is reliant on a defects management team analysing defect data to identify priority areas. As such, learning from defects can be reduced due to peaks in workload if data analysis is a manual process. Furthermore, a dual learning approach plays a significant role for HA’s learning consisting of designing out defects (codification) supported by networking (personalisation) to tackle issues of workmanship on site and those defects that cannot be designed out.

This study demonstrates OL has the potential to reduce defects in new homes but is a secondary task in HA’s practice; and highlights the practical challenges of academia and industry co-production in AR in construction.

Construction, demolition, refurbishment and material supply processes are responsible for a significant amount of waste; whilst estimates vary, the UK Government uses the figure of 70 million tonnes. The construction industry accounts for some 17 per cent of the total waste produced in the UK. How much of this is produced by refurbishment activities in the registered social landlord (RSL) sector is unknown, but there is little doubt that refurbishing housing offers opportunities for significant waste generation. RSL housing is maintained and refurbished by a number of triggers when a dwelling is left vacant after a tenant departs. Such a property is known as a “Void”. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the type of maintenance works undertaken to properties in the RSL sector and consider the potential for the application of lean thinking to those maintenance processes.

A literature review and interviews with RSL maintenance personnel are used to inform the discussion contained in this paper.

The main conclusion from this paper is that properties located in estates and built post‐1980 are those most likely to benefit from lean principles.

The RSL sector is changing from pseudo local government concerns to “social businesses”; therefore, the opportunity to apply lessons learned in other business sectors to the maintenance of RSLs' main assets (i.e. their properties) should be of interest to the sector as a whole.

Despite the number of quality management procedures being currently applied, construction defects in the domestic sector are acknowledged to contribute to the energy performance gap of buildings. This paper investigates the limitations and challenges to the implementation of project quality plans (PQPs) and their impact on the achievement of expected thermal performance in the UK social housing projects.

A qualitative approach, guided by grounded theory, was used in this research. This methodology provided the structure for systematic data analysis iterations, enabling cross-case analysis. An analytic induction process was designed to seek the explanation of the targeted phenomenon and required data collection until no new ideas and concepts emerged from the research iterations. This study collected data from five social housing projects through interviews, site observations and project documentation.

Multiple limitations and challenges were identified in the implementation of PQP to deliver thermal efficient social housing. Generally, there is the need for more objective quality compliance procedures based on required evidence. When investigating the root of the challenges, it was concluded that the adoption of statutory approval as the main quality compliance procedure led to the dilution of the responsibility for prevention and appraisal of defects that compromised the effectiveness of PQP devised by housing associations (HA) and contractors.

This study identifies the shortcomings of PQP in addressing quality issues with potential to undermine the thermal performance of social housing projects. The findings could be used by HA, contractors and policymakers as steppingstones to improve the energy efficiency in the domestic sector.

This article explores the housing experiences and aspirations of young disabled people in Scotland. Those who leave the family home in crisis experience several housing moves before settling; those who leave in a planned way tend to stay in their first home. Young people aspiring to leave the parental home are limited to a social housing tenancy, as a result partly of their economic circumstance and partly of a lack of knowledge of other choices. Social care professionals need to pay closer attention to assessing housing aspirations and helping young people consider all options. This should be an ongoing aspect of supporting all young disabled people.