Lendlease London project on hold after “social cleansing” claims

Demo against the Haringey Development Vehicle project

A £4 billion urban renewal project in north London that was to be developed by Lendlease is now unlikely to proceed following fierce political opposition.

NOTE: article first appeared on The Fifth Estate on 13 February

The developer has fallen victim to a sea-change in attitudes to private sector involvement in urban renewal projects, which has come to the fore amidst a growing affordable housing crisis in London.

The project, called the Haringey Development Vehicle (HDV), was a 20-year joint venture between Lendlease and Haringey Council that would have led to the creation of 6400 homes built at a value of £4 billion. Forty per cent of homes were set to be “affordable”.

But the project has become stuck at the centre of an ideological war about the delivery of public housing, which this month led to the resignation of Haringey council leader Claire Kober, who had campaigned to push through the Lendlease deal.

Claire Kober, the former leader of Haringey Council

Kober is a Labour leader whose laudable desire to improve living conditions in some of the capital’s worst estates led her to make a deal with Lendlease. The deal, though, was criticised by tenants and activists for encouraging “social cleansing” – because many occupants of homes to have been demolished for the project could not have been rehoused in the borough following completion of the new scheme.

Kober’s dilemma, which faces all councils in London and elsewhere, was how to finance such massive regeneration schemes when central government does not offer sufficient support and land prices are so high.

Councils usually turn to the private sector, but the trade-off is typically the loss of publicly owned land to the private sector and the loss of homes for social rent.

The loss of affordable housing

According to figures on London’s delivery stream of housing regeneration schemes obtained by the London Green Party in early 2016, were all projects to go ahead, it would lead to a net loss of 7326 social rental homes – those with the lowest rent levels.

They are disappearing in favour of so-called “affordable rent” homes, where tenants can be charged up to 80 per cent of private market rents. Even these are disappearing: the Greens calculated a net loss of 1389 across London.

“With a few exceptions, estate regeneration has been a complete disaster in London and has made our housing crisis worse,” Green’s London Assembly member Darren Johnson said.

Now this historical trend, led by private developers, is being challenged.

The tide is turning

Since the collapse of government-contracted services outsourcing giant Carillion and the protests in Haringey, the tide is turning against public-private partnerships.

On 18 December 2017 London mayor Sadiq Khan refused permission for an estate regeneration in the borough of Barnet that would have seen the loss of 257 social homes.

Khan said: “This is a classic example of how not to do estate regeneration. I fully support improving social housing on this estate and across the capital, but this scheme falls far short of what I expect of London boroughs.”

The developer in this case was a housing association, Genesis, who is also the developer and resident social landlord for the scheme.

“As I have made clear in my new London Plan, estate regeneration projects must replace homes which are based on social rent levels on a like-for-like basis,” Khan said.

“Londoners so urgently need more high-quality housing, not less, which makes this scheme completely unacceptable in its current form.”

The mayor’s newly-launched draft London Plan (published in December) requires applications for housing estate renewal to include the replacement of existing affordable housing on a like-for-like basis, and no net loss of existing social housing.

It envisages the following split of affordable homes being applied to new development:

• a minimum of 30 per cent low-cost rented homes, allocated according to need and for Londoners on low incomes (social rent/London affordable rent)
• a minimum of 30 per cent intermediate products that meet the definition of affordable housing, including London living rent and London shared ownership
• 40 per cent to be determined by the relevant borough based on identified need, provided they are consistent with the definition of affordable housing.

If a development supplies this it is eligible for being “fast-tracked” through the planning process.

A London-wide strategic housing market assessment (cited in the plan) has identified a need for 66,000 additional homes a year, of which 43,500 should be affordable.

Balloting residents

Khan has also announced plans to force councils to ballot residents on housing estates earmarked for demolition as a condition of obtaining funding for the work from City Hall. He said the broad support of tenants, leaseholders and freeholders living on estates is a necessary requirement.

There are estimated to be about 25 estate regeneration schemes underway at any one time in London involving funding from City Hall, and under the mayor’s plans all such schemes would, in future, require a successful ballot outcome before their funding could be approved.

Where demolition is proposed, the mayor wants to see councils and housing associations follow his “Better Homes for Local People” principles by providing:

• an increase in affordable homes – and, as a minimum, no loss of social housing
• full rights to remain or return for tenants
• a fair deal for leaseholders and freeholders

“We need more social housing in London, not less, which is why I will use all my powers to make sure that any plans for estate regeneration protect existing social housing and take every opportunity to build more,” Khan said.

“My guide sets out how I will use my investment powers in a way they have never been used before, by requiring resident support through a ballot for new plans involving demolition where City Hall funding is involved.

“I want to make sure people living on social housing estates, who have the greatest interest in their future, are at the heart of any decisions from the outset.”

Living Rent scheme

This week Khan also announced the London Living Rent scheme, an intermediate affordable housing product with low rents that vary ward by ward across London. Eligibility is restricted to households that are currently renting, with a maximum income of £60,000 and who are not currently able to purchase a home in the local area.

It will help middle-income earners who would otherwise typically be struggling in the private rental sector to save for a deposit by offering rents based on a third of local average wages and makes home ownership in the capital a realistic prospect for the many Londoners who feel priced out of the property market.

Rents in the first such project, The Sugar Works at Royal Wharf, Silvertown, are up to 50 per cent cheaper than local market rents, and range from £730 a month for a studio flat and £821 a month for a one-bed flat up to £1094 a month for a four-bedroom property. They are provided by housing association London & Quadrant.

Meanwhile, back in Haringey, residents of the sub-standard homes Kober wanted to replace, where sometimes three generations are living in the same crowded conditions, face an uncertain future until after local elections in May, where a new administration will be challenged with finding a more equitable solution to residents’ plight.

David Thorpe’s two new books are Passive Solar Architecture Pocket Reference and Solar Energy Pocket Reference. He’s also the author of Energy Management in Building and Sustainable Home Refurbishment.

Fact-checking Scott Morrison on affordable housing

The Australian Treasurer Scott Morrison has been seeking solutions to the problem of affordable housing in London. So let’s do some fact-checking on his position.

Australian Treasurer Scott Morrison 

Note: This post first appeared last week on The Fifth Estate.

Australia’s housing crisis

First – the scale of the problem: the thirteenth annual international house price survey by Demographia recently ranked Sydney’s home prices behind only Hong Kong, ahead of London and New York. It concluded:

“Hong Kong is the least affordable, with a Median Multiple of 18.1, down from 19.0 last year. Sydney is again second, at 12.2 (the same Median Multiple as last year). Vancouver is third least affordable, at 11.8, where house prices rose the equivalent of a full year’s household income in only a year. Auckland is fourth least affordable, at 10.0 and San Jose has a Median Multiple of 9.6.”

Whether or not you believe these exact statistics, there is no doubt that there is a supply crisis.

And, as with London, while the obvious solution may be to build more homes, the important shorter-term questions need answering of who owns the homes – occupiers or investors – and whether they are “affordable” or premium. The longer-term solution is: who builds them?

In a tight market, the more homes are owned by investors, the fewer can be owned by occupiers. This simple arithmetic is at the heart of the debate raging in Sydney, which Scott Morrison continues to dodge by refusing to admit that ending negative gearing might be a solution.

Negative gearing

Negative gearing allows property investors who make a loss to reduce the tax they pay on other income. According to ABC there are over two million landlords in Australia, over 60 per cent of whom claimed they made a loss (averaging about $10,000) in 2013-14, and so benefited from this.

Ending negative gearing – critics like Morrison’s own Liberal Party colleagues say – would reduce the incentive for investors to buy properties, easing the supply.

The Capital Gains Tax discount has also been blamed for the housing crisis. This was introduced by the Howard Government and generally results in half the profits from the sale of an investment property escaping tax.

Since being introduced in 1999 buying property as investment has increased substantially.

Whom does negative gearing benefit? Research by the Grattan Institute has revealed that the top 10 per cent of income earners, before negative gearing, get almost half the benefits.

The research body has dispelled the myths propounded by the pro-negative gearing lobby here and here.

The property industry argues that tax incentives for investment housing encourage more homes to be built. But more than 93% of property lending is for existing housing.

The Labor Party has proposed restricting negative gearing to new homes from July 2017, and halving the CGT discount to 25 per cent.

Speaking in London, Mr Morrison said this would not work and that changing negative gearing would make it harder to save for a house, because it would put rents up.

Fact-checking Morrison

Is this true?

No. In fact the opposite is true. While rents rose a little in Sydney and Perth when the Hawke government restricted negative gearing in 1985 they were stable in Melbourne and fell in Adelaide and Brisbane.

The Grattan Institute puts the rise in Sydney and Perth down to population growth and insufficient residential construction due to high borrowing rates and competition from the stock market for funds.

This week in London, Morrison was also quoted as saying: “What’s interesting in the UK is they’ve never had negative gearing. Yet they have the same and worse affordability problems than Australia has.”

That’s not quite true either, because landlords have had other kinds of tax relief. These were curbed in 2015 by the British government, with the then Chancellor George Osborne saying they gave investors buying homes to let a “huge advantage in the market” over people buying homes to occupy themselves.

Morrison also said on Sunday: “They have an even bigger problem than we do here, people pay more of their income in rents there, and they pay more of their incomes on their mortgages than they do in Australia”.

Is this true? According to the Resolution Foundation British high-earners with mortgages pay 20 per cent of their income toward their mortgage, while low-earners pay 28 per cent – and those on benefits are losing more than half their income. (These figures are a year old.)

In Australia, the most recent official data is even older – from 2013-14 – and doesn’t distinguish between high and low earners. It records that on average home owners spent 16% of their gross weekly income on their mortgage (down from 18% in 2011–12), while the figure for renters was 20%.

So Morrison may be right.

How do other countries compare in terms of housing supply and demand? According to the ANZ Bank Australia currently lacks around a quarter of a million homes, or 2.6% of its current housing stock (9.6 million). In the UK, house building is at around half the rate it should be.

In the social sector, there is a severe shortfall. The figure below compares the indexed number of households on social housing waiting lists, the number of vacant dwellings and the social housing shortfall as a percentage of the total social housing stock, from 2010 to 2015 in England alone:

England is not therefore exactly a success story wen it comes to housing. Does this make you wonder if Morrison might be looking for a solution to his problem in the wrong place?

What policies might work better?

In a paper published this month in the journal Housing Studies, the authors, from the universities of Adelaide and South Australia, conclude that “Australian governments need to adopt more effective housing policies if they are to meet the needs of the 700 000 to 1 million households who live in unaffordable housing”.

No surprise there. But what should they be? Morrison favours social bonds as a way of letting investors buy into the provision of affordable housing.

Does this work? In the UK most social housing is provided by housing associations which have charitable status. Most of these do issue bonds to raise finance. Here is a link to a list of the current issues and their returns.

Yet despite this, social renting is in long term decline compared to private renting, according to official statistics. And in the private sector, rents are 50% higher: private renters spend a greater share of their income on housing (30 per cent) than mortgage owners (23 per cent) or social renters (20 per cent) according to the Resolution Foundation.

Bonds may be part of the answer. But it’s more complicated than that.

The Joseph Rowntree Trust in the UK specialises in research into inequality and poverty, including housing and affordability. In 2013 it conducted a major study into how to finance the supply of new affordable housing which Morrison would do well to read.

Analysing innovative policies from the UK and abroad that help to increase the supply of below-market-price housing:

1. It found that a general shift upmarket, lowering subsidies and trying to encourage affordable rather than social housing doesn’t work: it results in higher rents and more limited security of tenure.
2. It cautioned against the use of state-backed guarantees in a climate of low interest rates.
3. And it came out in favour of competition among providers (both for profit and non-profit) because it encourages efficiency and innovation and lowers subsidy costs.

What else works?

Like Morrison, the left-wing think tank the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) (Hull and Cooke, 2012) supports the idea of local authority pension funds investing in housing newbuilds – but unlike Morrison it also supports grants for new home buyers.

But probably the most comprehensive review ever of different funding mechanisms, by the Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research (CCHPR) Funding future homes: an evidence base, found that no one approach wins out. Instead, all the models have strengths and weaknesses.

It also cautioned against importing solutions from one place into another, saying that “any serious cross-national application of innovative models needs to be placed into a suitable context”.

The Rowntree Trust also agrees that you can’t just take a single policy from one country and apply it in another – because conditions are so different.

Morrison therefore needs to take great care if he wants to transplant a policy from the UK to Sydney.

If there is any other single unanimous conclusion it is that the CCHPR and the Rowntree Trust both also feel that the local government level is the one best suited for identifying and driving the most appropriate mechanisms to deliver affordable housing.

“Local fiscal incentives and local institutional structures for mobilising savings or capital set against the local regulatory context for affordable and social housing are important general success factors”, says the CCHPR’s report on page 32.

Perhaps Morrison would have been better off staying at home after all.

PS: Although Morrison himself does not declare any homes he owns for renting out, the Coalition’s MPs own collectively 331, more than double the Labor Party MPs. Turnbull himself owns 4. I wonder how many of them benefit from negative gearing?

David Thorpe is the author of a number of books on energy and sustainability. See my website here.

Californian 'one planet' development planned around urban farm reaps first harvest

Homes and farmland at The Cannery.

The first American housing project that puts an urban farm intentionally in the centre of a community has begun to win awards and serve its first harvest. It is billed as California's first farm-to-table new home community and aims to become a state-of-the-art sustainable urban farming showcase.

The development covers 7.4 acres, of which the farm is 5.5 acres, including 4 acres of farmland with organic vegetables, poultry and orchard fruit.

Apartments at The Cannery.

Called The Cannery, it is an innovative mixed-use community with 583 residences on the site of a former tomato cannery in Davis, on the outskirts of Sacramento near San Francisco. Retail shops, a recreation centre, outdoor amphitheatres and miles of trails are also included in the plan.

Plan of The Cannery, on the outskirts of Sacramento near San Francisco

The homes are diverse, for all generations, lifestyles and size of family. The mixed housing includes accommodation to buy and rent, detached and attached, both high end and affordable homes. Furthermore, multigenerational life space designs include guesthouses and private quarters. Every single home is within 300 feet of a park or trail/cycle path.

Housing and cycle track at The Cannery.

The first crop from the urban farm is being harvested this month, sold through a farm shop that is open twice a week. Mary Kimball, the executive director of the Centre for Land-Based Learning, the organisation managing the urban farm, says, "We have three beginning farmers, all graduates of the California Farm Academy, who have started new farming businesses and are now providing the residents of the town very local produce."

Urban farmers market at The Cannery.

“To see The Cannery today becoming a viable farm community is not only personally exciting for me, but also one of the most fulfilling accomplishments in my career,” said Craig McNamara, founder of the Center for Land-Based Learning (CLBL). “The Cannery Urban Farm honours what I believe in most: connecting eaters directly to food.”

Training

The project includes a teaching academy for sustainable farming. The Centre launched the California Farm Academy five years ago to help those wanting to break into a career in agriculture.

“These first farm harvests at The Cannery signify about 6 ½ years of meetings, discussions, flexibility and creativity,” said Kimball. “From the earliest planning stages, there was active collaboration between the builder (The New Home Company), the City of Davis and the CLBL. It’s been a good example of public-private-non-profit partnership.”

There are several “agrihoods” around the nation, such as Agritopia in Phoenix and Serenbe in Atlanta, she says, but they tend to have different arrangements with the farmers. “As far as we can tell, The Cannery is the nation’s first farm-to-table housing development focused on beginning farmers.”

The Academy offers a full range of training and internship opportunities, focussing not just on growing but on conservation and included among the topics are access to land and equipment, the most expensive barriers to starting a farming business.

"The cost of land is really expensive," says Hope Sippola, one of the farmers. "The only way to make it affordable is to lease land through the centre."

This is one example of how the Centre partners with public and private landowners to provide low-cost lease opportunities. Weekly vegetable subscriptions via veggie boxes – Community Supported Agriculture – are being offered.

Recognition

Large house with garden and farmland at The Cannery.

The Cannery is managed by New Home Company, which was given a Grand Award for "Residential Community of the Year Master Plan" for its work at the end of June at the climax of the building industry's leading West Coast American conference, trade show, PCBC (Pacific Coast Builders Conference), the Gold Nugget Awards.

“We have worked extremely hard over the past several years to get to this moment,” said Kevin Carson, Northern California President for New Home. “The Cannery is unlike any other community in the western United States and it has truly been a rewarding experience to contribute to such an innovative concept." He was also elected to the Hall of Fame at the Gold Nugget Awards.

The New Home team also shared the Residential Community of the year honour with design consultants who helped shape the vision for The Cannery.

The site also reduces reliance on cars by supporting bicycles and walking, limits energy consumption with highly energy efficient buildings, and features renewable energy production: a 1.5 kV photovoltaic solar system and electric vehicle charging come with every home. Residents can also upgrade to net zero living.

Parks and paths connect neighbours everywhere they turn.

The builders

The homes themselves are built by Shea Homes, a large West Coast developer founded in 1881. The New Home Company developed the Urban Farm’s infrastructure, including a new agricultural well and conveyance system on the farm. The orchard land and infrastructure are being donated to the City of Davis, which is leasing it inexpensively to CLBL.

The Urban Farm is managed by CLBL, which is leasing the farmland to three graduates of its California Farm Academy Program. CLBL’s training program and farm business incubator teaches and mentors new farmers in agricultural production, business planning and marketing.

CLBL is partnering with University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources (UCANR) to develop community services and educational programs.

Urban farming in America

Sacramento Region has had a push in recent years to establish itself as America’s Farm-to-Fork Capital.

In August, Sacramento's Elk Grove City Council expressed unanimous support for a plan to introduce urban, commercial farming within non-agriculturally zoned areas in the city. “Urban farming” is described in a city report as “a type of urban agriculture that entails the production of produce that is grown in an urban environment, and primarily for sale or consumed by someone other than the grower.”

If the idea becomes a reality in Elk Grove, similar farms could be operated on currently vacant, unimproved, or otherwise underdeveloped parcels in the city. They can be for-profit, non-profit, and/or social enterprises. Their products can be sold at such places as on-site stands, farmers’ markets, grocery stores and restaurants. These farms can also contribute to food banks.

Urban farms are already located in many American cities, including Chicago, Baltimore, New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Sacramento and West Sacramento. They are typically found on properties ranging in size from one acre to three acres.

Cities need to do much more to feed themselves and reduce the environmental impact of farming, including food miles. Planning new communities around urban farms also reconnects city dwellers to nature, and the process of growing food, for which all too often they are distant and alienated.

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David Thorpe is the author of:

• Best Practices and Case Studies for Industrial Energy Efficiency Improvement (with Oung, K. and Fawkes, S. UNEP, 2016)
• A London Conversation: Business Briefing on Green Bonds (The Fifth Estate, 2015)
• The One Planet Life (Introduction: Jane Davidson. Routledge, 2015)
• Earthscan Expert Guide to Energy Management in Buildings (Earthscan, 2013)
• Earthscan Expert Guide to Energy Management in Industry (Earthscan, 2013)
• Earthscan Expert Guide to Solar Technology (Earthscan, 2011)
• Earthscan Expert Guide to Sustainable Home Refurbishment (Earthscan, 2010)

Why PPP cannot solve the affordable housing problem

It is now well established that, in an age where increasingly more people live in cities than in rural areas, squeezing in a higher population per square mile is preferable to urban sprawl for a number of reasons. This principle is highlighted by the second of a series of new reports from the Urban Land Institute (ULI) and TH Real Estate that was launched last week in London and San Francisco.

The Density Dividend: Solutions for Growing and Shrinking Cities takes a look at six European cities (Birmingham, Dresden, Istanbul, London, Stockholm and Warsaw) that are at various stages of population change – growth and decline – and concludes that they have little choice but to densify or face being increasingly inflexible, unattractive to live in, unsustainable, and ultimately uncompetitive.

It tries to establish what does and doesn’t work in making densification successful and popular.

But are the solutions the report offers sufficient to ensure success?

Cities vary in their attitudes. Some are new to urban redevelopment or lack the tools to deliver density in an integrated way, relying instead on ad-hoc initiatives and innovation.

The report identifies three distinct elements that need to be in place to ensure synchronised, sustained progress towards better, higher density:

1.  A strong story and vision for future evolution that can galvanise attention and support from residents, workers and investors alike together with a robust growth plan that provides a guiding framework within which development can proceed.
2. A prioritised tactical plan about where and how to densify, targeting areas for a critical mass of redevelopment matched to durable systems of investment and improved legal, land-use, and asset management tools.
3. Foster a demand for new urban space and focus on the positive psychology of vibrant urban lifestyles and locations.

The report comes from the Urban Land Institute (ULI), whose 34,000 members represent all aspects of land use and development disciplines, and TH Real Estate, an investment management company specialising in real estate equity and debt investing worldwide, owned by TIAA-CREF, a US financial services company. Once you realise that it has assets of around £557bn you begin to realise where this report is coming from.

The report advocates public private partnerships (PPP) as a way of solving investment problems. These kind of partnerships are favoured by both sides (developers / investors, and local authorities) because they appear to be a way of sharing the investment burden of creating new housing, particularly affordable housing, the need for which is desperate in most cities.

But is this true?

The experience of London

The picture that the report paints of London, however, is at variance with the reality. It is not a London which I recognise. Since I know this city better than the others, a comparison of the painted picture with what I know serves as a way of evaluating the authoritativeness of this report as a whole.

Of London, the report commends The London Plan which it says:

"has allowed London to be strategic about its re-urbanisation over the past 15 years. It supports compact city development and rules out sprawl as a means of accommodating the extra 300-400,000 homes and 500,000+ jobs forecast as needed by 2030. The plan is distinctive for identifying over 40 ‘opportunity areas’ for mixed-use intensification, mainly brownfield sites around transport interchanges. It also provides an overarching vision which allows large-scale projects such as Crossrail and the Olympics to be organised and delivered with confidence."

Some of this is true. Research from around the world about livability and sustainability in cities stresses the importance of development around public transport hubs and of making maximum use of existing brownfield sites. Wherever public transport hubs are sited, whether they are bus rapid transit, Metro or rail, real estate values go up, an increase in density occurs, and so does the level of economic activity and satisfaction of inhabitants.

Crossrail is an incredible achievement, one of the most impressive contemporary engineering projects in the world, and it will be vital to target density can improvements around the new stations. Istanbul is an example of a city that has increased population density without planning and without improvements in transport infrastructure with disastrous results.

But improvements do need to be made with regard to the needs of local people. They must be brought on side and listened to, which did not happen in the case of the Olympics site in London 2012. As the focus was on the timescale and the need to create a world-class sporting destination, local needs were bulldozed out of the way.

Everything depends for its success in urban development on the provision of housing that satisfies real needs. This is true no matter where you are in the world.

Part of the London Plan is The London Housing Strategy, which has an aim of delivering over 42,000 new homes a year in the city by creating a ‘Housing Bank'. This is supposed to help subsidise rent for households looking to buy their home, give bespoke financial support to speed up house-building on public land, and offer low-cost loans for developers and housing associations.

This is cited in the report as an example of a successful approach.

But is it?

First of all, the Bank doesn't even attempt to meet the actual needs for London's additional housebuilding, estimates of which fall within a range of 50,000-80,000 per year. New homes are in fact well below this level; in 2012-13 there were 21,900. Reports in January suggested that the Bank is likely to miss its target to create 3,000 homes, as documents show developers are planning to build just 106 properties by the 2018 deadline. Its website today talks of support for just 643 homes.

Graduates, young professionals, essential workers in service sectors like health, i.e., the very people that cities need to attract to be competitive and successful, are being priced out of London by the housing market. This is overheated due to a combination of lack of supply and investors from overseas buying up houses which then sit empty. Since 2002, London’s population has increased by 14 per cent, yet housing stock has only increased by 9 per cent during the same period.

The city’s average house price was £450,000 in December 2013, 73% higher than the national average and up 12% in the last year.

According to housing charity Shelter, the four main barriers to housing development in London are the same as for the rest of the country, but made worse by London’s tight administrative boundaries, status as an international property market and lack of fully devolved powers, including those over taxes.

The development market in London has become concentrated into too few firms, and the hurdles to involvement are too high. The price of land is also too high.

The Mayor’s London Housing Strategy itself states that delivering 42,000 per year will be ‘a huge challenge in itself.’

So is PPP the answer to this problem?

In 1980-81 local authorities were responsible for 70% of housing completions in London. Then Margaret Thatcher declared war on local authorities in England and introduced the Right to Buy for council tenants, stopping local councils from reinvesting the proceeds from the sale of their housing stock to tenants in building new homes. So in 2014-15 the equivalent figure was 2%.

Post 1980, new home building in the British capital reached a peak of 24,060 in 2004-05, in comparison to the lowest figures of 10,960 in 1984-85 (data from the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG)). So even the 2004-05 peak is less than half of the more conservative estimates for the need for new homes.

In other words, it was better when councils were allowed greater control of their finances and able to build council homes themselves.

Many of these homes must be affordable, although there is some debate over what this actually means. Nevertheless, according to one definition in 2013-14, just 9,200 affordable new homes were provided in London. 88% of these were new build, and comprised 45% of all new dwellings. The rest were provided by acquisition of existing stock.  This shows just how far behind the need the situation is and why homelessness is such a big problem.

The Housing Bank, to be fair, is meant to solve these problems. Some social housing associations like the Peabody Trust are taking advantage of it. But it is not up to the scale of the challenge.

Jamie Ratcliff, assistant director for programme, policy and services at the Greater London Authority, says the Housing Bank is offering deals at an initial one per cent, "approximately a third of the recent historic record low rate achieved by The Housing Finance Corporation/Affordable Housing Finance with their Government-guaranteed bond". He adds: "There are projects in parts of London where the costs, including decants, leaseholder buybacks and demolition, exceed projected sales values. This at best delays and at worst prevents the development of homes for sale or shared ownership."

The point of accessing funding from the London Housing Bank is to help "cash flow the development, allowing viable homes to be built now and sold in later years, once values have adjusted, ensuring the building of homes now, not vacant sites", he adds.

Yet finance is only one part of the obstacle course facing anyone wanting to tackle this problem. The lid is taken off this by a House of Commons briefing paper published a month ago called "Meeting London’s housing need", which cites many of these barriers.

At the institutional level there are staff and resource shortages in the planning departments, a lack of institutional memory within local authorities and limited partnership working between the many boroughs which make up London. From the point of view of developers there are uncertainty in the planning system, dysfunctional viability procedures, difficulties in land assembly and complex land ownership. The briefing note also acknowledges high land values, density being too low, and land supply constraints.

The solutions suggested include a more strategic outlook across boroughs, redefining the role of the Greater London Authority, modifying compulsory purchase order powers and procedures and introducing more consistent targets for affordable housing. Support also needs to be given to builders and developers to bring more players into the market.

Going back to the Urban Land Institute (ULI) report, it makes little reference to the complexity that is seen on the ground in this type of situation. One of its conclusions is:


"Cities that build an idea and ambition about what they want to become, and which instil this aspiration in their citizens, find it much easier to achieve the behaviour change that is necessary to increase densities of interaction and development."

But the experience of London shows it's not the citizens whose behaviour needs changing.  The required changes are institutional.

Large house builders like Persimmon and The Berkeley Group are reported as giving their executives record bonuses despite building fewer homes: Berkeley bosses will pocket £42m this year and up to £500m in the next five years, while Persimmon boss Jeff Fairburn could get £100m by 2021 according to Sunday's Observer magazine – are they members of the ULI, I wonder? Something clearly needs to change.

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David Thorpe is the author of:

• The One Planet Life;
• Energy Management in Buildings;
• Energy Management in Industry;
• Solar Technology;
• Sustainable Home Refurbishment;
• Sustainable Transport Fuels;
• Solar Photovoltaics Business Briefing;
• Passive Solar Architecture Reference Book (due in 2015);
• Solar Energy Reference Book (due in 2015).

How to Solve the Housing Crisis Sustainably

Britain has a housing crisis. Politicians are calling for the building of garden cities and for permitting building on formerly protected greenbelt sites. Business Secretary Vince Cable has told the Daily Mail that "building on green belt land should be 'encouraged' provided it is done in a 'proper way'". This follows the publication by the Department for Communities and Local Government of a prospectus for "Locally Led Garden Cities" which invites local authorities to put forward their ideas for how they wish to develop garden cities.

This all sounds positive, since, in the abstract, we love the idea of garden cities, with pleasant wide tree-lined avenues and residents tilling their gardens to grow their own food whilst cycling to nearby shops. But we all know how nice-sounding government policies frequently end up being hijacked by developers who wish to turn a tidy and quick profit and the dream, eventually, turns sour.

So, how to guarantee that these proposed new types of development are genuinely sustainable? 

The only way, as anybody involved in sustainability accounting or energy management will tell you, is through monitoring and measurement of pre-established metrics, backed up by the threat of planning permission being revoked should agreed benchmarks not be reached. In other words, we should permit building on green field sites only if they can establish that they are truly sustainable in a measurable way. This approach could just as easily be adapted to urban living, in several potential and already existing ways:

• by extending the parameters of the Building Regulations;
• by extending the Code for Sustainable Homes to include other metrics besides carbon emissions;
• by applying GEMIS Life Cycle Analysis to development;
• by applying ecological footprint analysis;
• by applying BREEAM;
• by applying GPI - the Genuine Progress Indicator;
• by using this ISO for life cycle analysis of the development in question.

Such an approach would build on a Welsh policy that has just achieved its first success and is showing its potential to spearhead a revolution in the way we can achieve sustainable development.

The success is also a personal one for a family that has just realised its dream. The Moodys are a family which lives on a smallholding between Caerphilly and Cardiff. Theirs has become the first One Planet Development in Wales - and the world - to receive permanent planning permission. Called Nant-y-Cwm farm, it is home to Dan and Sarah Moody (below) and their five children who had already been working their 16 acre plot for four years and were seeking retrospective planning permission from Caerphilly Council.



They decided to apply for planning permission under One Planet Development, a forward thinking policy by the Welsh Government which provides a way for people to live and work on the land with social, economic and environmental benefits. In addition to meeting planning regulations, applicants are required to produce a detailed management plan and ecological footprint analysis which demonstrates their commitment to sustainable living, including how they will provide for at least 65% of their basic household needs from land based activity within 5 years.

Dan and Sarah are overjoyed by their success, which they put down to hard work and their close links with the local community. Cllr Ken James, Caerphilly County Borough Council’s Cabinet Member for Regeneration, Planning and Sustainable Development, commented on the application by saying: “We were satisfied, following lengthy discussion with the applicants that their proposals complied with the One Planet Development policies, subject to a number of strict conditions”.

Jeff Cuthbert, the Minister for Communities and Tackling Poverty, has also visited the site, which is in his constituency, and expressed his pleasure at seeing what they have achieved.

This is important for a number of reasons. The policy is one of which the Welsh Government should be extremely proud. Wales has an objective, set out in its sustainable development scheme One Wales One Planet, that: "within the lifetime of a generation, Wales should use only its fair share of the earth’s resources, and our ecological footprint be reduced to the global average availability of resources - 1.88 global hectares per person in 2003".

One Planet Developments should, according to the Welsh Government guidance, initially "achieve an ecological footprint of 2.4 global hectares per person or less in terms of consumption and demonstrate clear potential to move towards 1.88 global hectare target over time".

So the practice offers a transition to a more sustainable way of life by providing a way for people to live and work on their own land with measurable social, economic and environmental benefits. By using a verifiable metric - ecological footprint accounting - it is setting a precedent for assessing planning applications and other developments. In this sense, it is far from being of minority interest only.

A body has been set up to support both those who want to make planning applications under this scheme, and those in planning departments who have to process them, often a job that proves to be outside their training and experience. Called The One Planet Council, it is an independent voluntary body that also sees itself as furthering understanding amongst the public and policymakers of how the tools and practices enabled by this policy can further Wales' overall sustainable development requirements and, by example, the rest of the UK. I am a founder member. The body aims to work together with all those with Local Planning Authorities, policy makers, academics, landowners, and those already living on and planning to live on One Planet Development sites.

Jane Davidson, previously the Welsh Minister responsible for the introduction of the One Planet Development policy and now Director of INSPIRE at the University of Wales Trinity St David's, helped to launch the Council at the Royal Welsh Showground Spring Fair on 17 May (below).



Standing alongside the Moodys she said: "I'm so delighted to hear about the Moodys’ success. Wales is unique in having a national commitment to support those who want to demonstrate that it is possible and desirable to live in a way that reduces their impact on the environment. I hope that the success of this application will pave the way for others who want to pioneer living lightly on the land and in doing so help others think about actions they could take to harness local resources better”.



At the launch of the One Planet Council, left to right: Dan and Sarah Moody, Stefan Cartwright, Samantha Minas, Jane Davidson, Eduardo Bracho, Mark Waghorn and Pete Linnnell. 

The planning guidance behind the policy holds open the door for One Planet Developments to occur in an urban context, but remains unclear on how this could be achieved. Some architects believe that ribbon development, for example, where there is green field countryside behind housing on transport links, offers one opportunity for this to happen. So does the concept of garden cities.

The OPD policy supports other policy aims of both the Welsh and Westminster Governments, including provision for affordable housing, reduced subsidy for agriculture, promoting healthy living, promoting sustainable communities and carbon reduction.

For example, in addition to producing meat, eggs and a wide range of fruit and vegetables, some of which is sold to local residents, the Moodys' smallholding also supports different local causes such as Kaleidoscope, a Cardiff based charity supporting people recovering from drug and alcohol addiction.

So here are the 12 main advantages of One Planet Development

1. Affordable housing
The UK housing market is currently one of the most inflated in Europe, and inequality between those who own a home and those who don’t is rising. For many, especially first time buyers and those who are on a low income, owning their own home is beyond reach. One Planet Development supports the construction of simple, well functioning dwellings tied into sustainable land management. These are intrinsically much less expensive to build than the average home, even when constructed to a conventionally accepted standard.

2. Sustainable, low impact homes
One Planet homes must be constructed from sustainable or recycled materials, locally sourced where possible for minimal environmental impact. Buildings must be energy efficient and generate all of their own electricity and heat renewably. Innovation and different styles of construction are encouraged as long as they comply with the stringent planning standards and meet building regulations. Dwellings should have a relatively low visual impact and be easy to take down at the end of their lives.

3. A reduced burden on the public purse
The purchase of land and creation of a One Planet Development is self-funded from the beginning, unlike some types of agriculture which receive subsidies.

4. Creating genuine livelihoods
One Planet practitioners are required to meet 65% of their basic household needs from land based activity within a 5 year period. A robust management plan is required at planning application stage to show how these needs will be met. The result is a subsistence livelihood with the possibility to develop new streams of income from education and other related activities.

5. Increased land productivity
One Planet Developments promote a more sustainable level of food production. A study of organic smallholding-type food production found the level of produce per annum to be 3.5 kg per square metre, equating to 35 tonnes per hectare. This is over 4 to 5 times greater than average UK wheat yields of around 7-8 tonnes per hectare on the best soil.

6. Beneficial to wildlife and the land
One Planet practitioners have a duty to conserve and enhance the biodiversity, cultural heritage and landscape of a site. The existing ecology is carefully preserved and enhanced by planting hedgerows, orchards and wetlands. Produce is grown without the use of pesticides, herbicides or artificial fertilisers by using methods such as companion planting, soil care and encouraging natural predators of pests.

7. Beneficial to the local community
One Planet living encourages outreach and sharing. Surplus food and other land based produce and crafts are sold locally to generate income, which is beneficial for the community by reducing food miles and by offering affordable, fresh, healthy food. Educational courses and open days may be offered. Developing land based businesses may offer employment opportunities.

8. Beneficial for Wales
One Planet Development is open to people from all walks of life. The more developments that use different approaches to sustainable building, land management and living, the more exemplar models others will have to learn from. The Welsh Government has made a bold commitment to a sustainable future for current and future generations. This initiative can help Wales become an inspiration to people around the world.

9. An efficient use of natural resources
Energy is harvested using the latest renewable technologies. Water is sourced on site from springs, streams or rainwater collection, and wastewater is processed on site with the nutrients reused to encourage biodiversity and fertility. Composting of all biodegradable waste and non-biodegradable waste is minimised, re-used where possible and re-cycled off site as a last resort.

10. Promoting health and well-being
There are numerous documented benefits of daily contact with nature that would reduce the burden of those living in One Planet Developments upon the National Health Service. These include: improvements in self-esteem and mood, recovery from stress, blood pressure, heart rate, vitamin D deficiency, the benefit upon health of consuming fresh food, as well as others such as improved community building.

11. Supporting sustainable transport
One Planet Development supports living and working on the same site. Ideally, sites should be located within walking or cycling reach of public transport and local communities to reduce vehicle dependence. Electric vehicles can be charged from sources of renewable power.

12. Measurable sustainability
One Planet Development is quantified by ecological footprinting, which shows how much of the Earth’s resources people are consuming. When households reduce their own ecological footprints this helps their country reduce its overall footprint. Practitioners are required to log specific inputs and outputs so that data can be monitored for planning and research purposes.

As I said, ecological footprint analysis is not the only way to measure and verify sustainability, but it is one with a policy foothold in the UK. Sustainability needs measurement, it needs to be quantified, it needs to be monitored in order to guarantee that it is truly sustainable and not merely used as a greenwashing exercise. Even if you don't believe that we collectively need to bring down our ecological footprint, I hope I've made it clear that there are many other benefits to supporting this type of activity and approach.

At last: the affordable solar house that makes a profit for residents

Glen Peters is a man with a mission to show how truly sustainable and affordable housing can be a solution to the housing crisis. Having made a good profit from a solar farm in his field (seen behind the house in the picture above) he's putting it to good use and demonstrating a new model for sustainable housing.

Working with a team of architects and designers he has produced a prototype two-storey detached three bedroomed house with a radical new take on passive house principles. Called Ty Solar (Solar House in Welsh) it is of timber frame construction and insulated with blown cellulose; and is potentially able to export more electricity to the grid than it consumes itself in a given year.

The larch used for the frame and cladding is sourced locally and assembled to specifications that are beyond those required by Building Regulations, giving it a Code for Sustainable Homes 5 rating (out of a maximum of 6). But this doesn't tell the whole story by any means.

By using recycled newsprint (the blown cellulose) as the only insulant around the entire building envelope and local timber, the house is locking up atmospheric carbon in its structure for an indefinite period, unlike buildings that use fossil fuel-based insulants that have emitted carbon during their manufacture.



The embodied energy of the house is therefore already very low, an important factor given that for normal buildings between 10 and 20% of their life-cycle energy consumption is used during the phase of extraction of raw materials and construction.

The final purchase price has been set at a maximum of £75,000. The principal watchword throughout the design process that has enabled this to be possible has been simplicity.

Almost heretically for passive house construction it eschews ventilation and heat recovery, and the only source of energy is solar: both passive solar through the abundance of south-facing windows and active through reliance on solar photovoltaic panels for electricity and top-up space and domestic water heating.

The demonstration house includes lithium iron batteries to store 12 kWh of power but is also grid connected to enable the export of unused electricity and the use of the grid as a backup at other times.

The battery bank is optional and really only for stand-alone houses. Glen says: “A group of 10 or more houses generating in tandem with a local smart grid could form a miniature power station and generate a considerable income, perhaps £1000 per year, for each of the households, or the power could be used to charge electric vehicles which could be shared between them."

Research commissioned by the Welsh Government estimates that over 14,000 new homes are needed every year in Wales for the next 15 years.

The hunger for affordable housing is reflected in lengthy waiting lists and increasing official homelessness figures. Wales' Minister for sustainable development has made the provision of affordable housing a high priority during his tenure.

All of this highlights the urgent need for houses of this nature. As Glen Peters says: "The bulk housing providers in the construction industry are ignoring affordable housing. They say that it doesn't work for them. I say they are missing a trick. We've proved it is perfectly possible to build low carbon housing that is truly affordable and that gives occupants zero energy bills."

With energy bills so high on the public agenda it is hard to see how local authorities and housing associations can ignore the potential that this house demonstrates.

Low embodied energy

This successful and attractive-looking house goes against the grain in terms of many of the current developments in sustainable housing.

Compared to the Mark Group's demonstration house in Nottingham, BRE’s ‘Smart Home’, in Watford, and Velux’ CarbonLight demonstration home in Rothwell near Kettering, it scores very favorably on local sourcing, embodied energy, embodied carbon and simplicity of use. Above all it compares well on price.

All of these three supposedly cutting-edge demonstration homes contain extreme amounts of technology and sophisticated materials.

They represent corporate attempts to capture a high-end market in low or zero carbon housing.

The first utilizes an incredibly energy intensive over specified steel frame.

The second uses occupation sensors to control heating, lighting, ventilation, water and security, as well as heat pumps, solar thermal and PV.

The third is designed to be iconic in its extremely unusual shape and therefore expensive to reproduce. All of them make heavy use of smart electronics. And this is what puts up their price.

But although they may score highly on low operational energy use this does not make them necessarily sustainable.

The real target of sustainable housing should be overall life-cycle impact. This means that in fact small homes that are zero carbon in operation, whose materials are sourced locally and are of low embodied energy, preferably built in bulk and perhaps in a compact urban terrace or block, will be inherently more sustainable than stand-alone large homes packed with different technologies and comprising a high embodied energy.

This makes Ty Solar's closest antecedent perhaps the ecological evolution of Walter Segal Method timber frame construction, as pioneered at the Centre for Alternative Technology. The Segal Method was, pointedly, devised by its architect to produce affordable homes.

Even the low pitch of the roof is designed to minimize the heated but unnecessary interior loft space and increased requirement for materials that are result of higher pitched roofs, while still permitting the solar panels which the roof supports to take advantage of solar radiation.

The larch cladding will protect the building for years to come with minimum need for maintenance. The fact that it is screwed on in panels also makes it easier to access the interior of the walls if needed.

The Passivhaus certified windows and doors are even made locally rather than in Germany.

The house sits on footings raised slightly above the ground to remove the need for unnecessary concrete in foundations.

“Gareth, Jens and I come from very different worlds but we're united in our goal to be a disruptive influence of traditional thinking about building homes. In this, manufacturing becomes a key component and we see ourselves as manufacturers rather than builders,” says Glen. “We have created a lot of goodwill in our community and hope to continue to do so as we expand, creating local jobs, sourcing locally and above all keeping things small."

The test is whether day-to-day the homes do result in their occupants reducing their energy use and bills. This depends on their habits.

To this end simple controls will be easier to manage (see picture above right).

Some developers seem to believe that the occupants need a degree in energy management in order to keep down their running energy and carbon costs. Utility rooms contain a bank of sails and buttons worthy of the cockpit of the Star Ship Enterprise.

Ty Solar, by contrast, scores highly on ease of use since ventilation is controlled just by opening windows when required, and space and water heating is controlled in the traditional way, with thermostats. There are no other controls.

The house has not been formally tested for Passivhaus criteria, nor does it mean to be. It has also yet to be independently pressure tested.

It is a trial house that will be monitored for one year. However, with two floors each of 44.16 square meters and a volume of 254 m³ it has achieved a SAP rated figure of 0.12 air changes per hour.

This compares very favorably to the Passivhaus standard of 0.6 a change as per hour or a permeability rate of 3.0 m³/m²h. Over a 200-day heating period, a typical British house with eight air changes per hour and a 100m2 floor area, heated to 20°C, will cost thirty times more to heat than an equivalent house with 0.3 air changes per hour, according to an energy calculator (SIGA). The SAP-rated space heating requirement of this house is just 32.39kWh/m²/year.

This high performance is shown by the U-values, which are as follows:

Element	Average / Highest W/m2K	Maximum permitted W/m2K	Passivhaus standard
External wall	0.13	0.30	0.25–0.16
Floor	0.13	0.25	0.18–0.12
Roof	0.14	0.20	0.13–0.09
Openings	0.90	2.00	0.85

It can therefore be seen that the house, according to the SAP ratings, compares favourably with Passivhaus.

LED lights are fitted throughout, making the annual lighting consumption just 371.49kWh. With no pumps or fans, there are no further electricity requirements over and above that which is used in day-to-day living by a family in any home – for appliances and gadgets. It is therefore predicted by the SAP rating to have a negative energy use of -3253.56kWh (minus appliance use) and negative carbon dioxide emissions of -596.92 kg/year.

All of this means that the Energy Efficiency Rating on the EPC goes off the scale at 107, with an Environmental Impact (CO²) rating of 108. In the Code for Sustainable Homes assessment it reaches Level 5. The SAP Assessment also predicts that there will be only a medium likelihood of a high internal temperature, or overheating, in July and August, which can easily be catered for by opening the windows.

"We've just bought a 400m² cow shed to convert into our factory so we intend to minimize the impact on the land. We turned down offers of a brand new shed on a business park,” adds Glen.

Future houses could be semi-detached or terraced, and have one, two or three bedrooms, as demand dictates and housing associations or local authorities wish.

Clearly, Glen Peters is a man with an eye on the future - a sustainable future.