Concrete bungle?

john prescott’s Communities Plan promises a happy future of 350,000 new homes, in well-designed, sustainable developments, to plug the housing gap in the South-east and Midlands. But many residents of the growth areas fear this means their green and pleasant land will be concreted over to build ugly, low-density boxes.

For housing providers, the knee-jerk reaction might be to dismiss this as Nimbyism – but these particular Nimbys could have a point.

Many of the basic requirements for sustainable development are still up in the air, so there’s a good chance this well-meaning initiative could result in suburban sprawl and failed neighbourhoods.

A number of factors may threaten the programme, from a lack of committed funding for infrastructure to an absence of people with the skills to plan, design and build the communities. There’s also a heavy reliance on planning gain agreements – deals in which developers agree to provide social housing or community facilities in return for permission to build lucrative private homes.

The South-east England Regional Assembly has warned that growth plans across the region are under threat and has called on the government to release more money for transport infrastructure.

Meanwhile, a scrutiny panel set up to examine the Milton Keynes and South Midlands growth strategy last month criticised the lack of a stated plan to protect environmental assets, encourage more energy-efficient buildings and create sustainable transport links and “social infrastructure”.

The panel has also said the development process is happening too quickly to allow the kind of community consultation that would lead to sustainable schemes.

Your train is delayed

“There are three priorities: infrastructure, infrastructure and infrastructure,” says Chris Wood, director of housing at Newham council in east London. It’s a familiar cry, particularly in the Thames Gateway.

A decision on funding for transport projects such as the Crossrail east-west link and the Thames Gateway Bridge are vital to the region’s future.

Without these, businesses won’t want to relocate and people won’t want to live there. And without proper transport links, planners would not be able to approve as many homes. Low-density development is anathema to a sustainable community, unable to support local shops and services. The result is impoverished urban sprawl.

Barking Reach, a district in the Thames Gateway, is an example. Without Crossrail, the site has the potential for 8000 homes, but if the Maidenhead to Shenfield and Ebbsfleet route is constructed, this could increase by more than a third.

“It would be a crime to build in Barking Reach without the additional infrastructure,” says Wood. “The problem is, the mantra has been ‘more housing – and quickly’.”

Michael Keith, chair of the Thames Gateway London Partnership, agrees that the drive to get immediate results without waiting for infrastructure risks wasting the opportunity to build a decent community. He says: “The housing numbers are too high in the short term, but too low in the long term.”

The number of homes outlined by the government for the London section of the Thames Gateway is 59,000. The Thames Gateway London Partnership and the London mayor are gunning for up to two or three times that number. But many suspect the ODPM has been anticipating low-density suburban sprawl, despite John Prescott’s rhetoric, because it has not been able to secure commitments from other departments to invest in transport.

There have been some positive signs in recent months, however. July’s comprehensive spending review gave the go-ahead to a number of transport links in east London, such as extensions of the Docklands Light Railway and the Underground’s East London line, and transport secretary Alistair Darling has said the government will publish a bill to allow the building of Crossrail. In addition, housing minister Keith Hill has made it known he is happy to look at higher numbers of homes in the Gateway.

But Crossrail, the most important project, is still waiting for funding. The government has not committed to paying for the scheme, nor identified where else the money could come from.

Can’t get the staff

The government’s design watchdog, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, has done a huge amount of work identifying what sustainable communities look like, but people that can implement them are very rare.

The lack of designers, masterplanners and project managers to work on the growth areas was highlighted in Sir John Egan’s review of built environment skills in April. If councils, private developers and housing associations don’t have people who can ensure high-quality developments, the government’s hopes will be dashed.

Paul Murrain, urban programme director at architecture lobby group the Prince’s Foundation, warns: “The skills issue is a massive problem, and currently we don’t have the mechanisms to do anything about it.

“Whatever the ODPM says about good design and planning, it doesn’t change the fact that there are still a lot of people out there in councils who think that huge areas of single-use are a good idea.”

Chris Brown, chief executive of regeneration consultant Igloo, agrees: “It’s very difficult to do high-quality schemes because the wider stakeholders don’t have the skills to recognise the difference between high and low quality.”

The Egan review recommended a national skills centre to tackle the problem. However, the government will not unveil plans for the institution until next January, and there is no timescale for when it will be up and running.

It is unlikely a significant dent will be made on the skills shortage before many of the growth area schemes start on site.

Perhaps one of the most controversial questions that needs to be answered before 400,000 homes are built in the South-east is, who is going to live in them?

Whatever the ODPM says, there are a lot of people in councils who think huge areas of single-use are a good idea

Paul Murrain, Prince's Foundation

Tenure is key. The demand for affordable housing has to be balanced with the need to create places that will work in the long term.

In the Thames Gateway, councils are resisting London mayor Ken Livingstone’s request for 50% affordable housing on all new developments because many of these communities already have very high levels of affordable housing, and consequently very high levels of deprivation.

Populating the new communities

In ODPM statistics, areas covered by Tower Hamlets and Newham councils in east London were among the country’s top 10 most deprived places. “You have to ask whether 50% affordable housing is a balanced community,” says planning consultant Robin Tetlow. “There is a threshold above which too much X X affordable housing is not socially sustainable.”

New towns such as Milton Keynes originally only allowed people with jobs to move there. Newham’s Wood does not advocate this, but says: “If you have 100 unemployed people in social rented accommodation, it’s so much more difficult to manage than 100 people with jobs. We need to think about a substantial proportion of housing going to people in work.”

The Association of London Government is in discussions with the boroughs and the Housing Corporation about a nominations policy for the Gateway, but no agreement has yet been reached.

It is also yet to be seen how rigorous Livingstone will be in policing his requirement for 50% affordable housing.

There is no guarantee that people will want to live in the growth areas in the Gateway, or even in Ashford or the South Midlands. ALG chair Tony Newman says: “The Gateway has to be a place of choice – not somewhere those with few housing choices are put.”

System failure

The planning system itself mitigates against sustainable developments, despite the changes in this year’s Planning & Compulsory Purchase Act and a raft of new guidance from the ODPM. A prime example is the basic conflict it highlights between encouraging people to walk and keeping traffic moving as safely as possible.

Designers of sustainable communities want closely inter-connected streets, with as few cul-de-sacs as possible to encourage movement and interaction. Highways engineers want sheltered dead-end-streets for people to live in, and pedestrian barriers on main roads to make people cross at crossings.

Ken Dytor, chief executive of regeneration company Urban Catalyst, says: “There is still a big disconnect between sustainable communities and the highways engineers. What the highways engineers do destroys the whole ethos of sustainable communities.”

Paul Murrain says the problem is wider and blames the growth of a litigation culture: “The rules around fire access, street safety and parking mean people now develop by rule books. People have actually learned how to make places that don’t work.

“You try to build a sophisticated main street today on the principles of successful towns – you wouldn’t get it through planning. If you want developers to do something better, you have to make it clear that the system allows that.”

Money trouble

All detailed studies so far have reported huge shortfalls in the money needed to achieve the growth. The London Thames Gateway Development and Investment Framework, published in April, identified an additional requirement for hospitals, schools, playing fields, nurseries, police stations and fire stations before development can commence.

On an overall cost of £16bn – its estimate for building 91,000 homes and infrastructure in the Thames Gateway – it identified a £3bn hole even when contributions from the public and private sector are included.

In Kent, similarly, the county council has said it will cost £10bn to provide all the infrastructure to support the planned growth in the county over the next 15 years.

So far the ODPM has promised £440m for the Thames Gateway and a further £164m for the three other growth areas, and is yet to say how much more will be available following the comprehensive spending review.

The Treasury’s efficiency squeeze could have a big impact – the Housing Corporation is expected to save £160m each year through procurement efficiencies so if grant per home falls, it could become harder for social landlords to reach more ambitious targets on space and environmental standards.

Building aside, the bulk of the money will have to come from other departments. But someone will have to run these services, and Milton Keynes council chief executive John Best has been leading a campaign to ensure local authorities in the growth areas are funded in advance by the government so they can pay staff to do this. The current system of government funding bases subsidies on population figures from the Office of National Statistics, which typically are two or three years out of date.

Tony McBrearty, deputy chief executive of the Thames Gateway London Partnership, says: “We have to suspend judgment until the full sums are done – but we really need to know where the mainstream money is – that’s the key to this.”

All in all, it seems sustainable development remains an aspiration rather than a reality for the planned housing. The Nimbys’ response may be predictable – people often fear that grand new building plans will go horribly wrong, and the sheer scale of these plans make outrage inevitable.

But the government will never calm these fears with rhetoric. It will only be able to do that when it has put the funds, infrastructure and qualified staff, in place to guarantee genuine sustainable communities, or else, the Nimbys’ fears may not be as exaggerated as they sound.