Building better (as well as faster)

Report out today on the broken housing market and achieving the mystical 300,000 new homes every year.  One topic of interest was build quality – with Government and local authorities criticised for not doing enough to prevent poor build quality of new homes. 

Key recommendations were that the Government department (MCHLG) should set out how local authorities, developers, and other agencies will prevent, penalise and compensate for poor residential build quality.  The Department’s design guide should also be revised to define what a sufficient quality of final build should look like. 

The Royal Institute of British Architects made the point in their submission that the design skills in local planning authorities had been cut back too far, and whilst design review panels can help these are no substitute for a properly resourced planning system. 

https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/public-accounts-committee/inquiries/parliament-2017/inquiry21/publications/