Our NLA Expert Panel on Housing, drawn from commissioners and architects across the sector, met to establish the key themes in housing for NLA research, campaigning and focus over the next 12 months. Our discussion encompassed a number of vital topics, with the overarching aim of a recalibration in the sector to ensure the quality, accessibility and resilience of all homes we are designing and building today, for tomorrow. There are six areas of particular interest:

 

1.     Affordability of our homes: a desire to reduce the widening inequality between the generations, highlighted by pressure of COVID on our home environments to transform into workspaces and classrooms as well as provide a haven to eat, socialise and sleep, often for several households. As the pandemic impacts the housing market and where people choose to live, could there be an opportunity to rethink affordability to encourage life back into city centres as office and retail space contracts?

2.     Distribution of our homes and their density: the post-pandemic future of city living, and the draw of the suburban and rural model, provides a backdrop to shifting thinking around the benefits of density and the intensity of cities. The ‘15-Minute City’ model in Paris relies on density but with it creates a series of local centres, where each neighbourhood has plentiful social infrastructure to be self-sufficient. Is local, rather than central, the way forward?

3.     Tenure of our homes: increasingly our homes are designed to meet specific requirements based on different tenure models, often creating a siloed and constrained approach to housing design, limiting any future change in tenure. How can we encourage a wider variety and blending of tenures and homes that are designed with this long term flexibility in mind?

4.     Sustainability of our homes: has the pandemic shifted our focus away from the path to zero carbon and how do we reposition climate change as priority within housing and development? How can we convince the commissioners of housing to invest in post-occupancy evaluation and research to inform the homes of the future?

5.     Design of our homes: a desire for increased flexibility, durability, space, synthetic infrastructure and amenity is a visible response to lockdown. How can we achieve a new era of better housing when viability challenges force down both cost and value? Do we need more or less regulation? Is it time to re-think NDSS? How do we respond to changing views regarding sharing of internal and external space and the sociability of our housing? How can truly intergenerational housing address our aging population and the post-pandemic impact in care homes?

6.     Planning of our homes: how will the consultation response to the White Paper shape housing growth areas across London and the proliferation of sub-standard housing through Permitted Development Rights? How can we achieve the right balance in the planning process and legislation to support the delivery of good housing where we need it and demonstrate to communities that development can be a force for good? 

 

Housing Expert Panellists
CHAIR. Jo McCafferty, Director, Levitt Bernstein

John Lewis, Managing Director, Modular Housing, AECOM      
Attzaz Rashid, Head of Design, Barratt London
Melissa Dowler, Director, Bell Phillips Architects
Adunni Adams, Head of Delivery, Catalyst Housing

James Pargeter, Consultant
Barbara Brownlee, Managing Director, Westminster Builds
Dipa Joshi, Partner, Fletcher Priest Architects
Fergus Evans, Project Director, Estate Development Programme, Grosvenor
Heather Macey, Associate, John McAslan + Partners  
Sarah Hiscutt, Partner, Knight Frank
Russ Edwards, Head of Product, Residential, Lendlease
Caroline Harper, Chief Planning Director, Be First Regeneration Limited
Peter Elliot, Head of Property Development, TfL