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Guidance

Manchester Residential Quality Guidance

An outline to the considerations, qualities, and opportunities that will help to deliver high quality residential development as part of successful and sustainable neighbourhoods across Manchester.

Author: Manchester City Council (MCC) by:

  • Deloitte Real Estate: John Cooper/Ed Britton
  • Planit-IE: Peter Swift/Robert Thompson/Alexandra Chairetaki/Chris Hall/Abi Allen
  • CallisonRTKL: John Badman/Michael Dillon

Publication date: March 2017

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Guidance

The Cambridge Sustainable Housing Design Guide

Cambridge City Council plan to build at least 500 new environmentally friendly council homes by 2022. The Good Homes Alliance contributed towards the development of ‘The Cambridge Sustainable Housing Design Guide’ for the Greater Cambridge Housing Development Agency (HDA) which sets out the key design principles that will be followed when developing the new homes.


Author: Greater Cambridge Housing Development Agency (HDA).

Publication date: February 2017

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Book Report

One Hundred Years of Housing Space Standards: What now?

Part history, part insight and part opinion, this is perhaps the most detailed and contextual analysis of housing space standards that exists, and certainly the most current. Written by Julia Park, Head of Housing Research at Levitt Bernstein, the account begins with a summary of the evolution, or perhaps more accurately, the comings and goings, of the various space standards that have been applied to new housing in England.

Reflecting on what history tells us, the book examines the role of space standards in the context of the current housing crisis and explores how themes such as under-occupancy, overcrowding, density, mix, land value, viability and politics are all part of the story. The final section offers informed thoughts about the way forward. It concludes that the benefits of regulation are likely to significantly outweigh any disadvantages and could be a catalyst for far-reaching, positive changes in the way we live – potentially resulting in more housing, not less.

Author: Julia Park, Levitt Bernstein

Publication date: January 2017

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Further information: housingspacestandards.co.uk

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Guidance

Designer’s Handbook

This handbook sets out the key design requirements for delivering comfortable, healthy, low energy homes that perform as intended.

Author: The Buildings Hub

Publication date: December 2016

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Report

Housing Design for Community Life

This report presents data about how people are using external spaces in residential areas on recently completed schemes in England. Inspired by the work of Jan Gehl Architects, it is a study of numbers of people, their activities and the time they spend outside as an indicator of what Gehl calls ‘life between buildings’. It presents new maps that show access to external spaces in relation to dwellings and the streets in between and reaches the conclusion that the layout of a development may have a significant impact on how well spaces are used.

It incorporates theories of child development, play and children’s independent mobility, in part to quantify some of the health and wellbeing concerns that need to be addressed, but fundamentally to highlight the value of children’s use of external spaces: both for their own bene t and as the generators of community life. The report reveals the social nature of these spaces, the importance for children and the challenges for other age groups, while also highlighting the damage that anti- social parking behaviour can have on otherwise well designed schemes.

“The report’s work in trying to understand how we use public space cannot be ignored. It is a vital manifesto for new planning policy and a cultural shift in our obligations towards people and the new communities we are creating.”

David Montague, Chair of G15 and Chief Executive, L&Q

Author: Dinah Bornat, University of East London/ZCD Architects

Publication date: November 2016

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Guidance

Builders’ Book

This is a good craftsmanship guide that highlights key construction details when building a new home, and good practice for delivering them.

Author: Zero Carbon Hub

Publication date: December 2016

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Report

Housing our Ageing Population: Plan for Implementation (HAPPI2)

The APPG inquiry found there were far reaching benefits from developing good quality housing for older people, including a reduction in health and social care costs, as well as the freeing up of family housing and has made a series of recommendations to create movement in the housing market, improve the health of older people and create new housing options for younger people and families. These include:

  • A Cabinet Office Task Force should bring together the Departments of Health and for Communities and Local Government to take forward the nationwide drive to build the homes needed by an ageing population
  • The Department for Communities and Local Government should encourage and incentivise the private sector and registered social landlords to meet the rising demand of those seeking to move to elegant, functional, sustainable and manageable homes for later life
  • The Department of Health should tailor its £300m Health, Care and Support Housing Fund to ensure more schemes are designed to HAPPI principles
  • Private sector and registered social landlords, with government support, should develop a HAPPI kite mark to raise HAPPI’s market profile
  • Working alongside local authorities, the Homes and Communities Agency should lead in championing HAPPI to ensure that a clear targeted strategy for housing older people forms part of every local plan and that, where necessary, appropriate sites are brought forward specifically to fill any identified shortfall in market provision
  • Planners should recognise the special nature of high-quality retirement housing in their requirements for affordable housing and for Community Infrastructure Levy charges
  • Local housing and social care departments should give strategic priority to assessing and investing in older people’s housing; and maintain accessible housing registers

Author: Housing our Ageing Population Panel for Innovation

Publication date: 2012

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Report

The Housing our Ageing Population Panel for Innovation (HAPPI) Report

The authors make the following recommendations for design of housing for older people:

  • New retirement homes should have generous internal space standards, with potential for three habitable rooms and designed to accommodate flexible layouts.
  • Care is taken in the design of homes and shared spaces, with the placement, size and detail of windows, and to ensure plenty of natural light, and to allow daylight into circulation spaces.
  • Building layouts maximise natural light and ventilation by avoiding internal corridors and single-aspect flats, and apartments have balconies, patios, or terraces with enough space for tables and chairs as well as plants
  • In the implementation of measures to ensure adaptability, homes are designed to be ‘care ready’ so that new and emerging technologies, such as telecare and community equipment, can be readily installed.
  • Building layouts promote circulation areas as shared spaces that offer connections to the wider context, encouraging interaction, supporting interdependence and avoiding an ‘institutional feel’, including the imaginative use of shared balcony access to front doors and thresholds, promoting natural surveillance and providing for ‘defensible space’.
  • In all but the smallest developments (or those very close to existing community facilities), multi-purpose space is available for residents to meet, with facilities designed to support an appropriate range of activities – perhaps serving the wider neighbourhood as a community ‘hub’, as well as guest rooms for visiting friends and families.
  • In giving thought to the public realm, design measures ensure that homes engage positively with the street, and that the natural environment is nurtured through new trees and hedges and the preservation of mature planting, and providing wildlife habitats as well as colour, shade and shelter.
  • Homes are energy-efficient and well insulated, but also well ventilated and able to avoid overheating by, for example, passive solar design, the use of native deciduous planting supplemented by external blinds or shutters, easily operated awnings over balconies, green roofs and cooling chimneys.
  • Adequate storage is available outside the home together with provision for cycles and mobility aids, and that storage inside the home meets the needs of the occupier.
  • Shared external surfaces, such as ‘home zones’, that give priority to pedestrians rather than cars, and which are proving successful in other countries, become more common, with due regard to the kinds of navigation difficulties that some visually impaired people may experience in such environments.

Author: Housing our Ageing Population Panel for Innovation

Publication date: 2009

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