By Joshua Hopkins, Denbury Homes.
There is no denying the scale of the current housing crisis. For too long we have failed as a society to build enough homes to meet the needs of a growing and ageing population. As a result, more people than ever before are homeless.
Research shows younger workers on an average salary for their age, must wait 13 years from age 21 to save enough for a 10% deposit on a house costing £285,000. And skyrocketing housing costs mean that 11.3 million people in England spend more than 40% of their household income on their homes – more than any other country in Europe.
Successive governments have claimed to recognise the scale of the crisis. And today’s King’s Speech set out the new Labour government’s plans to get “Britain building again”.
It’s also clear that the public wants more houses: a survey last year said that 80% of people were either supportive or not against more houses being built in their area.
But England is currently only building around 220,000-240,000 new homes a year, compared to France at roughly 380,000 and Japan at 860,000 – even though their population is shrinking.
So why, as an industry, have we built far fewer homes than we need?
Streamlining the planning process
House builders like to blame the planning system and public opposition for the slow pace of house building. Campaign groups like to blame house builders for maximising profit and ignoring local concerns.
You’d expect me, I am sure, as the Land Director of one of the region’s fastest growing house builders to tow the industry line and set out an agenda to accelerate planning permissions and bulldoze through community priorities.
We certainly do need to streamline the planning process – it takes too long and costs too much at present. So, yes, I do look forward to the new government’s promised reform of the planning system, along with additional support from new planning officers and a task force to accelerate stalled housing sites.
The system needs to be simpler, cheaper and fairer to allocate land for housing and then for house builders to get on site and deliver their part of the deal – high quality homes that people can afford.
Build beautiful homes
But I do not advocate any reform that could be seen as fulfilling the mantra of “Build, Build Build”. If house builders are to be trusted to build more homes, more quickly, then they need to significantly up their game in terms of delivering beautiful homes set in quality landscapes.
The failure of the industry to design beautiful homes that reflect their locality and surrounding environment is one of the main reasons why so many people shudder when they hear about a planning application close to them. Currently, too many developments are simply ill thought through and poorly designed, leaving behind lasting scars and eroding trust.
At Denbury Homes there is a very simple philosophy – if you build beautiful homes people will want to buy them and communities will not fear development.
At Denbury we take great pride in carefully designing each of our houses to reflect its location and the heritage of the county. This includes taking our time to build our homes – on average we take around seven months to build a home, national builders take around half that. This is down to our attention to detail such as using wet plaster rather than plasterboard or the care we take with specialist brickwork. And we are delighted to be a 5* builder – a company people can trust to deliver.
A community focus
We have recently teamed up with Hugh Petter and the team at the award-winning Adam Architecture to design a new range of house types that take their cue from the vernacular architecture of the region. Hugh has served as Architect to the Duchy of Cornwall for over twenty years and has spent much of his time working with landowners and regional house builders across the country to prove that development can be beautiful.
As Hugh says, “Development can do great things for local communities when they are consulted properly; when their voices are heard by the development team, and when the resulting development is tuned carefully to meet local needs. With new development we only get one chance to get it right. I am confident that Denbury Homes, with their vision; clear focus, and attention to detail, will make an important contribution towards meeting the housing crisis in an exemplary way.”
The homes we build will last for generations and we believe they should therefore be a fitting legacy for our region.
Leaving a local legacy
We’ve recently received approval for the first residential phase at our St Edmunds Gate, Bury St Edmunds development. This is our flagship development, and we see it as the cornerstone of our growth plans. We’ve taken great care to showcase our commitment to good design in the homes chosen. From the facades right through to the build quality this will be a development that we hope will be an exemplar across the region.
As someone who grew up in Suffolk, and who lives there still, I am very conscious of the impact houses have on the landscape. I don’t want our company to be remembered as the one that added an ugly estate to the side of a small village. Or built places that people don’t want to live. Or can’t afford.
If we are to solve the housing crisis without damaging the beauty of our county, we need to focus on building beautiful homes in lovely landscapes at a price that people can afford.
Yes, of course, we do need to reform our cumbersome and under-resourced planning system and yes, it would be nice if local people didn’t automatically object to new homes near them. But alongside that, house builders need to up their game too – a focus on first class design would help us all – and leave a legacy that we can all be proud of.
That’s something on which Denbury is rightly focused.
