Housing boom based solely on numbers could flood UK with ugly homes
No one wants to live in ugly housing that sucks the joy out of life, says Jennifer Selway.
Before the election, Angela Rayner, then shadow housing secretary, promised that in the building bonanza – which would follow when Labour got into power – only “attractive homes” would be built. That sounded hopeful.
But, as with the Chancellor’s promise not to raise taxes, that pledge has been swept away.
Not only will councils no longer be able to block “out of character” developments, but the requirement for developers to produce “beautiful” homes has been scrapped. That sets alarm bells ringing.
An obligation to produce beautiful homes might feel like a frivolous requirement in these serious times, a superfluous luxury. Surely all anyone needs is a roof over their head? Job done.
But we know that simply isn’t true, and Angela Rayner should know that better than anyone, having been brought up in poverty on a grim council estate.
Poor housing does not only mean shoddy homes with mould, dangerous wiring and broken lifts.
Poor housing is about living in a built environment that sucks the joy out of your life.
For instance, in 2017 a study at Warwick University found that beautiful urban architecture had the same impact on physical and mental health as the presence of green spaces. We used to know all this without the need for academic studies.
In the 1860s, Octavia Hill, (one of the founders of the National Trust) bought three houses in London, providing homes for the urban poor in which she attempted to provide “beauty…for the refreshment of our souls”.
She had borrowed the money from art critic John Ruskin, an associate of William Morris, one of the founders of the Arts and Crafts movement who believed everyday objects and environments should be practical but also lovely. “Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful,” is Morris’s famous quote.
This may all sound terribly twee and middle class, but Hill, Ruskin and Morris were all once heroes of the Labour movement and of working people.
Beauty was not the prerogative of the wealthy.
The King, bless him, has been banging on about domestic architecture for his entire life, a man who grew to adulthood in the 1960s when soulless tower blocks were thrown up, creating ideal conditions for crime and despair while community-friendly streets were unthinkingly bulldozed.
It had looked as though the bad old days were behind us. Until now. Labour’s housing policy is solely about numbers and targets.
Ugly, soul-destroying dwellings will be the result.
