Product category:
Building Trade Associations and Institutes
News Release from: Chartered Institute of Building [CIOB] | Subject: RICS-sponsored report
Edited by the Buildingtalk Editorial
Team on 29 March 2006
Report examines the problem of
affordability.
RICS-sponsored report examines the problem of affordability.
The latest statement on housing policy from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister about building new homes on public sector land may not be quite what Anna Minton had in mind when she wrote the RICS-sponsored essay entitled 'The privatisation of public space' But the notice from ODPM does indicate what could happen if promised changes in planning law and infrastructure finance fail to curb the upward rise of land prices and housing costs
This article was originally published on Buildingtalk on 12 Mar 2004 at 8.00am (UK)
Related stories
CIOB Commission Welcomes Graduate Recruit Upturn
Applications to join building courses up to mid-January had risen by 16 per cent. Civil engineering courses are up by 25 per cent and architecture by 15 per cent.
'Urban Renaissance' Held Back By Funding Obstacles
London Assembly has called upon the UK Government to show more determination in assisting public and private sector organisations to find new ways of funding large-scale regeneration projects.
Ms.Minton in her recently published paper on the economic and cultural impact of trends in development policy and practice makes a number of recommendations directed at easing the ever-upward rise in building costs running counter to the desirable aim of affordability.
Ms.Yvette Cooper, Housing and Planning Minister at the ODPM, cites as one practical step to help families get a first foot on the housing ladder the shared equity scheme used in association with projects to build low cost homes at high environmental standards on public sector land.
"If we don't build more homes for the next generation", she said, "then within 20 years we will see the proportion of thirty year old couples able to afford their own home drop from over 50 per cent to nearer 30 per cent".
Further reading
London's Olympic Demand For Construction Funding
The London Development Agency is responsible for preparing and implementing the Mayor's business plan and invests more than £300 million a year in supporting the growth of new and existing businesses.
Construction Industry Better Deal On Software
The Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) has announced that it will be offering its members access to a range of IT resources as part of a special CAD and IT service.
Solar Tower Will Be World's Tallest Structure
In New South Wales, Australia, a feasibility study has taken place to build the tallest structure in the world, a solar electricity plant measuring 1000m tall and 7000m wide.
""That", she said, "is not fair on the rising generation." And that is why it is so urgent that that the Government's policy measures to promote affordability should succeed".
"Anna Minton's essay with the sub-title 'What kind of world are we building?' is a sequel to her report published three years ago by RICS on the theme of building balanced communities".
"This compared American trends towards the spread of gated communities and ghettoes with the growing British phenomenon of 'hot spots' of affluence and 'cold spots' of exclusion".
"'Astronomically high property prices'".
"Her latest report opens with the observation that over the last three years this pattern has accelerated dramatically, with astronomically high property prices in the hot areas, all too often just a mile or so away from cold areas of exclusion".
"Accompanying this new patchwork is the growing privatisation of the public realm which is gradually changing the nature of our towns and cities".
Ms Minton's prime example of the forces of change at work is the Paradise Street Development Area in Liverpool".
"This, she explains, is one of the largest regeneration schemes currently under construction in Western Europe, redeveloping 42.5 acres including 35 streets in the heart of Liverpool".
"It demonstrates as do many other big schemes her theme that private ownership and management of the public realm has now become part of the process identified by government as the 'urban renaissance'".
"It appears from this description that in Liverpool the city council has virtually handed over 35 streets to Grosvenor Estates to enable them not only to undertake a £750 million development scheme but to manage public access to it and to regulate people's conduct when they are there".
"Traditional rights of way are to be replaced by 'public realm arrangements' manned by private security guards known as 'quartermasters' or 'sheriffs'".
""At the same time all maintenance functions - from rubbish collection to street cleaning - will be contracted out by local government to the developer, who will have sole responsibility for managing and maintaining the space.
"In fact", she says, "the Paradise Street scheme is not in essence very different from other developments - already completed or in the pipeline - but in this case both the developer and Liverpool City Council have been more blatant about the future management and control of the space".
"A developer close to the scheme explained that its design rests on the application of 'shopping mall' principles, based on the presence of a single landlord managing such a large area, enabled by local authority powers of land assembly which have paved the way for the compulsory purchase of 200 properties.
As for ownership, while the council retains the freehold, it has leased the entire site to Grosvenor for 250 years." That sounds like a good deal for Liverpool as well as for Grosvenor".
"The city will no doubt benefit from rising rent returns over the years, so much more sensible than selling the land at a price which in a few years time will look like a give-away".
"Unfortunately recent events have shown developers that it is not only necessary to build facilities which attract people but to protect them while they are there".
"But such massive schemes, while they have great advantages for the public using them and generate large rents reflecting the value of custom they attract, have the effect of squeezing out the small businesses which add variety, colour and choice to the high street".
"Identikits on the high street".
"Over the last decade, Ms Minton comments, the steady erosion of these types of businesses in high streets and new developments has led to concern at the creation of identikit environments up and down the country, with more than 20,000 independent shops closing since 1997".
"There is some recognition among policymakers," she says, "that squeezing out independent businesses creates a loss for communities and a few local authorities have adopted policies to stem the tide".
""In Newcastle the city council has appointed a cultural estates manager who is a chartered surveyor seconded from the property department to culture and environment".
"Her role is to assist small, independent, in particular creative businesses in the city to find affordable space, often on council-owned land".
This mirrors similar moves at government level to find publicly-owned land where new homes can be built at affordable prices.
As Ms.
Minton says in introducing her recommendations, affordability has become a central policy issue.
Among the palliative measures that could be adopted, she mentions extension of Section 106 planning obligations which ensure that a percentage of affordable housing is built in new developments.
This policy, she says, could not fail to have a very significant effect on the feel of the new 'private-public' developments being created, allowing space for real diversity and a greater spectrum of genuine local inclusion.
Developers' contributions certainly help to moderate the pressure of rising land costs at specific sites but they don't abate the underlying pressure of rising values as is evident from the steadily increasing average cost of house purchase.
As things stand, the government is proposing to cut back Section 106 agreements in favour of the planning gain supplement.
Whether that policy will be modified as a result of the consultation remains to be seen, but the indications are that government attempts to influence the underlying problem of affordability are way off the mark.
The privatisation of public space is by no means a new phenomenon.
It has been advancing steadily since the Norman Conquest.
Today it has become embodied in custom, law and practice, the bedrock in fact of the chartered surveyor's practice.
Ms Minton has made a brave attempt to spell out some of the consequences of this social revolution in its most recent manifestation.
But it will take a lot more than Section 106 agreements and planning gain supplements to moderate its effects as she has so ably set out.
Even the combined forces of the Treasury, the Revenue and the ODPM have not so far closed with the problem in an effective and sustainable way.
The RICS has however done well to support the publication of such a vivid chronicle of our times, looked at from the standpoint of the land and property market.
• Chartered Institute of Building [CIOB]: contact details and other news
• Email this article to a colleague
• Register for the free Buildingtalk email newsletter
• Buildingtalk Home Page
Search the Pro-Talk network of sites
