UK Housing - More than just a shack ?
 

The State of UK Housing Stock ?

Housing in the United Kingdom is an issue that always seems to be neglected by the political establishment. The last few decades have seen significant changes in who takes responsibility for housing stock. There has been a large shift from public to private ownership - and this has in most part been a great success for the people of the UK. Yet since the 1980's the UK leadership has failed to provide a framework that would allow for the continued building of  'affordable housing' on a significant scale. This February the UK Labour government issued a new outline for housing across the UK. According to the Government, the UK will require at least 3-4 million new homes within the next quarter century.

Why the UK needs more homes

   Demographically speaking the UK population is fragmenting into smaller units. Millions of people - especially the 'thirty somethings' are increasingly living alone (even those in relationships).  The UK is also faced with an ageing population. Within a few decades there will be millions more people who are retired and who live alone. These are not speculative social projections, but they are rooted in trends that are already well underway. Across the UK, 30% of all households are now occupied with just one person (ONS, 2001 Census). Are we looking at around 1 in 2 households being single-occupier homes by the middle of this century ? Well, it is certainly looking that way, unless something radical happens socially to UK culture (an almost certain 'non').
   

Crazy Prices

    UK House prices have continued an inexorable upward trend, a trend that has greatly outpaced general inflation levels.
The average price of a semi-detached home in the UK is £101,000 approx (and that was 2001 data) - that price is probably 10-15% higher as of writing.

What good have higher house prices done for the UK ?

   I see nothing to be gained from higher house prices. For some bizarre psychological reason, the UK population seem to think that general price rises in the shops are a bad thing, but that seeing house prices soar is a very beneficial thing. Who is benefiting from this ? Well in the short term, the sellers usually see massive capital gains, especially those who bought there home a decade or more ago. But critically, first time buyers are now being totally priced out of the market. Demand outstrips supply by a massive amount, and worst still, this situation looks set to stay unchanged for the foreseeable future.

    Observers have noted that many key workers in the public service are unable to afford even the most basic of housing. Teachers and hospital staff are unable to afford even a starter home on a basic salary of £20,000 and £15,500 respectively (2002 data approx.). This inability to afford even a basic home has lead to the realisation that teacher shortages for example are a result of potential trainees understanding that a teachers basic salary is simply not adequate to cover the expenses of a home. The Labour government do have a 'key worker homes' scheme, costing around £250 million. But of this money, they only expect to be able to supply 7-8000 homes during the next few years.  

To illustrate the program, let us take an example from the Welwyn/Hatfield Area in Herfordshire, which is a leafy suburban district lying just to the north of London.

   Consider the scenario of a single person on an average salary of £21,500, who is seeking to live in a one bedroom flat. Options are somewhat dire. The price of an average 1 bedroom flat is £89,000. Assuming a basic deposit of £10,000, the very most that person will be allowed to borrow is likely no more than 4 times their salary, i.e roughly a mortgage of  £85,000. So the absolute best this person will be able to afford is a property of £95,000. Typically though, the salary/property ratio can be as low as only 2.5 times annual salary. For people in some occupations, this would mean a maximum mortgage of around £50,000 - not enough to afford even the cheapest place in one of the more 'undesirable areas' of town.
   
     Instead of purchasing a property, what about Renting ? Well, typical monthly rent works out at around £475-575 ! This is a nightmarish situation for someone to face - especially someone who is single without the support of sharing the burden with a partner. Why do we have this crazy situation ? Well it is a case of simple supply and demand economics. In this case there are simply not enough places to meet demand, thus sellers are able to keep their selling prices/rental charges (relative to average earnings) unfairly high.  The really tragic thing is that this situation is not likely to change, and currently seems to be getting worst.
Currently average earnings are increasing at around 4-5% annually, but house prices (and rents) are increasing at around double this level. The gap is just getting worst as time goes by. How new trainee teachers, nurses, and other people in the public services are supposed to afford their own home is truly a saddening thought.

    The only hope of reversing this frustrating situation would be a new government that dedicates a massive amount of effort and resources to building single person apartments on a massive scale. We would not be talking about a building plan involving tens of thousands of new homes, but instead we would be looking at building a million or more small 1-2 bedroom sized apartments. Naturally such a scheme would be implemented over a few decades, but it would at least address some of  the demographic changes facing the UK.

Suburbia Close : Typical new UK housing

Time to build high again ?

   The 1960's saw the arrival of the infamous grey concrete tower block across the UK urban landscape. Today many of these blocks have been demolished and have made way for conventional terraced housing and low rise 1-2 bedroom apartment blocks. However, in the last few years there has been renewed interest in building high into the sky.

   Marks Barfield Architects (UK) are planning to build the first of a new design of 'tower blocks', the first of which will be somewhere in the London area. They are aiming for a tower 200 metres tall, which will comprise of some 500 apartments.  

   At first, many people will be (understandably) dismayed at the thought that tower blocks will start to appear once more in urban areas. Why though did tower block developments (almost always) fail in the first place though ?

   Any building needs decent regular maintenance, and it is clear that although the original buildings were made to some reasonable standard, local councils simply failed to invest in them each year. Within just a decade of completion, some of the blocks were falling into an appalling state. However, it does'nt have to be this way. The tower blocks that do remain across the UK, are generally in a good state. Some local councils have come to realise that with limited space available in the core city zone, maintaining and upgrading the older tower blocks is a worthwhile investment.
   It does appear unlikely though that the UK will ever see Towers start to appear in such numbers as they did immediately in the post war decades. In any case, any towers that are constructed should not be run by local councils. Councils are simply too short term minded to be trusted with such schemes, they failed grossly in the past, and should not be relief upon again. Instead, towers should be privately managed, or better still by non-profit organisations - preferably housing associations, who have shown to be quite proficient in maintaining low rise blocks to good standards. 
 

Utilities - time for a re-think ?

    The standard utilities each house is linked to have improved immensely over the last century. Essentially every house in suburbia now has direct access to a limitless supply of clean water, electricity, and varying communication links. The issue is that things have now reached a plateau in mainstream housing, and it must be wondered if this is 'as good as it gets ?'.
I would like to outline a few considerations...


Power

   First, let us be clear about domestic power consumption.

1. Gas supplies are very much a finite resource, current estimates for UK Gas reserves suggest that the gas will stop flowing sometime in the middle of this century. Fifty years may seem a long way off, but in the scale of things, it means our great grandchildren will probably never get to use a gas appliance in the home.
In any case, by 2010 it is expected that the UK will already become a net importer of Gas (DTI forecast) . The days of self-sufficiency in Gas are rapidly coming to an end for the UK.

2. Electricity : UK domestic power consumption has increased by about 30% since 1970. Considering all the power hungry technological appliances in our homes, this is actually quite a respectable figure.

Water

UK domestic consumers today have access to probably the cleanest water in the world. Most householders are able to have as much fresh water as they like, and use it as they like. One notable aspect is that of south east England where rainfall has become increasingly sporadic from time to time, resulting in some quite harsh usage restrictions.

   Grey water - water from the Bath and Shower, which is recycled within each domestic home. Instead of proceeding to the main waste water pipe, this 'grey' water from each bath or shower goes to a storage tank located within the house, and is then able to be used (primarily) as water for the toilet cistern.   
    This system is used in many places, including some coastal communities in the UK. Using clean filtered water for the toilet is quite simply a waste. Making use of this grey water can lead to significant efficiency gains for the householder, this is especially the case now that many UK homes are charged for water by the litre.
 

Communication

   Just 2 decades ago the average UK consumer had only one phone in the house. That phone had to be positioned where the phone engineer wanted it, the householder had no right to request a phone in any particular place. Having a land line phone in the bedroom was simply unheard of ! 

Things have certainly developed since then. Today almost every house has a land-line phone. As a side note, mobile phones now outnumber these fixed line phones.

The Internet is surely the most important technological development of the 20'th century. Today, more than haft the UK population have a domestic internet connection, and almost a million have net connections of 128kbps or more.

---

Summary Proposals

The following proposals would be a combination of legislative changes and direct government financing (part and whole) of various schemes.

1. Communication : Subsidising/tax breaks for internet suppliers to improve their main 'trunk' routes for communication.
* South Korea has the most internet wired population in the world - due entirely to govt. support in providing a decent underlying network of nationwide net trunk routes. Standard net speeds for the average Korean will soon be around 20Mbps, compared to the UK where the majority of people are still using 56kbps dial-up. The UK still lacks adequate network capacity to provide the population with high speed net access.

Domestic Solar power generation
A new UK housing standard ? 

 

2. Power
Solar panels on the majority of new homes. Current technology is now at a point where it should start to become 'pushed' as a general house standard. For instance, 5-10% of total home power consumption might be served by the home's own renewable power generation solar arrays - placed on the roof. 

3. Recycling Facilities

The fundamental problem that the government faces in getting people to recycle their rubbish is at the moment of disposal. The typical English kitchen is simply not designed for recycling. There is barely the space for a standard 40liter bin, never mind 2-3 of them. It would take only a minor design measure to ensure that each and every new home has adequate space for a few bins each for different types of waste - such as plastic, paper, glass. The German people manage to recycle 75% of their domestic waste, compared to around 15-20% in the UK.

4. Grey water.

New houses should come fully equipped with grey water storage tanks, along with the extra piping network necessary to make use of this water.
A further possible scheme is the collection of rainfall via the roof, for use as grey water. This water would be a further free method of using reducing the use of purified water, where grey water is  adequate.

5. Triple glazing

Windows are now double glazed as standard in almost all UK homes, yet surely we can aspire to do even better ?
Triple glazing would cut down on noise even further, and reduce heat loss in winter a further significant amount.

6. Noise insulation

All new homes will be fitted with noise insulation, this would be applied to all house to house border walls. In the case of apartment blocks, floors especially should be more solidly insulated. It seems crazy for high quality apartment blocks to be built, but then have absolutely no noise reduction structure between apartments.

7. Single person homes.

Of all the social issues facing the UK, the shortage of affordable housing is now becoming critical. The UK govt. should be assisting in the building of around 1.5-2.5 million single person apartments, built over a 15-25 year period.

8. New Towns - a renewed development.

Instead of cluttering already over-crowded cities/towns with new housing estates, a dozen or so brand new towns should be developed across the UK. Each town would be limited to around 75-100,000 people in size. Currently around 10% of the UK landmass is urbanised, another 12-15 new towns will not 'ruin the countryside'. The fact remains the UK is going to need a few million new homes, they must be built.
---

Respectable standards, but could do much more

   UK housing is certainly more than just a shack in many respects. Currently there are some very positive attributes that come with the average UK semi-detached home. Overall house design is of a far higher standard than in decades past. Energy efficiency in newly built homes stands at a reasonable level. Most new homes come with decent telecommunication lines pre-installed. 


 

A block of 4 One Bedroom Apartments
in UK Suburbia

   However, there are still some serious shortfalls in quality. Noise insulation is something that few new homes possess as standard. Grey water recycling remains a measure unused in almost all housing. Domestic power generation measures - such as Solar, are yet to be applied on a nationwide basis. The standard utilities that enter every UK home need to be re-considered. With some adequate planning, most homes should be at least meeting some of their own power demands.

   More than anything though, a new series of 'New Town' developments would seem to be the most useful strategy. Yes, such a proposal would meet some stiff resistance, yet a new set of 'towns from scratch' appear to be the more simple way of engendering a brand new style of UK household. The original New towns plan that was delivered in the post war era was one of the UK's best achievements in the last century. 

   What style of home do we want the UK homeowner in the mid 21'st century to be living in ? It is clear that more homes are going to be just single person homes, most new housing developments are going to have to be directed to towards single people, rather than the stereotypical 2.4 children with 2 parents household.

   Are we really meant to accept that UK housing standards have reached their peak ? I would suggest that it is time for a renewed 'New towns' development programme, and to rethink how homes should manage their energy needs and in recycling of waste.   


Contact Calrissian

Return to 

© 2003 Philip Calrissian
Last Updated : 08/10/04

World Population : 6.29 billion as at May 7'th 2003

US/World Population Clock
 

Related Websites

Housing Policy : Deputy Prime Minister Gov. site.

Dept. for Trade & Industry : Construction section

National Housing Federation : UK housing organisation

Design for Homes : Project Gallery, a selection of latest designs

Articles

Prescott's plans: Too little, too late? : BBC online summary of the latest Govt. housing policy

Home Truths : A radical policy overhaul is needed.

Teachers Priced out : Key workers unable to take up employment due to the lack of affordable housing.

Lofty solution to housing crisis : Guardian article

Streets in the Sky : Tower blocks in the 21'st century

Tower Power : Old housing blocks renewed

House Builders Promise Better Designs : Guardian.

UK Energy Supplies : DTI report to Parliament.
 

UK Stats

UK Population : 60.095 million (Mid-yr), 2003 estimate

Forecast : 2025 : 63.8 million (and falling slowly)

see : UK Population Trends  - US Census Bureau


 

UK Energy

UK Gas Reserves : 2.1 Trillion cm.
Note, reserves were guessed to be 1.1 trillion cm in 1973. The estimate of future extractable reserves is quite variable.

Yearly Gas usage : (90Mtoe 1999  , 120Mtoe 2020 projection)
* Mtoe = oil equivalent

UK House Prices

Source : The Land Registry, 2001 Census, ONS
 

UK Communications connections

Land line phones : 34.8 million (1997)
Mobile phones : 43.5 million (end 1998)

Internet Users: 34.3 million (2002)

Data sourced :  CIA Handbook


 

Time to Build high again ?