Planning for Housing: Process
The question answered is this essay is question number three in the Housing Design and Construction section shown below:
“How will government, national and local, deliver ‘greener’ housing in the years ahead? What advantages (and drawbacks) does a locally negotiated approach have over stricter regulation, and vice versa?”
Introduction
Climate change and global warming have over the recent past necessitated the need to embrace ‘greener’ housing globally, and the UK government both at national and local level has been in the forefront together with many other countries across the world to embrace the concept of ‘greener’ housing in their attempts to significantly reduce their energy consumption and carbon emissions, the two leading factors believed to induce climate change and global warming (Allen and Iano, 2008). Thus, in the years ahead the government of UK at both national and local levels intends to make sure it delivers ‘greener’ housing characterised by significant reductions in their energy consumption and carbon emissions, and has put various mechanisms in place to enable the achievement of this goal (Shucksmith, 1990).
In this essay, the principles and concepts of ‘greener’ housing will be discussed. This will be followed by a discussion of the green buildings rating system as well as the government policy that is likely to promote delivery of ‘greener’ housing in UK. The projects that will contribute to delivery of ‘greener’ housing in UK have also been discussed in this essay followed by a discussion of the advantages and drawbacks of locally negotiated approach over stricter regulation. The last section of the essay is the conclusion which summarises the main arguments.
The principles and concepts of ‘greener’ housing
The most appropriate way through which the government of UK will be able to deliver ‘greener’ housing is by embracing the concept of green building, also known as sustainable building or green construction. This is mainly because it is a structure which allows use of process that is resource-efficient and environment friendly throughout the life-cycle of a building mostly during its construction as well as during the utilisation phase of the building (Golland and Blake, 2004). However, ‘greener’ housing covers the entire life-cycle of a building ranging from design, actual construction, operation, renovation, maintenance and eventual demolition. In order for the government of UK to achieve the goal of delivering ‘greener’ housing, there must be close cooperation between all the planning for housing stakeholders both at national and local level including the design teams, the architects, the engineers, the contactors, regulation bodies, clients (both public and private) and law enforcement agencies (Allen and Iano, 2008).
As the government of UK both nationally and locally strive to deliver ‘greener’ housing, it is important to note that this is only achievable through implementation of the necessary policies and regulations as well as adopting appropriate mechanisms such as new technologies in design, construction and operation (Allen and Iano, 2008). However, despite the fact that new technologies are being developed constantly for the purpose of complementing currently the existing practices in construction of ‘greener’ houses, the common objective of designing green buildings to achieve significant reductions in the overall impact of the buildings on natural environment and human health (Yan and Plainiotis, 2006).
Green building rating systems
Globally there are various green building codes and standards, such as the International Green Construction Code and the International Code Council’s draft which are sets of rules created by organisations that develop standards in order to establish minimum requirements for green building elements such as materials or cooling and heating (BREEAM, 2014). Therefore, as a result of this different countries have developed various building environmental assessment tools where some of the major ones which are currently in use including the BREEAM of UK, which plays a crucial role in helping consumers in the determination of a structure’s environmental performance level (BREEAM, 2014). As a result the government of UK has been in the forefront towards making sure that all current buildings and the ones to be built in the years ahead adhere to the laid down procedures and regulations as outlined by BREEAM. By doing so the government ensures that in future there is no particular house that will be built without the certification from BREEAM eventually making sure that it indirectly delivers ‘greener’ housing through promotion of compliance of the BREEAM regulations in all public and private building as well as commercial and residential houses (BREEAM, 2014).
BREEAM which purports to be the world’s leading design and assessment method for sustainable buildings mostly ensures that all the buildings regulations that are outlined are adhered to at all times. BREEAM also operates a green building rating system which awards credits for optional building features for supporting green design in categories such as water conservation, efficient in energy consumption, building site location and maintenance, reduction in building materials, as well as occupant comfort and health. Therefore, most of the building in future will be struggling to achieve the highest number of credits because number of credits attained by a particular generally determines its level of achievement (BREEAM, 2014). This implies that if the government of UK continue to collaboratively work with BREEAM to establish the necessary regulations the government shall make tremendous strides towards delivering ‘greener’ housing because BREEAM will be playing an oversight and supervision role through government’s facilitation (Gallent and Robinson, 2012).
Government policy that is likely to promote delivery of ‘greener’ housing in UK
The government of UK has so far embraced various policies that are aimed at making sure that it delivers ‘greener’ housing through a continuous improvement on the number and nature of the houses built. Among these policies the one that has been aggressively pursued to deliver ‘greener’ housing is the government’s house-building policy of 2005. In this policy, the government of UK targets to deliver 180,000 a year by year by 2016. However, through the Green Paper of July 2007, the government of UK targets to build about 3 million ‘greener’ homes, where after 2016 240,000 will be built every year (House of Commons, 2009). However, despite that fact that the houses that being built currently up to 2016 are not absolutely greener, the government is expected to make sure that those that will be built from 2016 onwards through the house-building policy will achieve low to zero carbon dioxide emissions (House of Commons, 2009). Thus, in order to make sure that the delivered ‘greener’ housing are sustainable, the government will be required to prioritise on mitigating any environmental impacts that may accrue from the increased house building rather than aiming at only increasing house building targets without proper measures to ensure ‘greener’ housing is delivered in the years ahead. This policy will have tremendous impacts on making sure the government delivers ‘greener’ housing because it provides mechanisms that address the issue of environmental impact (House of Commons, 2009).
In this regards, the National and Planning Advice Unit and the Department for Communities and Local Government have collaboratively given the issue of delivering ‘greener’ housing a priority. This has been achieved through regular reviews of the house-building targets new homes in order to make sure that they are attributable to the attempts of the government’s efforts to significantly reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emissions to range from low to zero. This will further be supported by the fact that the government of UK announced in December 2006 that from 2016 all new homes to be built within the house-building policy to be zero carbon (House of Commons, 2009). The government has frequently reiterated that the set date for zero carbon standards despite been challenging it will be achieved, and insisted that if this date was to be set earlier than the set date it could jeopardise the overall number of homes to be built (House of Commons, 2009). The government asserts on the importance of progressive tightening of building regulations over time rather tightening them instantaneously in order to allow effective and smooth movement of house-building industry towards achieving zero carbon standards as well as helping them to sample new construction technologies and techniques (Gallent, 2005). This policy clearly outlines the government priorities which are to build out more homes as well as making sure that the new homes which are built are zero carbon, which favours building of more greener homes which in future will allow the government to deliver ‘greener’ housing in the years ahead in a consistent manner (House of Commons, 2009).
Projects that will contribute to delivery of ‘greener’ housing in UK
The green homes project is one of the project which has been launched by the government of UK in conjunction with the local governments and the private sector in order to enable the refurbishment of older buildings in an affordable and easy way, in order to significantly reduce carbon emissions and make them more efficient to use o operate (The Green House Project, 2014). This is one strategy to ensure that both national and local governments deliver ‘greener’ housing in the years ahead. Considering that the project promotes the importance of sustainable refurbishment, by providing easy access to advice, information, products, and technologies to the developers planning to improve to their properties into ‘greener’ houses has encouraged most of them to embark on improving their houses, a trend that is expected to continue in future with the support of both national and local governments in their attempts to deliver ‘greener’ housing (Satsangi et al., 2010; The Green House Project, 2014).
Scotland has also embarked on an initiative to make sure that in the coming years it will be able to deliver ‘greener’ housing, both residential and commercial (Scottish Government, 2014). For instance, the Greener Homes Prospectus by the Scottish Government supports the efforts of the government in the delivery of the homes that are affordable through a consultation on Scotland’s Sustainable Housing Strategy aimed at considering the ways through which the government will deliver a major step-change in the provision of energy efficient homes which can be regarded ‘greener’ housing by 2030 (Scottish Government, 2014).
This mega project towards delivery of ‘greener’ housing in the years ahead will be implemented through the Greener Homes Innovation Scheme which has so far been allocated a £10 million Fund seeking to attract bid applications capable of offering new approaches in order to deliver ‘greener’ housing which are energy efficient and affordable using innovative modern construction methods (Scottish Government, 2014). For the Scottish Government to effectively deliver ‘greener’ housing through Greener Homes Innovation Scheme it is seeking to support multiple proposals offering new approaches to fund and deliver affordable ‘greener’ housing (Scottish Government, 2014). This is attributable to the fact that the bids will be envisaged to provide options for greener homes and quality sustainable through renovation or new; promote modern construction methods that are capable of meeting or exceeding the Scottish Building Standards Silver Level of Sustainability; support priorities for investment and housing strategy by the local authorities; ensuring that low and zero carbon generating technologies (LZCGT) are embraced in the houses to be designed in order to foster ‘greener’ housing, even though the government is also open to considering fabric first solutions (Scottish Government, 2014).
The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) is a vibrant project aimed at creating awareness among the England citizens to stand up for the countryside and repute or resist any attempts by public organisations or private investors to put up net houses on the green belts (Campaign to Protect Rural England, 2014). The necessity to defend green belts has arisen from the fact that everyone in the country needs a place to live, but there are no appropriate mechanisms to prevent urban from sprawling into the only green spaces remaining in England because currently more countryside in England is covered by house-building compared to any other kind of development (Gallent and Tewdwr-Jones, 2007). Previous and continuing house building without addressing the issue of climate change which can be addressed by embracing modern construction technologies that advocate for ‘greener’ housing will only worsen the situation, but the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) aims to ensure that urban areas are regenerated or the construction of new houses takes place in the ‘brownfield’ sites (Campaign to Protect Rural England, 2014).
Therefore, as successive national and local governments continue to prioritise new house-building, it will be important for them to continue building on the ‘brownfield’ sites without interfering with the ‘green belts’ in order to deliver ‘greener’ housing (Campaign to Protect Rural England, 2014). Moreover, the local governments should shun incentives from the national government and private investors in order for them to put up new developments on ‘green belts’ because this will mean more strain on water resources, increased emissions of climate changing greenhouse gases as well as increased road traffic and congestion (Campaign to Protect Rural England, 2014). The local government will however, have a solution to this challenge by discouraging building of new houses on the Greenfield sites, while at the same time encouraging building on the brownfield sites as well as putting pressure on those who intend to build houses to support regeneration of the urban areas in order to make sure that they renovate houses in the urban centres into sustainable standards pleasant for many people living in urban areas (Campaign to Protect Rural England, 2014).
Advantages and drawbacks of locally negotiated approach over stricter regulations
Locally negotiated approach over stricter regulations has been used for a while and it has its own advantages and drawbacks. For instance, the advantages of this approach are that it can be done any time at the convenience of the parties involved (Carmona et al., 2003). Moreover, this approach also has the advantages of avoiding the unnecessary costs and complexity associated with the stricter regulations in the house-building process. However, the drawback of the locally negotiated approach over stricter regulations is that sometimes it may result to hastily negotiated deals that do not meet the minimum construction standards, something which may eventually return to haunt the developer (Wellings, 2006). The other drawback is that, sometimes the developers do not strictly adhere to what is agreed in local negotiations which sometimes results to construction of substandard houses. On contrary or vice versa the stricter regulations enables fundamental review of the building regulations framework by government as well as voluntary housing standards aimed at rationalising the large number of codes, rules, regulations, standards, and guidance. However, this has the drawback of being costly and complex (Satsangi et al., 2010).
Conclusion
In conclusion, it has been clearly shown that the government of UK has the potential to deliver ‘greener’ housing in the future, if the policies, strategies, and projects which have already been initiated will be fully and appropriately implemented. Also it is important to note that locally negotiated approach would be essential if done with good faith because it would prevent the unnecessary costs and complexity associated with stricter regulations.
References
Adams, D. and Watkins, C. (2002) Greenfields, Brownfields and Housing Development, London: Blackwell Publishing.
Allen, E., and Iano, J. (2008) Fundamentals of building construction: materials and methods, Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
BREEAM, (2014) About BREEAM, Retrieved on 7th January 2014 from: http://www.breeam.org/
Campaign to Protect Rural England, (2014) Our countryside is vanishing under new housing, Retrieved on 7th January 2014 from: http://www.cpre.org.uk/what-we-do/housing-and-planning/housing/the-issues
Carmona, M., Carmona, S. and Gallent, N. (2003) Delivering New Homes: Processes, Planners and Providers, London: Routledge.
DCLG (2007a) Homes for the Future: More Affordable, More Sustainable, DLCG: London.
Gallent, N. (2005), Regional Housing Figures in England: Policy, Politics and Ownership, Housing Studies, Vol.20 Issue 6, pp.973-988.
Gallent, N. and Tewdwr-Jones, M. (2007) Decent Homes for All: Reviewing Planning’s Role in Housing Provision, London: Routledge.
Gallent, N. and Robinson, S. (2012) Neighbourhood Planning, Bristol: Policy Press.
Golland, A. and Blake, R. (2004) (Eds) Housing Development: Theory, Process and Practice, London: Routledge.
House of Commons, (2009) Greener Homes for the Future? An environmental analysis of the Government’s house-building plans. Environmental Audit Committee’s report; May 2009.
Satsangi, M., Gallent, N., Bevan, M. (2010) The Rural Housing Question: Communities and Planning in Britain’s Countrysides, Bristol: The Policy Press.
Shucksmith, M. (1990) Housebuilding in Britain’s Countryside, London: Routledge.
The Green House Project, (2014) About the Green House Project, Retrieved on 7th January 2014 from: http://www.greenhouseproject.co.uk/about/project-aims/
The Scottish Government, (2014) Greener Homes Innovation Scheme. Retrieved on 7th January 2014 from: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Built-Environment/Housing/sustainable/largescale
Wellings, F. (2006) British Housebuilders: History and Analysis, London: Blackwell Publishing.
Yan, J., and Plainiotis, S. (2006) Design for Sustainability, Beijing: China Architecture and Building Press.
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