Quantifying the extent of space shortages: English dwellings (original) (raw)
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2019
Adaptive reuse of office buildings into apartments has been touted as a successful regeneration model, tackling the blight of vacant commercial premises whilst also delivering new housing. Since 2013, office-to-residential conversions have been classed as ‘permitted development’ in England: a pared-down ‘prior approval’ process allows planning authorities to assess only limited aspects of proposals compared to normal planning applications. Research has shown a vast increase in conversion activity resulting from these reforms, but many commentators have expressed concerns over poor housing standards and the removal of occupied space from office markets. With previous studies focusing mostly on economic and environmental aspects of conversions, and much commentary disproportionately dominated by outcomes in the South East, this dissertation focuses instead on social impacts in the northern city of Newcastle upon Tyne. A mixed-methods research approach was employed, involving interviews and questionnaire research with various stakeholders connected with two case study conversion schemes. Secondary data analysis of planning documents was also used to estimate how widespread conversion activity has been in Newcastle as a whole. Findings demonstrate that Newcastle has been less severely affected by permitted development than other cities, with case study schemes generally considered to be of adequate quality. However, conversion activity is predominantly delivering housing for temporary residents which fails to integrate into localities and build strong communities. It is recommended that additional requirements be added to the prior approval process in order to ensure consistent housing quality and social integration in future office conversions.
Assessing the risks of dampness and mould growth in renovated properties
A large portion of the UK housing stock was built before the introduction of the 1989’s building regulations in which insulated cavity walls became mandatory. It is estimated that 65% of the UK housing stock have uninsulated walls and 49% have single glazed leaky windows making them inefficient in terms of energy performance. There have been great efforts during the recent years to improve the quality and energy performance of such buildings through retrofitting/refurbishment not only to improve the living standards of their occupants but also to achieve UK’s carbon emission targets for 2050. Refurbishing such buildings to improve their quality/energy performance may, at the same time, increase the risk of poor indoor air quality (IAQ), condensation, dampness, and mould growth in these buildings. Many refurbished housing stock in the UK are facing similar problems. Damp and mould issues affect between 30-50% of new or refurbished buildings. There is therefore a need for appropriate ...
The Great British Housing Crisis (Capital and Class)
Noting the recent resurgence of housing as a political issue, this article takes a historic view of the origins of the current housing crisis. While the foundations of the contemporary housing system were laid in the period following the First World War, the roots of the crisis lie in two developments in the 1980s: the privatisation of the social housing stock through the Right to Buy and the growth of mortgage lending in response to financial liberalisation. These two changes combined to produce an upsurge in ground rent on residential land and a restructuring of housing consumption and production around the pursuit of this ground rent. This article ends by outlining a range of policy measures and considering the prospects for their implementation.
The projected climate change-induced rise in external temperatures is expected to lead to an increase of excess heat-related health risks. The comfort and health impacts associated with a warming climate for city dwellers, in particular, is of increasing concern due to interconnected phenomena, such as the urban heat island, social deprivation and synergistic effects of heat waves and outdoor air pollution. Among the most severely affected are expected to be the elderly, the chronically ill and the socially deprived population groups of the inner cities. Whilst there has been a wealth of studies to date investigating the health effects of outdoor weather and pollution, the impact of indoor environment exposure is poorly understood. Furthermore, the majority of existing indoor environment modelling studies assume 'standard occupancy' profiles, which may be markedly different to the lifestyle of elderly, more vulnerable individuals. This paper presents preliminary results of a...
Fuel Poverty in England: Historical inevitability or avoidable social ill?
Fuel Poverty, namely the inability for a household to maintain the home at an adequate level of warmth and at a reasonable cost, has only recently been formally accepted and adopted by the English government. The definition itself has grown from initial work in the late 1970‟s and the seminal research of Brenda Boardman in the late 1980‟s and early 1990‟s. It wasn‟t until the Labour party were elected in 1997 that the term was acceptable parlance within government and only in 2000 was any legislation introduced to tackle this social issue. Many of the drivers of fuel poverty, particularly the energy inefficiency of the English housing stock find their roots in social attitudes and policy failings dating back to the industrial revolution, with potential issues highlighted to government in 1946. We consider the development of the concept of fuel poverty and its drivers in order to explore whether the current prevalence of fuel poverty in England was an inevitable side-effect of our historical public health and housing legacy or a result of government social policy inaction. Our analysis of the extant literature shows that a combination of both of these factors is likely to have resulted in the current fuel poverty picture, however government inaction has served to unnecessarily exacerbate the current figures in England.
2013
The aim of the report was to produce recommendations for occupants to undertake, concerning passive changes to the building design and changing occupant activity to reduce overheating in 19651980 semi-detached dwellings. To do so, interventions in these two topics were tested to reduce overheating on a post 2010 Building Regulations base case. This base case and interventions simulations were developed using IES software. To measure the level of overheating, internally, a degree hours over the CIBSE overheating threshold (CIBSE, 2006) method was used. The basic upgrades to the building implementing the 2010 Building Regulation were found to decrease the total degree hours. When changed to two elderly (vulnerable) occupants, the total degree hours decreased overall. Other interventions that were found to decrease the total degree hours below the 2010 Building Regulation model were the updated appliances/occupancy trends, the cross ventilation strategy, north orientation and most prominently, the nigh time ventilation. A combined model of these interventions were then able to remove all degree hours beyond the threshold, even in a heat wave simulation; for both occupancy types. As well as the combined intervention model, external wall paint shutters and curtains (sourced from previous research) are recommended for reducing overheating, based on ease-of-use and cost.