A survey for CABE, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, which advises the Government on architecture commissioned a survey of 2500 owners of private new homes, which says that flats are too small.
* 44% said that there wasn’t enough space for small children to play safely in the kitchen while meals are being prepared;
* 47% per cent don’t have enough space for all the furniture they have, or would like to have;
* 35% said they didn’t have enough kitchen space for the appliances they need, such as a toaster or a microwave;
* 37% said they or their children do not have enough space to entertain guests privately;
* 57% don’t have enough storage; and
* 72% said they did not have enough space for the three small bins required to recycle properly.
All this is because the housing boom led to the rise of the ultra-small flat, but the crash in the market and new space standards are putting pressure on developers to come up with roomier designs – but if this is to be achieved without prices going through the roof it must be done at higher densities.
Statistics from warranty provider the NHBC show a move away from building detached houses and flats and towards terraced houses and semis. The major catalyst of this change is, of course, the crash in the housing market. The boom in flats was fuelled by demand from investors who bought them either to rent or to hold empty and resell. The crash in property prices, reduction in buy-to-let mortgages, and the reluctance of banks to lend on new flats that could fall further in value, has slashed demand for these properties.
The plight of the tiny flat is being exacerbated by a host of new regulations. The Lifetime Homes standard, which comes into effect nationally in 2013 for private housing, 2011 for social housing, and is already a planning requirement of some local authorities, broadly sets out rules for space and bathroom facilities to make homes easily adapted for people with mobility problems. In London, a new space standard has been proposed by the mayor for publicly funded housing from 2011. This states that flats cannot be smaller than 50m2, which would rule out some of the designs built in recent years. Architect Levitt Bernstein has produced a range of three-bedroom houses to use as examples of what can be done at densities higher than the 50 homes per hectare used for many terraces. The designs will appear in the Housing Design Handbook by David Levitt, to be published next month. Some take up much less space than conventional terraces and so might work on city sites once intended for flats. Designs are getting rid of connecting spaces, like hallways, and making homes much more open plan to meet the Lifetime Homes standard without making homes bigger.
Another idea to pack more homes onto sites is to build three-storey single-aspect, back-to-back terraces so the houses don’t have back gardens and are tall and narrow. Some second-floor rooms at the back of the houses in the centre of the terrace do not have windows and so get light and ventilation through lightwells. These designs, though they allow more houses per hectare than occurs with traditional designs, necessitate some compromises with a room being unsuitable as a well used bedroom, but fine for a couple who need an office/spare room.
So, will this move towards larger sizes and more rooms last? Probably as long as the Credit Crunch – the move away from buying flats towards houses also happened around the property slump in the nineties, then the house price boom came and brought with it tiny studios. The simple laws of supply and demand dictate that if flats double in size there will be half as many, and they will cost twice as much. So are you ready for your rent to go up in your larger flat?
Read more:
http://www.building.co.uk/story.asp?
http://www.cabe.org.uk/news/new-homes-are-too-small-for-everyday-life
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/propertynews/6008295/Rabbit-hutch-Britain-new-homes-too-cramped-survey-reveals.htm
