Housing association boss: ‘Avoid style wars when building homes’

The head of one of the UK’s leading housing associations has warned that misguided attempts to implement a “beautiful buildings” policy in the wake of recommendations by the government-backed Building Better, Building Beautiful commission could result in disastrous developments.

Paul Hackett, chief executive of Optivo, said the underlying emphasis on style in the BBBB commission’s interim report, published earlier this month, rather than what makes places work was worrying. “Style wars are deeply unhelpful. We’ve seen in the past how people get hung up on style.”

“Badly applied it could be a bit of a disaster. Any guidance needs to focus on the right things,” he said. Instead emphasis had to be on the building blocks of what made a successful place, like access to public space and affordable housing.

“We don’t want identikit developments that could be anywhere: that’s what we are trying to get away from,” Hackett said.

Ian Tant, president of the Royal Town Planning Institute, agreed: “Beautiful buildings in the wrong context don’t really do anything. It’s about getting context and overall planning of places right.”

And while the report encouraged local authorities to turn down “bad design” Tant pointed to the erosion of design skills within local government since councils stopped mass housebuilding in the eighties.

“It’s one thing saying they don’t like a design, another thing entirely being able to identify what they want in a design.”

The commission’s recommendation that each local authority should appoint a chief planner, who would have a seat in the council’s senior management team, was a step in the right direction though, Tant said.

The report sought to steer clear of any definition of architectural beauty, with commission chair Nick Boyes-Smith noting that it was difficult to assess KPIs around the issue of “beauty”, preferring to focus instead on creating good quality places.

The BBBB commission’s final report is expected to be published in December.