A short history of space and construction standards for homes

The background of the current building and space standards is important in understanding the Joint Equity and Options for Homes approach to designing and building homes for people.

The quality of housing in London has continually been shaped by some form of local and national regulation. The first building regulations in the UK stem from the London Building Act of 1667 established following the Great Fire of London, which specified that all houses were to be built in brick or stone and the number of storeys, width of walls, and width of streets allowed within the walled City of London.

The London Buildings Acts in the 19th century set out specific provisions for new housing, including street widths, thickness of walls, room heights, minimum size for back gardens, and the placing and design of chimneys, fireplaces and drains.

Planning and housing policy originated from the public health movement towards the end of the 19th century and a concern that public intervention, both through regulatory standards and direct public sector development, were necessary if overcrowding and disease were to be overcome.

The Public Health Act of 1875 had a direct influence on the type of housing built, by requiring local authorities to implement regulations, or ‘bye-laws’, that each house should be self-contained with its own sanitation and water.

By 1880, and further influenced by the philanthropic movement, most towns had similar bye-law regulations: streets a minimum of 36 feet (11 meters) wide, 150 square feet (14 sq. m.) of unbuilt space at the rear of each house, a minimum room height of 8 feet (2.4 m), a lavatory and drainage, and windows of a certain size in relation to rooms

By the end of the 19th century, the dominant form of housing in the UK became the ‘bye law’ terraced house, with 2.5 million built between 1870 and 1910.

In 1911 80% of the UK housing stock was privately rented. Landlords often built working class housing to the lowest possible standards.

Change came as a result of several demands:

• Public health and bye-law movements which set basic standards for housing, especially in terms of space and access
• Growth of the national infrastructure - water, sewerage, railways, all of which made
• work and home locations more flexible, and amenable
• Philanthropy - for example Octavia Hill and the Peabody Trust
• Provision of housing by councils.

In 1918, the Government commissioned the Tudor Walters Committee to review housing conditions and make recommendations regarding the design and layout of new homes to be built following the First World War.

The Tudor Walters report, based on the standards and densities of the Garden Cities movement, recommended that every house should contain three ground floor rooms (a living room, parlour and scullery), at least three bedrooms (one of which must take two beds), and a bathroom and larder. These were the first set of space standards applied to the construction of new homes, based on the number of rooms provided.

Recommendations were also made in regards to external appearance and layout – houses were to be built as cottages set amongst front and back gardens, built in culde-sacs rather than long terraces at densities of 12 dwellings per acre, with a 21 m minimum distance between facing rows of houses. The report’s recommendations were adopted in the 1919 Housing Act and applied to new council housing.

However, the primary drive, during this period was for high numbers and that meant sacrificing many things we would see as essential. The bathroom was often omitted and a bath fitted in the kitchen and the rooms got generally smaller.

Of course in the 1960’s many of these houses were modernised and bathrooms were added, at significant cost.

Toward the end of the Second World War, the Government commissioned another housing review, the Dudley Report of 1944, to assess housing standards post-Tudor Walters in preparation for peace time re-construction.

The Report provided the basis for the 1944 Housing Manual, which set out guidance to local authorities on housing and estate design, covering site layout, density, house types, size of rooms, flats, efficiency in building, new methods and materials, heat, insulation, etc. The peace time Labour Government adopted

“ A separate house for every family that wants one”

This led to a building boom in both the public and private sectors and the subsequent 1949 Housing Manual called for a greater variety of dwelling types and higher space standards than the 1944 Manual, with the requirement for a 3-bedroom house increasing from the previous 800-900 sq ft benchmark to 900-950 sq ft.

Despite limitations and unprecedented demand, the standards of housing were generally high, with average space standards reaching their highest in 1949.

In 1961, the Ministry of Housing and Local Government published the influential report of the Parker Morris Committee, Homes for Today and Tomorrow.

This set out the need for space standards, which for the first time were derived from a review of how residents actually used their homes and its different rooms. The report also highlighted the need for storage space, and called for all rooms in the house to be heated.

Unlike previous standards that sought to influence the form and appearance of housing being built, the report’s main concern was the internal arrangement of the home to provide for resident needs in response to the impacts of a fast changing and increasingly affluent society.

The Parker Morris standards were further developed by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government in Design Bulletin 6 published in 1963.

This illustrated the space and furniture requirements for family and personal activities along with the space required to use and move around furniture, and included dwelling plans to illustrate the approach and standards recommended by Parker Morris.

This was also a period in which a considerable amount of good practice guidance was published, including the Greater London Council’s Generic House Plans and Housing Layout guidance, also based on the Parker Morris standards.

The Parker Morris standards were initially used as good practice guidance throughout the 1960s until they were made mandatory for the new towns in 1967 and for all new council housing in 1969. The HATC report on Housing Space Standards for the GLA notes that this was a period when public sector house building exceeded private for several years; however the adoption of dwelling space standards did not always lead to well designed, popular housing.

This was also the era of multi-storey, industrialised building, Radburn layouts, etc many of which proved unpopular. This highlights that good quality design requires not just good space standards, but also good site planning and good quality construction’

The minimum areas in the Parker Morris report quickly became maxima for public subsidy purposes, once set against the Government's Housing Cost Yardstick. The Parker Morris standards were abolished in 1980 due to cuts in public expenditure; however they are still frequently cited even today as a good practice benchmark.

During the 1980s, as Local Authority house building significantly declined, ‘Housing Associations’ emerged to become the main provider of new social housing. New homes were built to guidelines set out by the Housing Corporation in the 1983 document Design and Contract Criteria, which largely equated with the Parker Morris standards.

By 1987, as housing grant gradually decreased, cost efficiency was prioritised over and above adherence to housing quality criteria

In the early 1990s, a drop in Housing Association quality standards in England began to be identified by a number of research reports, showing that 68% of Housing Association properties built in 1991/1992 fell below Parker Morris standards by more than 5%, as well as reductions in storage, circulation space, and amenities and even standards of construction materials and workmanship

The Housing Corporation set out to reverse the deterioration of quality standards by developing its Scheme Development Standards (SDS) in 1993. The SDS core performance standards defined the minimum that was expected in a housing development funded through social housing grant.

These have since been updated, using the Housing Quality Indicators scoring system that currently applies to grant funded housing and incorporates criteria such as space standards.

The 1990s also saw the emergence of greater awareness of the rights of people with disabilities and housing standards have moved to address accessibility, encouraged by the work of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the development of ‘Lifetime Homes’ standard which aims to ensure that new homes are designed to be able to adapt to the changing needs of their occupants, particularly in later life. This lead has been followed up through Building Regulations in response to the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act, where certain elements of the Lifetime Homes standard such as entrances with level access have been legislated for in private sector homes. The London Plan has also adopted the full Lifetime Homes standard as planning policy for all new homes in London

Focus has also shifted to the emergence of place-making and urban design criteria as key components in creating good housing. Though the planning system has only recently adopted this wider design agenda, with a general acceptance that urban design, rather than architecture, represents the most appropriate and effective means through which local authorities can influence the quality of new developments.

Acceptance of the role for urban design has come slowly, with urban design mentioned for the first time in planning guidance in 1996 layout and massing and legibility and connectivity of the public realm, have since been embedded within the planning system through the publication of By Design and Planning Policy Statement 3 (Housing) and form a key part of

More recently, environmental sustainability and resource efficiency have taken a central role in shaping the standards debate and the quality of all new homes, in response to predicted changes in climate due to carbon emissions.

At present, Government has a target of all new homes being zero carbon by 2016, and the Code for Sustainable Homes was launched in December 2006 to assess the environmental performance of new build housing.

Housing standards in the UK have frequently been used in the past to improve the quality of new housing, arising from social and public health concerns of poor quality housing to more recent concerns in relation to housing’s contribution to climate change.

Standards have also been used to set the benchmark to be achieved in periods of major house building. At times, the housing standards set have been quite prescriptive, impacting directly on the form and type of housing.

However, twentieth century housing has been typified by higher standards for public sector housing provision, including the application of minimum space standards at various periods since 1919. This trend of higher standards for publicly funded housing continues to this day and private developers need to learn from the public housing sector.

The main lesson is that excellent design, both space and use, leads to internal and external living spaces that benefit the occupier and long term investment growth.