To think U.K. houses and flats are not fit for purpose?

[Notcontent]

So - I know that there is a housing shortage - but I think too much forces is on getting houses and flats built no matter how small/inadequate, which can cause huge problems for the people living there.

The U.K. has some of the smallest houses in Europe. I am not saying people need huge houses - far from it actually. But homes should have:

• adequate heat and sound insulation
• rooms that are big enough for storage, etc
• somewhere for people to dry their clothes
• etc

I am not an architect but I am interested in this as I have lived in a few different countries, in different houses and flats, and have experienced first hand how small things in house design can make a huge difference to people’s quality of life.

Agree. We had to store our bikes in our bedroom when we lived in our 2 bed flat, which was actually very large compared to the one we had before. It was annoying because there was a massive communal hallway type space which would not have blocked any entrance or whatever if we left our bikes there but we weren't allowed to because of fire risks

Builders were allowed to leave their wood and building materials there though.

Also Windows
Sony houses i went to view had 0 windows on the whole side of the house or just a tiny one.
we didn't actually have a window in our flat bathroom so a few times we had power cuts in the bath and it was completely black. very tricky to get the children out so I could find a torch
we ended up keeping candles and a lighter in there.

Amazing people keep saying UK is a tiny country with no space, it's just not true. Countries like Belgium and Holland are much smaller and have greater population density. About 7% of the UK is built on.

The problem isn't space it's the will to improve ordinary homes.

We live in a 4 bed flat in Italy. It is not very beautiful (outside!) but all the bedrooms are good-sized doubles and there is plenty of storage as well as a cellar for each flat for bikes, luggage etc. When we were looking it was clear that even here rooms have got smaller over the last few decades and ceilings lower. (Ours are 3 metres which really makes it seem more spacious plus we have cupboards in the hall that go up to the ceiling). The only thing I would change* is the bathroom size - both are tiny but I guess that wasn't a priority.

*well, I would also love a utility room and a garden but that would be a completely different place!

Land is limited and expensive.

No. No, no, no, no, no. I was born in Macau (population density c.21,000 per square kilometre) and grew up in Hong Kong (comparatively empty at 6,700/km2). There are regular posters here who come from Singapore (8,000/km2). Even the Dutch and Israelis (457/km2 and 380/km2 respectively) would howl at the idea that the 277 folk crammed on to each square kilometre of the UK are somehow struggling with limited land.

Less than 10% of the UK is built on and almost all of that is not housing anyway: just 2% of England's land surface is covered in buildings of all types - houses, shops, offices, factories, greenhouses - and that falls to 1.4% for the whole UK. We gain more than that much land every day when the tide goes out.

Facts here: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41901297

The problem is that building land is rationed by the government through the planning system and scarcity of planning permission translates fairly directly into smaller homes. There are any number of reasons why this might be the case, but the most obvious one to me is that the UK's education system and economy is now so poor that for decades successive governments have deliberately opted to use house price inflation to deliver 'increasing wealth' because labour productivity certainly doesn't.

Well, okay: land, in the places where most people want to live, is limited and expensive. I don’t think there’s any point talking about how much of the UK isn’t actually built on, when it’s the built on land where people want to be. For a variety of reasons, some of them solveable with enough political will, some of them solveable by an attitudinal shift in how we live - which I think has to include a reduction in space provided for parking multiple vehicles per household, not an increase.

My council flat hasn't got room in the kitchen for a fridge freezer, Mine is in a tiny room at the other end of the flat which when you are disabled doesn't help. The house I owned when I was married was a 3 bed ex council & was massive with a downstairs toilet, utility room, understairs cupboard for coats & vacuum, fitted wardrobes & airing cupboard in one bedroom, fitted wardrobes in the smallest room. It was insulated so well we had to have the upstairs windows open right through the winter & the fuel bills were very low. Compared to my flat where the heating needs to be on the highest setting from September to April it was great to live in .

Agreed with other posters that small homes are understandable but terrible design that wastes space, zero storage, awful insulation standards etc less so.

I do agree though that people will buy houses with multiple toilets whereas I've accepted I will never get back the money I spent on my roof - I think probably the original tiles from 1885, could see the sky through it, now well insulated and ready for the next 100 years, but no buyer will care.

Yanbu. We were recently looking at a new build as we are planning to downsize - but it was a step too far.

Now looking at an older property that needs work, but has a much bigger downstairs, front & back gardens parking and a garage.

It wouldn't be so bad if we lived in warmer climate and spent less time indoors.

The only real attempt there has ever been to dictate minimum standards for housing size in the UK was the Parker Morris Committee in 1961 which laid down minimum floor space requirements based on average furniture sizes (of the time) and the space needed to move around it and perform ordinary household activities.

Given that since then households have acquired things like washing machines, dishwashers, computers and desks, many more clothes and toys than a typical household had 60 years ago, and average furniture itself has grown larger (as, indeed, have Brits) you'd have thought there might sensibly been an attempt to revise the "Parker Morris standards" but they were only ever mandatory in the public sector, and scrapped in 1980 anyway. In reality, for much private housebuilding Parker Morris was effectively a maximum guidance rather than a minimum requirement and whereas a family home in the UK averaged 153 square metres in the 1920s that had fallen to under 97 m2 in 2014.

Minimum space standards, of course, are entirely normal in the rest of Europe, even in much more densely populated countries than this.

YANBU, we took a tape measure with us on a second viewing in a new build show home. The bed in the 'third bedroom' was much smaller than a standard single. I also couldn't find a place to keep the Hoover or even our towels as there were no cupboards, even the under stairs cupboard had a loo shoved in it.
In the end we bought a 1950s semi, unlike a new build it's not pretty and it needed some TLC but we have so much space, a lovely garden and storage!

Agreed, I live in a less than fashionable ex-council 50's semi which is fantastic size-wise compared with newer builds, have viewed both, also great room in the roof, big garden (for two sheds), just built sensibly. My previous house was similar, with communal as well as individual gardens and it's lovely to live somewhere like that. I drive onto some of the newer more expensive estates just built in the last year or two and I'm horrified at how squashed up they are and there isn't even enough parking for the cars, so no-one can pass each other and it's like a maze. But they keep being built and someone is buying them, through lack of other options I guess.

Interesting article here, suggesting that if you fix housing then it unlocks a lot of potential elsewhere in the economy. We really need to tackle the insidious British Nimbyism disease.

www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jan/17/the-big-idea-could-fixing-housing-fix-everything-else-too

I'm not a big fan of new builds but I'd say they have much better use of space than older houses. Older houses have kitchens and bathrooms added in where they werent before and often ill thought-out extensions.

My home is an extended two bed semi. Nowhere has a cupboard to hide away either the Hoover or the ironing board. The slightly taller kitchen cupboard still isn't big enough. Why kitchens do not get designed with all this in mind is baffling.

@SE123

I'm not a big fan of new builds but I'd say they have much better use of space than older houses. Older houses have kitchens and bathrooms added in where they werent before and often ill thought-out extensions.

I would agree with that - our last house was a new build and really packed things in - downstairs loo and an en-suite shower upstairs in what was quite a small house.

Our current house is 1960s and has quite small rooms but is built on a wide road with lots of space. We have quite a small garden but some of the other plots are quite generous.

The thing I really don't like about new build estates is how close the houses are to one another and how narrow the roads are. I don't need a big garden because I don't like gardening, but a bit of space between houses is a must!

As for Nimbyism, I think it's chicken and egg. Most of the time people do appreciate there is a need for some new homes (not as many as claimed, as we have so many disused ones which should be renovated and brought back into use and so many second homes too) but know that they will be expensive, crammed together and low quality.

I think where developments are well thought out they attract much less opposition especially if also on brownfield sites.

PPs who say the UK has lots of available land that is unbuilt on, may not realise that they are talking about large areas such as Scottish mountains, where it would be
a) impractical to build at all and
b) 500 miles away from where people need to work and live.
The population density figures for the UK are a misleading average- they don’t reflect the pressure on London and the SE.
Secondly, you can obviously have much bigger homes on the same footprint if you stack them up as high rise blocks - but these are v unpopular in the UK. Brits want a fantasy house and garden with roses round the door etc, not an upstairs neighbour banging about on their ceiling. Apartments are much more the norm in European cities.

The population density figures for the UK are a misleading average- they don’t reflect the pressure on London and the SE.

London and the SE is really nothing special!

ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/DDN-20170406-1

I can only think the OP has very limited knowledge or experience of houses in the UK.

@RobotValkyrie

What baffles me most is the lack of basements/cellars in British houses. You could still build the same number of houses on the same land, and every house would get extra storage space + a utility room. But no, no basements.

Im not convinced that the uk is an ideal place for cellars. I have friends who live near the top of a hill and after heavy rain, their cellar prone to flash flooding. Its not a damp problem. Buildings at the bottom of the same hill have had flash flooding from surface run off on the ground floors.

The big problem here is the number of people paving drive ways, removal of trees, everything paved on top of the clay soil which once its saturated, means there's no where for the water to go.

We live in an 'ugly' 60s build, but wow the quality of the building puts our old new build to shame and the proportion of the rooms is good. All the two bed 1950s council houses got bought out and extended to twice the size because the plots were big. Those that are unconverted are sought after. Meanwhile the new builds are pitched at an overpriced rate and are tiny by comparison.

I am pretty sure the average family are living in smaller homes than a generation ago.

@Guacamole001

My home is an extended two bed semi. Nowhere has a cupboard to hide away either the Hoover or the ironing board. The slightly taller kitchen cupboard still isn't big enough. Why kitchens do not get designed with all this in mind is baffling.

Whats an iron? Ive not used one in 20 years.

(slight exaggeration but my point is that is having a dedicated space for an ironing board something that reflects lifestyles in 2022?)

You're damn right Notcontent, we put up with houses which are too small because that's what's on offer and we can't afford anything larger. My new build has little storage and my vacuum cleaner when not in use is either in the spare bedroom or on the landing. Not ideal.

I'm in my 6th (probably last) house as I downsized, 'losing' a garage, conservatory and - what really irks me, a kitchen which was large enough to fit a dining table. I knew what I was letting myself in for and it was out of necessity but it will always rankle. In over half the houses I've lived in the kitchens were too small. I wonder what type of houses millionaire building firm bosses live in? Not shoe boxes, that's for sure.

Of course 'living' spaces in homes are so small because our culture doesn't really prioritise 'living', it expects us all to be on the constantly revolving hamster wheel of work. The concentration of land ownership in the hands of relatively few people is a significant driver of land costs and hence house prices in this country. Instead we have pitched battles between those priced out of the housing market and those who paid inredibly high interest rates back in the 80's. Both of these are unacceptable yet we buy into this narrative while the peope who are really creaming off this system stay conveniently off radar.

@RincewindsHat

Sure, it could partially explain it. It even sounds like it makes sense UNTIL you look at the extremely healthy profit margins and revenues of companies like Barratt Homes and realise there's actually no good excuse for churning out estates and homes with poor design and not making adequate parking provisions. Land cost is in no way an issue.

Land cost is massively an issue but you are correct that the volume housebuilders are making huge profits. The issue is that due to their economies of scale they can build much cheaper than the smaller developers - and that's keeping the quality that same. Imagine how hard to compete to buy land if you're a smaller developer who wants to build something GOOD. The poorest quality, cheapest development is the one which allows the developer to buy the land and build.

We have a 4 bed new build built over 10 years ago. We saw many more newbuilds built more recently but the one we ended up buying had better sized bedrooms and a separate dining room which works for the way we live. It doesn't have a playroom but the bedrooms are large enough to accommodate all of the kids toys. The garden is a nice size but not huge. My mum had a 3 bed semi with a huge garden and space at the rear. They were able to extend outwards and up and keep the garden size (got rid of the patio). Mum's house had an original kitchen that was no bigger than my utility room but they made it work till they could afford to extend it (a good 10 years). I would have loved to have bought a 3 bed semi with space to extend over time and when we could afford it but they don't have those type of houses where we live. If I ever moved back to where my parents live that is the type of house I would like to buy one with potential.
Yanbu.