This is something that has come up here before. George Trefgarne thinks he has the answer:

Regulation. Unbelievable.

The Telegraph has an in-depth report. The answer? Planning.

But you knew that.

From the Telegraph. Explains why the Japanese are so keen on "scrap and build". I had always assumed it was because of the earthquakes - why preserver something when an earthquake is going to destroy it sooner or later anyway. I had not thought that it might be because the state had got itself involved.

Alistair Twiname replies:

Your councillor friend makes some good points about over regulation causing declining standards of housing. However the regulations encouraging minimum densities are very recent additions, the problem with modern housing is not a question of density, the number units per hectare of a typical Victorian development (Islington in London, Marchmont in Edinburgh et all) was way, way higher that what is currently built on Greenfield developments. yet these are the lofty spacious houses that we bemoan the loss of. The real problem is the developers' lack of imagination and skill in creating density, developers have decided that people would rather die than live in a terrace house or in a flat. They build detached rabbit-hutches with a garage instead of making decent terraces / tenements they have stuck to their formula and people bought it. Council's demanding higher density is more likely to be the cure rather than the cause of the problem. I am all for the reduction of the amount of regulation in the construction industry but the real problem is the lack of skill and understanding.

Building regulations, (which affect the sizes of doors, fire escapes etc) have made building a building a far more technical activity but I cannot see that as an excuse for poor building. Citing the 70s as a era that passed the building regs and repeated the formula is a fudge, that's what they did when they built Bath, Edinburgh and Bloomsbury 200 years ago.. the problem wasn't that they repeated, the problem was that they repeated something that wasn't worth repeating.

Alistair Twiname, who is an architect ie a real person who actually knows something wrote:

I reckon your right.. the vast majority of modern housing is drivel, although I'd say the worst of it is over.. some new houses are not all that bad (see Wayne H and Barratt)

Though one thing I'd say you miss is that whilst workmanship standards have dropped (something to do with having to pay builders enough to live on or some other commie nonsense) the actual performance of buildings in terms of waterproofness, thermal performance, heating, ventilation etc is far far superior. plus with new-ish technologies like galvanising steel and preserving timber they might not fall down as quick as I'd like them to. I'm not sure about the crampedness of houses getting worse either, compare the living space of a factory worker 100 years ago with today. I heard a statistic that said that if current houses continue to be replaced at the current rate the newest ones will be as old as the pyramids when they get replaced. Our problem is we don't have the mechanism to build very big chucks of city and towns and don't have the Victorian political/entrepreneurial muscle to do it any more. Still the lack of thought, organisation and brain power put into our housing is staggering.

TBHNT is something of a hobby blog - one that only occasionally gets updated, and so, only occasionally gets read. So, I have been overwhelmed with the response to my piece on modern housing especially since Brian Micklethwait plugged it on Samizdata.

John Harrison who in addition to having the dubious distinction of being an ex-university chum of mine is also a Conservative councillor wrote me a long e-mail about how he sees things from his end. He wrote:

You raise an interesting question about modern housing and whether smaller rooms and bad workmanship are caused by controls such as the planning regime. I would suggest that numerous different factors have an influence but the main ones are planning, building regulations, consumer choice and latterly new planning guidance such as PPG3.

Since Metropolitan Green Belts were established, there has been increasing pressure on builders to locate new housing on a diminishing supply of land within existing settlements rather than by spreading the suburbs further over green fields. So we end up with smaller houses as a result of less land being available for building. Under new Planning Policy Guidance 3, Councils are encouraged to seek increasing densities of housing so the trend is set to intensify.

The other influence of the planning system is that Councils try to extract planning gain, so that as part of a development, developers have to stump up cash for new roads, schools, and increasingly provide a proportion of the land for 'affordable' housing. So to make a site profitable, developers have to make enough profit out of the remaining land to cover the development of the whole site. This adds to the pressure on house prices because the 'affordable' housing does not add to the supply in the market since it is only available to those who can not afford to buy. This creates a further incentive for developers to cram as many houses as possible on the part of the site that remains theirs to sell. Of course, many housebuyers have little option but to buy the smaller houses since the prices have been pushed up by the planning system and these are all they can now afford. The reason for smaller rooms, I suspect, is that builders are responding to legitimate consumer preferences. Given a certain size of footprint for the property, would you rather have three bedrooms or four? Properties with more bedrooms sell for a higher price, even if one of those rooms barely gives enough space to rotate a feline.

Land and buildings are expensive and builders need to build to a timescale and budget that allow them to sell at a price that finds a buyer in the market. With all the costs loaded on them by planning policies and planning gain and affordable housing quotas, is it any wonder that the quality of the build suffers?

There is also the effect of the building regulations which increasing lay down standards which must be followed, prescribing all sorts of things from the width of doors to the steepness of staircases. Once a house design has passed the hurdles of this the builder will re-use it over and over again - the bland designs of the 1970s come to mind. Councils have, to some extent, learnt that this leads to very boring street scenes and to their credit, insist on variations in design to give some interest to the view but within all the constraints of the planning system, these variations are only cosmetic - a few different coloured bricks here and there; use of a few different 'standard' house designs through a street.

Saddam is dangerous - Liberty Log
Gadaffi to head human rights body - The Captain
Students not paying enough - Liberty Log
Thick Scot, smart Paddies - Samizdata
End the dividend tax - Samizdata
Good book on buildings - Junius
Clinton snout in Enron trough - Hawkgirl
Quiz of the Day: how geeky are you? - The Captain