IT is likely that the UK Labour government will soon push for around 15,000 houses to be built in Scotland within the next four or five years. They will want credit if that is successfully accomplished and they will blame the SNP if the target isn’t met. It is a familiar old story and so the Scottish Government must grab the narrative firmly and deliver positive housing results.
Our approach and the resultant housing solutions will be all the better, in my view, if they are distinctively Scottish. Inevitably, there will be “culture war” issues about any environmental improvements nowadays, and so arguments to counter what is often disinformation must be robust and fully formulated right from the beginning.
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To contribute to the debate, Here are some suggestions. Emphasis could be placed on social housing as a contrast to “affordable housing”, which will be the theme in England/Wales. We can perhaps set a target of 50% new builds being social housing, with the majority of that council housing. Keeping extended families close is a feature of council estates, and in well-designed developments communities thrive. It ought be a popular policy.
Let’s reduce our homelessness problems and dependency on the use of private landlords and hotels as stopgaps. We can use this housing drive to bring order from the current chaos. 15,000 houses will bring social change to our country, but only emphasis on the social housing aspect will bring the much-needed fundamental change.
Standards must be high, particularly regarding regulations for insulation values. As we move to heat pumps from gas boiler systems, cost is going to be a hot topic (probably a little distinct battle in the “culture war”). A unit of electrical power, a kWh, is very significantly more expensive than a gas one, though it is hoped it will be less costly through time. So consideration should be given to legislating for higher insulative values in the social housing than those applicable to other new builds. Expensive, yes, but some of the cost can be recovered by using air-to-air heat pumps (some are less costly than gas boilers) with invisible ducting replacing radiators and piping. Alternatively, ground heat pumps could be an option in flats and maybe in four-in-a-block housing.
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Measures like this will make the houses truly affordable in terms of running costs and perhaps shame the big building companies into improving the currently variable standards in the private housing estates. Also, we must strengthen local authority build inspections, both during the construction phases and on completion. It is just a last-minute nod and a wink at the moment.
The higher insulation standards will best be achieved if external wall panels are fully factory-built and then joined up on site. But whatever systems are used, architects and the building firms must be legally accountable for the delivery in full of the low projected running costs of the housing. That is essential.
And let’s avoid tiny rooms where you can only fit small furniture. Resist too the large expanses of glass that architects favour. They make houses too hot when you want cool and too cold when you are wanting affordable warmth. Decent-sized gardens for the semi-detached and the four-in-a-block houses makes for happier householders too. It’s back to the future but with modern materials.
Finally, Scotland has most of the turbines and a lot of the pylons. Isn’t this oil all over again? Let’s make the argument for the zoning of electricity supply as UK Labour begins what I reckon will be a long fight with the “never in my backyard” activists down south over their turbines. Zoning could reduce costs for all of us living nearer to turbines and also reinvigorate Scottish manufacturing, which has been in decline for decades. Cheap green electricity could reverse that as well as improving our lives in many other ways.
David Crines
Hamilton
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