Housing – What can we do?

With Pippa Goldfinger (FTC Councillor) Melissa Mean (Knowle West Media Centre) & Mark Merer (Welham Studios)

Frome Town Council

• Taken an ambitious approach to planning and development
• Holds monthly planning meetings with great attendance
• Opens dialogue with developers
  • Dealing with greenspace, good architecture and affordable housing
• Part funded Frome Fair Housing
• Opened up conversations with developers and housing groups

Melissa Mean

Melissa is from the digital arts charity Knowle West Media Centre and spoke on their project We Can Make – http://kwmc.org.uk/projects/wecanmake/

• To deliver affordable housing at the point of need
• Working with residents to understand needs

Issues to face

• Current strategies are failing the majority of residents
• Proposals are likely to be rejected
• Planning department is understaffed
• Intimidating process for application

How to fix?

• Start with the people, needs and assets
• Collecting information/needs from residents door to door and illustrating the findings in the form of a artistic piece
• Understanding the microscale of the housing crisis is important
• Option to utilise space inside people homes/unused rooms

How to deal with the micro site?

• Possible on the citizen level
• Develop common tools to manage on a community level
• Set up a community design menu
  • Supplier framework
    • Local labour, materials
  • Dispersed Community Land Trust
    • With smaller plots banding together

Housing Factory

• Supply system to work on a local level
• Built a prototype house that meets housing criteria
  • All locally supplied & built over 10 weeks
  • Passive house
  • Didn’t ask for planning permission for the prototype
  • It’s on wheels!
    • House on a chasse
    • Caravan act

Mark Merer

• Focus on the edges of towns and villages, how they look
• Approached by Bruton Town Council to bring in culture and lifestyles into planning
• To provide an alternative to larger developments
• New area of focus
  • More social housing, more space
• Land owner is happy to hand over more land
  • Self-build, naked housing
  • Initially against the idea but was persuaded when it was offered as a legacy to the town

Mark Brierly – NVB

• Garden city movement
• Younger generation are unable to buy houses
  • National problem, a shortage of houses
  • Frome is around 1000 short of affordable houses
  • Due to costs, brown sites in Frome aren’t meeting affordable housing demands
• Created a strategic alternative, taking over the responsibility from Mendip District Council to put in place a plan to build 700 affordable homes over a fixed period

Needs of the town

• Getting community groups together to support self-build projects
• More opportunities for youth to get onto the housing ladder
  • Issues concerning increasing housing prices vs. low paying jobs
• Self-build register – Parish Councils to nurture these groups

Final question: What is all Parish Councils joined together to speak with government about the issues related to housing?

Further information

• Rowan Moore, ‘A Blueprint for British Housing in 2028’
• https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/jan/21/blueprint-for-british-housing-2028-not-utopian-dream
• Bright Green Futures, Involved in 2 self-build schemes in Bristol
• https://www.brightgreenfutures.co.uk/projects/the-bower/
• https://www.brightgreenfutures.co.uk/projects/water-lilies/

Additional notes on this topic from the Breaking the Mould booklet can be found here.