Housing, communities and local government

Other topics identified by the scan

Other topics identified by contributors are listed below and may be explored in future research projects. The sub-topics were identified by contributors to the scan and may not address all aspects of the topic. Relevant parliamentary research briefings are linked:

Housing quality, regulation and standards 

This topic identified several issues including:

• The significance of decent, safe, quality housing, and access to affordable and securehousing

• Links between housing affordability, availability, quality and health

• New build quality, and suitability for net zero
• Quality in the social rented sector

• Quality and standards in the private rented sector, including landlord regulation and licensing, tenant rights, and rent regulation
• Leasehold reform

• Indoor air quality issues, such as damp and mould. Consideration of ventilation alongside insulation in retrofits

• Insecure building materials, fire and building safety, including cladding, and leaseholder payments
• Housing for disabled and ageing populations
• Regulatory and social barriers to retrofit

• Impacts of climate change (including differential impacts across populations), and planning/ regulation addressing this

• Overcrowding, and recommended minimum space standards not being met

• Development of biodiversity net gain standards, integrating local nature recovery strategies, including co-planning with communities

• Ensuring compliance with building regulations which support sustainable solutions

• Supporting economically sustainable mortgage access through regulatory balance

• The effectiveness of binary thresholds in home risk assessments

• Supporting understanding of risks in homes

Housing planning

This topic identified several issues including:

• Affordable housing supply to meet demand, including learning from previous new towns, and modern methods of construction

• Planning processes, including complexity, and lack of planning enforcement

• Supply of social and private rented homes

• Transforming housing design, retrofit, and energy systems, and reuse of materials, to meet net-zero targets. Role of green finance in net zero transition

• Shortage of planning officers in local authorities, construction skills shortages and new skills required for net zero transition

• Use and purpose of brownfield and green belt sites

• Connection between housing and health

• Challenges caused by climate change

• Benefits and challenges of technology and its adoption (such as smart health tools, digital planning technology, smart cities, AI) for housing and in communities
• Developing housing for all life stages, including older populations

• Community-led housing, including potential to support shared green economies and reduce social isolation
• Reconsideration of land banking and land value

• Resident input into housing solutions
• Long-term impacts of housing and urban design on residents

Planning of public spaces and urban areas

This topic identified several issues including:

• Reconfiguration of urban centres, including repurposing buildings, in consultation with communities
• Strategic, integrated planning to deliver/ maintain resilient and sustainable infrastructure, such as in transport, energy, drainage

• Connecting communities through good design
• Improving toilets, seating and other amenities, to improve accessibility
• Lack of safe access to green spaces for children and young people in urban areas
• Importance of green spaces for health. Consideration of social contract between land owners and users
• Evaluating the Business Improvement District model
• Consideration of multi-sectorial partnerships to revitalise local places

• Addressing cemetery space needs alongside climate adaptation
• Delivery of street trees, including location and long-term management

• Role of leisure spaces in communities
• Public libraries’ role in tackling inequalities
• Considering placemaking and place management, including culture, heritage, and creativity; participatory approaches to place branding; sense of belonging; skills for professional place management/leadership
• Data analysis of urban areas for planning and investment

Supporting the needs of parents, families and different community groups

This topic identified several issues including:

• Childcare affordability and suitability, and support for families, including supporting young parents, supporting parental employment, and improving paternity/ shared parental leave
• The significance of supporting young people, including through youth work, youth services and centres, training and employment pathways, and access to outdoor spaces (relating to mental and physical health)

• Addressing geographical and social inequalities, especially in rural and coastal towns

• The accessibility of urban areas, including facilities and public transport

• UK population changes, including the ageing population and migration

• Community and social cohesion, including intergenerationally, and ageism, community identity, gentrification, the significance of social networks, and integration of refugees

• The availability of social care, and system investment, including in mental health

• Economic challenges and responses, such as poverty, including its impacts on children, insurance costs, debt, family resilience to crises
• Supporting social mobility, and climate-resilient local productivity growth, including employment of those with protected characteristics
• The affordability, availability, suitability, and quality of housing, including for young and older people, care leavers and looked after children, asylum seekers and refugees, and those with fewer financial resources
• Homelessness and temporary housing, and their impacts, including on health
• Role of housing associations in supporting employment
• How community voices can be incorporated in policy making

Acknowledgements

POST would like to thank consultation respondents and peer reviewers for kindly giving up their time to support this work, including:

• Professor Sam Jacoby, Royal College of Art*
• Dr Gemma Burgess, University of Cambridge
• Dr Emily T Murray, University of Essex
• Professor Gary Dymski, University of Leeds
• Dr Sophie Elsmore, London South Bank University
• Professor Jeremy Gilbert, University of East London
• Professor Patrick Diamond, Queen Mary University of London
• Professor Karl Spracklen, Leeds Beckett University
• Professor Matt Egan, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
• Professor Steve Millington, Manchester Metropolitan University
• Professor Margaret Greenfields, Anglia Ruskin University*
• Professor James Evans, University of Manchester
• Professor Ken Gibb, University of Glasgow*
• Professor Nick Dunn, Lancaster University
• Dr Emma Davidson, University of Edinburgh
• Dr Larissa Allwork, University of Derby*
• Professor Helen Carr, University of Southampton
• Professor Norman Hutchison, University of Aberdeen
• Professor Anna Tarrant, University of Lincoln*
• Dr Robin Darton, University of Kent
• Professor Zografia Bika, University of East Anglia
• Dr Mel Nowicki, Oxford Brookes University
• Professor John Sturzaker, University of Hertfordshire*
• Dr Emma Ormerod, Newcastle University
• Emily Woodruff, University of Warwick
• Professor Anne Power, London School of Economics
• Professor Danielle Sinnett, University of the West of England

*denotes people and organisations who acted as external reviewers of the briefing.