The places in which we live and work are important to our quality of life. How places are designed, built and run affects our housing opportunities and choices; our access to public transport, education and jobs; where we shop and spend our free time; even whether we feel safe walking down the street.

Sustainable communities are places where people want to live and work, now and in the future. Places should be designed to be sensitive to their environment, and contribute to a high quality of life by ensuring they are: safe and inclusive; well planned, built and run; and offer equality of opportunity and good services for all.

One way English Partnerships is pioneering new ways of achieving this quality is through its Carbon Challenge programme. The initiative is testing the skills and appetite of developers to meet the zero carbon challenges of the future, by creating a number of communities throughout England that meet Level 6 of the Code for Sustainable Homes (CSH).

Hanham Hall near Bristol is the first site to be awarded developer status in the Carbon Challenge. The developer selected to build 188 zero-carbon homes on the 6.6ha site is Barratt Developments Plc, working with HTA, Arup, Kingspan Offsite and Sovereign Housing Group on the winning bid. A detailed planning submission will be made in spring 2008, with the development completed in 2011. Five more sites could be identified for development as part of the Challenge this year, and English Partnerships hopes that RDAs and other public and private sector landowners will come forward with suitable land parcels. Each site must be able to support approximately 200 homes in order to deliver the critical mass needed for shared energy schemes.

Carbon Challenge is about changing lifestyles as well as appropriate design. Homes at Hanham Hall will be equipped for home working, as required by Code Level 6, and will come with the highest specification energy saving appliances. There will also be allotments for residents’ use. Heat and power will come from a biomass Combined Heat and Power plant (CHP) – one of the easiest ways of initiating consumers into renewable technology use.

Community expectations

‘In Europe, says Steve Carr, Director of Policy and Economics at English Partnerships, ‘there are numerous examples of CHP plants integrated within communities in new housing developments. But until now developers in this country have struggled with this idea’. For this site, with an estimated electrical demand of 604,000kWh, Barratt is proposing to install a biomass boiler/air turbine CHP system backed by two gas boilers. Their research indicates ‘confidence in the wood chip fuel supply chain’. The plant systems proposed for use will be reviewed as the designs progress.

‘We need to learn to deal with community expectations about the schemes to be delivered, and give people confidence about the performance of this new technology,’ says Carr. ‘Our experience with the bids for this first site has shown that fixing the energy strategy is important to successful masterplanning.

We don’t see this project as an isolated ‘green village’. Although the site is adjacent to existing villages, the residents wanted a buffer between their communities and the new development. This has restricted connectivity with the existing community. There are, however, shops, schools and transport links within walking distance.

Carr stresses that design criteria for Carbon Challenge sites are based on placemaking principles and not technology solutions in single buildings, although there is obvious overlap between the two. ‘We asked: Will this scheme have character? Is it distinctive? There is a range of house types. We don’t want technology to dominate these schemes. Eco-housing schemes should not compromise all the things you want in a great place; the detailing, the street design, the reduction of the impact of car parking.’

The homes of the future are going to be different. ‘We need to accept that the look and feel of places is going to be different because of the environmental agenda. For example, the Hanham Hall site has homes with shutters to reduce overheating of homes in the hotter summer months and sustainable open drains in the streets to deal with surface run-off. Building renewable technology onto existing house types simply won’t deliver the performance required at Level 6 of the Code for Sustainable Homes,’ says Carr. But how the planning regime copes with the new forms has yet to be seen. Planners have been unhappy using ‘eco hats’ in some developments, and have rejected designs featuring shading devices, overhangs and louvres. ‘The issue of planning acceptance of this sort of feature is going to be interesting to see,’ says Carr.

A planner in Norfolk, for example, rejected a design scheme in January 2008 because he considered the modern design to be ‘inappropriate to the locality’, although he noted that the homes would incorporate renewable energy features with the aim of achieving zero carbon output. ‘The four-storey buildings would dominate the adjoining street and their overall scale, massing, angular form and materials would appear incongruous,’ the planner ruled.

A Development Trust is proposed for estate management, consisting of stakeholders and community representatives. The Trust will manage a not-for-profit ESCo (Energy Services Company) to distribute and bill for heat and power. The energy infrastructure has been optimised to offset any possible financial impact resulting from the site’s small size. The team is exploring energy and excess heat sharing across all buildings on and close to the site.

Ongoing management and maintenance issues will be key to zero carbon developments, and no clear model has as yet emerged. Home owners may not want to own the renewable energy supply as well. Schemes where the renewable energy technologies such as expensive solar panels are available on the same ‘serviced’ basis as Sky dishes, with customers paying for services, maintenance and upgrades, are being considered by the industry. ‘I think we are likely to see ESCo providers coming into the market,’ says Carr.
One significant plus point of this type of development, says Carr, is that it requires a high level of collaboration between the house builder, the supplier, the architect and the engineer to get the job done. ‘We’_re seeing successful schemes having well integrated teams. Architect HTA, for example, is spending time with the manufacturing and technical team, and getting involved with what can actually be built on site, not what it wants to build.’

Steve Carr, Director of Policy and Economics at English Partnerships, spoke with Juliana O’Rourke

Guidance about the principles of urban design, how these can be applied and the processes which lead to the design and delivery of successful places can be found in the two Urban Design Compendiums published by English Partnerships and the Housing Corporation, and online at http://www.urbandesigncompendium.co.uk


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