Column by Oliver Farley

It is said that the three most distressing events in everyday life are bereavement, divorce and moving house --- we can attest to the last having just moved back to central Horsham. As with all moves, the task is not yet complete. There seems to be endless junk accumulated over the years which would cause heartbreak to part with, laden as they are with memories, as proportionately intense as the item is useless. Still, we are feeling quite virtuous about the move as we’re freeing up one house by merging ourselves into the other.

Central government wants to build 1.5 million new homes, which sounds like a tsunami of development headed for green spaces countrywide, including Sussex and Horsham.

Whatever the merits of the aim, indeed whether it is achievable at all, the sheer magnitude of the problem has recently drawn attention to an old question, much cited but still unresolved, namely, the number of empty properties in England. The director of the Architectural Association School of Architecture, Ingrid Schroder, wrote last month in the Financial Times a most pertinent article on the issue:

“England has more than 700,000 vacant dwellings…of varied character….37% are long term empty…. 38,000 in London … while there are1.3 million households on social housing lists….it seems tragic that the U.K. can’t accommodate some of its extensive needs with what it has.”

Efforts are being made to extend existing homes and to convert office space into residential, yet admirable as this may be, it will never be enough to satisfy burgeoning demand. The answer always seems to be “build more, ever more”, with examples such as the 800 houses projected for the golf club at Southwater/Denne Hill being imitated nationally.

There are other concerns to keep in mind. Our District Council has a Cabinet Member for Climate Action and Nature Recovery, and she has written eloquently on numerous occasions in the pages of the WSCT. We are nevertheless reminded that the building industry is the cause of 40% of global carbon emissions, so there is an apparent conflict between the desirable aims of climate management and meeting the social need for homes. Ingrid Schroder advises us “….to address the root causes of abandonment and explore the opportunities for staged and continuing revitalisation of neglected spaces and communities.”

A step in the right direction is championed by Duncan Baker-Brown, an architect and lecturer at Brighton University. He points out that for every five houses built, a house worth of waste goes to land fill. He advocates designing space around the standard lengths and sizes of materials to reduce waste, and most intriguingly, he also advocates reusing waste material to build new. He had his students do just that in the construction of a two-storey teaching facility, all built from assembled waste elements. It involved a lot of patient sourcing, but isn’t this one indication of a possible path ahead?

For more information see horshamsociety.org