Research, Reports And Publications

We undertake research and often lead research on issues that we feel need greater clarity of advice, such as car parking and bin storage. We are regularly commissioned to conduct bespoke research. In 2007 we produced a report for the Scania region of Sweden. It warned the region’s exporters not to invest in breaking into the UK housing market because its growth appeared unsustainable. A month after the report’s release, Northern Rock failed.​

Listed below are publications that we have produced, with details of how to purchase or download a copy. Please email [email protected] with any enquiries.

We helped produce Superdensity in 2007, a report which warned that soaring density in London had to be made liveable with better amenity for residents, such as useable balconies. It led directly to the commission of design standards for London, now embedded in the London plan.

We worked on the HAPPI report for the HCA and NHS. In fact we coined the term HAPPI. The original acronym was PISSOPH (try saying that aloud).

We created Building for Life in September 2001. CABE had the money and leadership, we had the working knowledge of where to apply focus.

Our Healthy Homes standard originally created for Ebbsfleet Development Corporation underpins Homes England’s Healthy Homes standards.

We wrote the brief for the only competition in recent years to unite various government deparments, the Home of 2030 in 2018.

English Partnerships adapted the style of the eSCAPE compeitition we created in 2005 for David Wilson Homes into its Design for Manufacture competition in 2006. This was the largest competition in the decade. David Birkbeck was the only judge from the private sector on the panel.

 

Car Parking: What works where?

An easy to use guide to help urban designers, masterplanners, architects and highways engineers to design parking efficiently into the street scene. This is the most popular piece of research on English Partnerships website.

 

High Density Residential Developments: A Good Practice Guide

Levitt Bernstein and Design for Homes Publication for Northern Ireland Housing Executive

This Good Practice Guide makes a welcome contribution to discussions around delivering quality housing and meeting housing need through high density residential developments. It will also hopefully act as a catalyst for continued innovative and creative discussion around achieving success in this area. The guide provides technical guidance on high density housing, offers design solutions and highlights principles for the effective management of shared spaces. The inclusion of case studies, photographs and diagrams demonstrate that good practice can lead to inspiring, enriching and sustainable uses of space. We trust that the Good Practice Guide will benefit all those with a key interest in housing delivery in Northern Ireland including the Department for Social Development, the Planning Service, housing associations, architects and developers.

 

Recommendations for Living at Superdensity

Schemes of between 150 and 500 homes per hectare are becoming increasingly common but are the right precautions being designed in?

Design for Homes, HTA, Levitt Bernstein, Pollard Thomas Edwards Architects and PRP have produced the report, which for super density schemes recommends:

  • Make context the primary issue for determining schemes
  • Provide some large, family dwellings
  • Include private open space for all homes
  • Draw up management and maintenance plansConsider the access to flats including security issues
  • Improve sound proofing
  • Design in the context of a wider masterplan
  • Create an energy strategy to take advantage of density
  • Collaborate closely with local authorities
  • Minimise service charges, which tend to be higher in superdense schemes

To download a PDF of the full report Superdensity2.

 

Perceptions of Privacy and Density

A unique piece of research looking at residents’ thoughts on SPACE, SECURITY, SOUND and SAFETY and across a range of housetypes from regency to MMC.

Overview of Privacy & Density Research Findings

Intrusion of privacy in the English home for most people means hearing or being heard by the neighbours. This is usually caused by poor construction and detailing of party walls, and sometimes by having the windows of adjacent properties too close together.

These are some of the findings of a major 68 page report into issues facing households living at the higher densities of 30-50 homes to the hectare called for in England¹s statutory guidance for the planning of new housing (PPG3).

“Perceptions of Privacy and Density in Housing” analyses experiences of different common types of urban housing provision dating from four different centuries  Regency terraces, Victorian milltown terrace, Edwardian mansion block, 1970s townhouses, 1980s conversion, 1990s urban regeneration and PPG3-compliant new-build. Researchers found that intrusive noise is by no means a function of higher density – two low density suburban models introduced as controls in the research (1930s suburban semis and 1990s large executive homes on an out-of-town greenfield site) were both damned by owners for suffering from intrusive noise.

The report marks the launch of Design for Homes Popular Housing Research, a new venture resulting from the merger of Design for Homes and Popular Housing Group. Sponsored jointly by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Royal Town Planning Institute, Royals Institution of Chartered Surveyors and the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, the research set out to:

  • Understand which issues are significant in household and personal perceptions of privacy in housing.
  • Identify what design elements are effective in achieving privacy in higher density housing from different environments.

The research contractor Mulholland Research and Consulting undertook focus groups and in-depth interviews in the 10 schemes drawn from across England, 8 developed at PPG3 densities and two at below.

The eight developed at PPG3 densities were:

  • 1980s Hospital conversion and new-build, Jesmond, Newcastle
  • Hulme Regeneration, Manchester
  • Turn of the 20th century terraces, Ryton, Lancashire
  • Regency terraces, Clifton, Bristol
  • Poundbury urban extension
  • Greenwich Millennium village, London
  • Edwardian mansion block, Battersea
  • 1970s town houses, Norwich

The two low density developments were:

  • Wynyard nr Sedgefield, an out-of-town development in county Durham
  • 1930s suburban semis in Cheam, Surrey.

A surprise finding of the research was that households perceive privacy very differently from how regulation supposes they do. Members of a household are more concerned about getting away from each other through having private internal domains than they are about the spaces between them and their neighbours.

Click privacyorderform1 to download an order form and order a copy for £90 including p&p.

 

A New London Housing Vernacular

The joint work of Urban Design London and Design for Homes, first published in 2012. It is based on analysis of a range of schemes selected from entries to the Housing Design Awards. This is the beginning of a programme of work into assessing and understanding the phenomenon termed the New London Vernacular

Please call us on 020 3301 3855 to discuss a potential project.