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Sunday, August 29, 2010

London minimum house sizes

Boris Johnson the London Mayor is showing his Russian and German pedigree with his new authoritarian guide on minimum sizes for new house building in the capital.

However, this is nothing new.

Any of us old enough to remember a time before the internet ruled the world will recall the Parker Morris Standards which existed in the 60s, 70s and was abolished in the early 80s by the Thatcher government. The Parker Morris standards laid out minimum standards for all new public housing developments and was also adopted by most private developers too. It was the reason why many houses built in the 60s & 70s have palatial sized rooms compared to many modern rabbit hutch developments.

I'm not a great fan of regulation as many of you know. But actually having a bedroom where you can get a bed in seems to be quite sensible. I've seen too many examples of new flats where the rooms have been cut down to nonsensical sizes, all for the sake of saving a couple of hundred quid on the development costs. These new builds have then been sold to idiot investors in the boom times who expect to rent out a one bed flat & broom cubhoard as a two bed apartment.

The reality is that landlords and tenants are all the poorer for being left with unattractive and unusable spaces.

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