The Direction Home

A home would be nice

In the upcoming UK's Financial Autumn Statement  (Nov 23rd) Chancellor Hammond has a golden opportunity to re- invigorate the UK economy.


One of the key failures over the last 20 years or so has been around the housing stock , there's not enough of it, it's too expensive and sub standard (particularly around heat retention).


It was interesting chatting to an architect friend this last weekend about housing issues:

Poor quality estates should not be replaced by over dense schemes  

What I learnt from him confirmed my fears about  building developers - they expect exorbitant profit (60 margins are typical) they are unwilling to assume responsibility to improve quality and tend to go for lowest cost at whatever level it is set.


Government needs to  ensure that developers have an incentive to use the stockpiled land they are sitting on and to improve the building standards that developers must comply with.

Ealing Council leader Bell & acolytes
(probably not talking about housing)

Councils to should focus on housing and ensuring that 'Cathy Come Home' is a historic document and not a contemporary problem.


Improved housing can form part of a virtuous cycle where families are able to have better quality of life and be happier.

And it's not just families who need this help recent months have seen rapid increases in those single people sleeping rough,

Densification in West Ealing and Red 69

Housing remains an issue in UK and especially London- a big 'tell' on UK economy is building trade and we'll see soon if new projects (UK Building Starts) continue to be developed - those cranes on the horizon tell us a lot about economic activity

As they appear in HK advertising - see more here

People I know with grown up children often still have them living at home as it's so difficult to afford a 'place of their own', there were some predictions of housing market collapse with Brexit vote but doesn't seem to have happened yet (and UK interest rates historically low).

Even with this news and the imminent coming of the new London Crossrail/Elizabeth line   I was still a little surprised to get an email from a HK friend alerting me to pricing of new flats in West Ealing.

What really surprises me is both the 'densification' and move from what were public housing estates to an ultra expensive part 'Conran' development with prices starting for 1 bedroom flats at around £0.5 million.

Not so different from the Computer generated image - how work is progressing from earlier on this week

Red 69

And keeping the building theme going. Here's a red that triggers more memories

When I worked at ITN -more than 30 years ago one of the contractors there explained how they used this arrangement to deliver waste to a skip and reduced dust and spillage, iot a great invention but a logical  thought that improves practice.

The sort of improvement that spreads with copying 

[see the latest rough cut of the ongoing project here]