IN last month’s article we started to look at the document created after a “Visioning” event in 2010 in Wellington. The report was broken down into sections, detailing what the people at the event hoped was likely to be happening 15 years in the future.

This month we are focussing on the section entitled ‘Housing’; much like the section on ‘Energy’ discussed in last month’s newsletter, some of the ideas have come about.

There is much better insulation now in homes, Building Regulations (that everyone needs to conform to for building and renovation projects), have in recent years meant that new homes are very much better insulated than they were back in 2010, as an example loft insulation has risen from 100mms thick to 270mms.

There is now a phasing out of oil and gas central heating (air and ground source heat pumps weren’t mentioned in 2010), there was a much more positive attitude to wood burning as a heat source than is now the case. The idea of having a larger community wood has come true, with the Woodland Trust and volunteers planting a few thousand trees in the winter of 2024/25 but these trees are definitely not for burning and keeping us warm.

In the last few years Wellington has had a huge increase in new builds on estates, mostly on the edge of town. In 2010 we hoped that these would not be on agricultural land as we needed to grow more local food, unfortunately this is not the case, as the vast majority have been built on good quality agricultural land.

The new “Future Homes” legislation which comes into force this year means that all new homes are projected to produce 75 per cent less CO2 emissions than current new homes, this could surely be classed as the “super insulation” we dreamed of back in 2010.

The idea of using local materials such as stone and cob has unfortunately not come about, with many of the new houses difficult to distinguish from anywhere else in the country. Timber frame houses have become more common with new builds and are seen as a more sustainable alternative. Straw Bale is a low impact super insulating and cheap alternative which some councils have used to build Social Housing. If councils are going to be able to build more houses then maybe this might become more common.

One of the ideas explored in the 2010 report was that community style housing with communal areas to grow food, share tools and work together would become more common. On both the Somerset and Devon County Council’s websites, they have a section on “Community Led Housing” talk about co-housing, intentional communities and cooperational housing, which is interesting because it may mean that the ideas of different ways of living have become more mainstream.

Housing as everyone knows, is a massive problem in this country with many people unable to find affordable secure housing, maybe we need some more imaginative solutions than just more of the same.

Next month we look at ‘Water’.