Derwenthorpe: Ten Years in the Making

 Derwenthorpe: Ten Years in the Making

by Richard Partington

Richard reflects on derwenthorpe where we aimed to:
Create an equitable and sustainable community
Achieve exemplary environmental performance
Promote social cohesion, integration and inclusivity

Derwenthorpe was initially a joint enterprise by York City Council and Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust (JRHT) to create a sustainable and equitable new community. Building on Joseph Rowntree's legacy and the ethos of his model village, New Earswick, the project includes homes for families of all sizes and incomes. Although Rowntree campaigned for working people to have healthy, sanitary accommodation he imagined a truly mixed community, with a social and spiritual focus as well as opportunities for education and good health. At New Earswick, he and his son Seebohm also built a school, sports facilities, a library and the Folk Hall, the centre of community activities and adult education. Of course, being Quakers, there were no betting shops or pubs!

A century after New Earswick was conceived Derwenthorpe now has a mix of homes and tenures, 40 per cent are affordable. All are designed for future adaptation and modification to cater for infirmity or disability, extending the idea of Lifetime Homes, another Rowntree initiative. The affordable homes, some of which are shared ownership, are scattered through the scheme and their tenure is entirely 'blind', that is there are no visible clues or differences in quality. To ensure that the balance of the community remains over time JRHT have certain pre-emption rights on the sale of shared ownership homes and all homes are designed to the same standards for space and adaptability so that in theory a private home could become a social rented home in the future.

All of the public spaces including parks, pocket squares and streets are conceived as pedestrian spaces – accessible to everybody. There are no kerbs or formal pavements in the 'home zones' and car parking is discretely distributed so as not to dominate. Children of all backgrounds play in a fantastic playground that was opened to a wider neighbourhood before any of the new homes were built. Many homes have direct views over the landscape and the lake, a newly-created flood management device, which, with its thriving ecology, is the focus of the public park. The park is also intersected by a Sustrans route, National Cycle Route 65, making it accessible to the surrounding residential areas of Tang Hall and Osbaldwick, and giving safe car-free access to the City centre.

In contrast we recently visited a well-publicised scheme in Nine Elms in London where residents of the affordable homes were deliberately excluded from the landscaped courtyards of some blocks, quite simply denied access. There has been public criticism of developers creating second-class entrances to tower buildings (poor peoples’ doors) but what kind of society actively discourages the mixing of people of different means? The truth is that many people living in affordable housing are employed[1] – its just that they do the jobs, often vocational ones, such as nurses, carers, teaching assistants, that we under-value and under-reward. The inequity is even more striking when one considers the selfless contribution people doing essential jobs have made during the pandemic.

The principles of equitability expounded at Derwenthorpe embrace equal opportunity, access and security of tenure but also affordability: of housing costs, management and governance costs and the cost of running the home. All of the homes were designed from the outset to try and safeguard residents against rising fuel costs. As designers we prioritised fabric measures, that is insulation, high performance windows and a draught free construction, well before the term ‘fabric first’ was coined. We also increased floor to ceiling heights and ensured there was plenty of natural light. Now it would seem that the likely focus in housing design is to achieve net zero carbon, with homes heated by heat pumps and other low carbon technologies. The Government’s Future Homes Standard is a welcome but belated step towards this goal. However, the foundation of sustainable design is to reduce demand, that is, to do everything to reduce the energy consumption in use. Our priority will continue to be the creation of secure, desirable and comfortable homes (with low energy bills), within an enjoyable and equitable setting.

[1] English Housing Survey 2019 to 2020: Headline Report 

6 per cent of social renters were unemployed, 31 per cent in full-time work, 14 per cent in part-time work. The remainder (49 per cent) are in a group including the retired and those in “long-term illness or disability and those who were looking after the family or home”.