Government signals fresh backing for live/work

Richard McCarthy, director-general of programmes, policy and innovation at the Department for Communities and Local Government, welcomed the Live/Work Network’s new report Tomorrow’s Property Today at Live Work Network's national conference last month. He said: 'Live/work can make very powerful contribution, economically and socially, to a neighbourhood.' He added that live/work development fitted with the government’s wider concept of sustainable communities. 'We introduced the concept of sustainable communities and the elements go to make that. Living and working in the same place is one of those elements.'

'This could have been about large scale development. But it’s more about creating those very special locations to make them places where people can live and they can work.' He added that the residential and employment elements in well designed and well managed live/work schemes could feed off each other to promote sustainable communities. But he also said that live/work developments needed to be well managed and well designed.  'Not all live/work is well built, not all of it is well managed. You cannot build it and walk away.'

Kate Barker, the author of two landmark government reports on housing and planning, also backed live/work. 'Creating quality live/work can clearly make a contribution to getting carbon emissions down,' she said. The live/work concept was also heavily supported by Robert Upton, secretary general of the Royal Town Planning Institute, which co-sponsored the event along with three RDAs and BT. However, in a fringe session at the conference, Hunter Page managing director Paul Fong expressed disappointment with the vague drafting on live/work development in the recently published draft Planning Policy Statement 4. 

'Let’s hope we can get something more explicit so that show to people on the ground what you are trying to achieve.' And he said volume house builders were not the best developers of live/work schemes, explaining that many smaller scale outfits were securing permissions and selling them on to volume builders. 'The problem with the national house builders is that they are looking for volumes whereas specialists are concetrating on quality.'  

View a full report of the conference and photos here.

For members, Tomorrow's Property Today is free to download in our downloads area.