A company owned by a major Conservative donor is embroiled in an acrimonious battle over its plan to build 1,500 homes in a new town near Cambridge without fulfilling the minimum room sizes wanted by the council.
Gallagher Estates, which is owned by the property developer Tony Gallagher, who is also a member of the Tory party’s Leader’s Group for major donors, is in dispute with local councillors over a development being supported by £30m of public money.
The developer was originally granted planning permission to build 1,500 homes at Northstowe, eight miles north-west of the university city – with the council insisting on “minimum room sizes and minimum gross internal floor areas”. But Gallagher Estates appealed successfully in March to the Planning Inspectorate, part of central government, to have that requirement removed, bypassing the Tory-majority council after officials missed a deadline to address the issue.
Tim Wotherspoon, South Cambridgeshire district council’s Conservative cabinet member with responsibility for the Northstowe development, said he felt “very strongly” about the move by Gallagher Estates to eliminate the need for adhering to minimum room sizes and that locals were “sore about it”.
Officials said they believed that they were in a dialogue with the developers about room sizes, before Gallagher Estates went over their head to the inspectorate.
Commenting on developers seeking to build homes smaller than the recommendations, Wotherspoon said: “I feel that it is quite appalling that, in the 21st century, we should put up houses where, in some cases, the kitchens aren’t big enough to store fresh vegetables and where you can’t have the whole family sitting down to have a meal together or the children can’t have friends over to sleep over because the bedrooms are too small.”
Campaign groups want to see minimum room sizes made mandatory in nationwide building regulations. They are currently at the discretion of local planning authorities..
According to research by the housing charity Shelter, Britain is building the smallest homes in western Europe and is one of few countries without minimum space standards.
New-build homes have shrunk dramatically over the decades. In 1920, the average semi-detached new-build measured 153 sq metres (1,647 sq ft), according to the Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba). Today’s equivalent is 86 sq metres.
Typical new terrace houses have been reduced from 95 sq metres and three bedrooms, to 60 sq metres and two bedrooms.
The coalition government reviewed house-building standards but decided not to include mandatory minimum space requirements after lobbying from the housebuilding industry. “Opposition to the proposed space standard was most significant from builders/developers, with more than double the number opposing the space standard than supporting it,” its consultation noted.
Tony Gallagher, who lives near David Cameron in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, has donated at least £320,000 to the Conservatives over the past 12 years, both personally and through his companies. In January last year, he attended a dinner hosted by David Cameron at Chequers, the prime minister’s grace-and-favour country home.
Gallagher Estates declined to comment. But the company has previously told the planners that “larger dwelling sizes have implications for cost and land use” and that the company might not be able to build 1,500 homes on the site if it has to follow the room size requirement.
“A requirement to provide larger dwellings will result in an increase in the build costs, which will ultimately, in part if not in full, be passed on to the purchaser. As a result, the impact on the affordability of smaller properties will be significant,” the company noted in its appeal.
Housebuilding has become a battleground in the election, as a result of so many voters finding themselves unable to afford a home. Ed Miliband said he would exempt first-time buyers from stamp duty on houses worth up to £300,000. The Conservatives have promised to build 400,000 homes on brownfield land and extend the right-to-buy scheme to housing association tenants in England.
Gallagher’s development is intended to create part of a new town called Northstowe near the village of Longstanton in Cambridgeshire. The new town, which is supposed to be an “exemplar” site for sustainability, will eventually have almost 10,000 homes, and is supported by a £30m grant from the Department for Communities and Local Government.
Deborah Garvie from Shelter said that developers getting around minimum room sizes had significant effects on new homes. “It seriously affects the quality of life of residents,” she said. “It causes stress and tension. Riba have carried out research showing people keeping their groceries in car boots because it doesn’t fit into the kitchen.”
Gallagher lives at Sarsden House in the town that became famous for the “Chipping Norton set” of friends around the prime minister. The property developer bought the 17th-century house, which has landscaping by Humphry Repton and a Doric temple in the grounds, for £26m in 2006. His close neighbours include Charlie and Rebekah Brooks, the former editor of the Sun.
