With space at a premium in many cities, could tackling the nation’s housing crisis mean ditching the back garden in favour of a roof terrace?
Lots of would-be homeowners fantasise about a family house with plenty of space for the kids to run around, kick a ball or jump on a trampoline. But the housing minister this week sent a signal that when it comes to new-build homes in urban areas, perhaps some families were going to have to give up on their dream of a back garden – or at least rethink their concept of outdoor space.
Under this vision of 21st-century urban living, instead of a (perhaps postage stamp-sized) lawn and some flower beds at ground level, with maybe a garden shed, compost bin or a goalie net, you would have a rooftop terrace with artificial grass, decking and a few pots and planters, all specifically designed to be “low-maintenance”.
In its recently published housing white paper the government warned that the density of development in England’s urban areas would have to increase, with land used “more efficiently”. Speaking to MPs on Monday the housing minister, Gavin Barwell, said high-density housing didn’t have to mean tower blocks. To illustrate his point he gave a big plug to the “urban houses” that make up part of Berkeley Homes’ huge Kidbrooke Village development in Greenwich, south-east London, which he had visited recently.
“Berkeley Homes were building three- or four-bedroom family homes, and they were doing them at double the usual density they would achieve – essentially they had ‘back-to-backed’ them and put the gardens on the roofs.
“They wouldn’t work in every part of the country, but they were really innovative homes, selling very well in that environment,” Barwell said.
So could these urban houses be a model for other developments in space-constrained cities such as London, where there are said to be 13 prospective buyers for every available three- or four-bed property?
They are essentially an updated and improved version of the old back-to-back terraced houses, many of which were demolished as part of slum clearance schemes. Berkeley has already built 22 urban houses, which are spread over three floors – four if you include the private rooftop terrace that you get instead of a back garden. Building in this way, and ditching the back lawn – which with new-builds are often pretty tiny anyway – allows the company to get twice as many homes on to a site.
All bar one of the 22 homes are occupied, and the company recently launched its second wave of 15 urban houses on the site – 13 three-bed and two four-bed properties – which are due to be finished by the end of the year.
The three-bed urban houses cost £865,000, so they are not cheap, but the company said they were “customisable” so that, for example, the study could be turned into a fourth bedroom.
So who’s buying them? At the moment it is mainly couples without children but who plan to have a family, said Berkeley’s sales director Lyndon Nunn. He added: “The roof garden is proving really popular with customers.”
The company’s blurb says that “unlike traditional back gardens, this spacious terrace benefits from all-day sunshine and is the perfect private sanctuary for relaxing, entertaining and playing in a safe and secure environment,” adding: “With timber decking and artificial grass, this unique space offers low-maintenance modern living.”
Some green-fingered readers might question whether a terrace with a fake lawn counts as a garden, but we will put that aside. However, when asked whether buyers mind not having a back garden, Nunn said: “They don’t.” He insisted that many people actually viewed this as a far more useful space. “You get the views from it. It’s safe and secure. It’s a decent size – 320 sq ft [for the three-bed homes].”
Nunn said the intention was that these roof terraces were not plant-free zones, which is why the company had put a water tap and power up there: “We want people to have that living garden. We are encouraging some planting up there.”
These are leasehold properties, so there would be restrictions on what you could and couldn’t do on the roof terrace. For example, Nunn said Berkeley was happy with a gas barbecue but had said no to charcoal ones. He added: “We don’t want people putting seriously heavy items up there.” One would imagine that something like a climbing frame, goalie net or trampoline for the kids would be a definite no-no on safety and/or “heavy item” grounds.
Meanwhile, some parents might be worried about their children playing on a rooftop garden, but Nunn said the terraces were perfectly safe, with glass balustrades and fencing, adding: “You’d probably be up there if you’re a parent with young kids.”
Old-style flat roofs can be associated with leaks and damp problems, but Berkeley said things had moved on a great deal, with completely different building methods used nowadays, and that this was a “very robust form of construction”.
Returning to the back garden v roof terrace debate, while some people would probably miss having their own patch of green at the rear of the house, others would likely be happy to go without. Last year, in a Guardian article about housing market “myths”, property guru Kirstie Allsopp said: “We’re not interested in our gardens any more – we’re not the passionate gardeners we used to be. I’m finding that people are put off by them. They look at a garden and say: ‘Oh, I can’t handle that’.”
One design expert who wished to be anonymous said that while having a roof terrace instead of a back garden was something potential buyers could easily weigh up, she felt there were drawbacks to the urban houses, even though, in principle, putting big homes on small plots was an efficient and intelligent way to house families in urban areas.
She said she had seen designs for similar back-to-back houses “but they’re L- or T-shaped. Bigger plots than these, but still much more efficient than a conventional house and garden.
“They create some outdoor space at ground level as well as a roof terrace, every room gets a window and they are triple aspect. In practice this makes all the difference. For me the urban house at Kidbrooke takes a good idea just a bit too far”.
Rethinking the housing model
Berkeley’s “urban house” isn’t the only new scheme rethinking the rules around outdoor space and gardens.
In the London borough of Newham, the McGrath Road development is another reworking of the old back-to-back housing model. It will be made up of more than 20 homes laid out around a tree-lined square. The top floor living room in each property has a private roof terrace.
Meanwhile in Harlow, Essex, the 84-home Newhall Be development was launched five years ago. This much-praised scheme is another to go down the rooftop terrace route.
However, it’s not all about new-build. Making efficient use of existing housing stock is also vitally important. Chimney Pot Park is an award-winning community of 318 “upside-down houses” in Langworthy, Salford, created from several streets of derelict century-old terraced housing. The living space and kitchen are upstairs, the bedrooms are downstairs and a new balcony and garden terrace were added, said Urban Splash, the regeneration company behind the scheme that involved creating homes to buy and to rent, and was completed in 2009.
The company said that while the insides of the properties were transformed, “the best bits of the original terraces have been kept: the size, the shape, the roof, the front door”.
An Urban Splash spokesman said: “They sometimes come up on the market and seem to sell very quickly.” A Chimney Pot Park two-bed one popped up on Rightmove this week. Offers in excess of £140,000 are being invited.
