As we embark on delivering 1.5 million new homes, we urgently need to ask what truly makes a good home, or we risk failing on a very large scale.

But the debate on housing quality often centres on space standards, internal layouts, materials, thermal performance, construction methods and, more recently, fire escapes and the BSA. These are, of course, very important, but they are not the starting point. In fact, we had very generous space standards under Parker Morris, yet many of those homes have been demolished as they failed at the level of place. Good quality housing starts before you even enter the unit. It starts with the urban design.

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