The cost of good design is the meat of the argument

The horsemeat scandal and the house-building industry have interesting parallels. A lot of it is to do with money. The demand for cheap food means that producers’ margins are squeezed.

The high cost of land means housing is put together by accountants and mortgage lenders, as Alison Brooks has pointed out previously in BD.

The result is that the bulk of what we build has as much to with good design as Findus lasagne has to do with Italian cooking.

In the case of the dodgy global food chain, the government has reacted quickly. The law, after, all has been broken. Recipes said to contain one thing contain another. The Food Standards Agency has promised that the investigation would be “relentless”.

When it comes to housing, the rules can be bent this way and that, as at the Heygate Estate and Robin Hood Gardens. But over the vexed question of what is good design the market must decide.

In a speech to developers and architects last week, planning minster Nick Boles repeated his view that too much housing is ugly (wisely omitting the word “pig”) but went further, saying that it wasn’t the government’s job to interfere in what was built — rather it is people who need to be “very intolerant of things that are not beautiful”.

This signals a further shift away from the days of of Cabe, when nanny knew best — which is welcome.

But can people really “kick out ugliness” as he has suggested? Neighbourhood plan referendums are the only method by which developers’ plans can be chucked out by the public, and examples are thin on the ground.

But he is right to change the tone of the debate. Good design was an ingredient everyone assumed was in the housing mix, but rarely ever was. Beauty might taste better.