Report comment

Quite a number of issues to consider there, and as an architect who has been working for small and middle size practices I have to say that the balance between cost and quality is the main issue, a great amount of time and resources are expend on ascertaining the amount of money for a project due to a constant changes of budget and a great deal of value engineering. All these leave most of the practices with a limited amount of time to properly consider other design factors therefore the consequences are there for everyone to see. In a school project I worked on, the variation on budget from a project designed to meet Passiv-Haus classic to carbon zero standard was around £1.2 million and this was a huge issue on design program because the local authority was unable to rise additional money within the time scale already agreed.
On the other hand, I think there are enough design provisions on our planning system to deliver quality homes. We should celebrate the planning system rather than blaming it for everything that goes wrong. Lastly, I see advantages on traditional constructions methods for homes due to robustness and energy efficiency. I put into question all policies that claim to conceive a low cost construction industry, just good intentions that fills up the hell.