Advisor attacks housing scheme

A GOVERNMENT SCHEME to replace 400,000 homes in the Midlands and the North of England has been criticised by the government‘s top conservation advisor.

Simon Thurley, the chief executive of English Heritage, told Planning magazine the problems surrounding a low-demand for housing had more to do with a minority social element than the architecture of pre-1919 terraces.

“We should move away from the idea that the problem is the housing rather than the people. 

“To say that terrace housing is causing problem is, to put a technical term on it, b******s,” he told the magazine.

“Fulham, Chelsea or Bath have plenty of terrace housing and are not dysfunctional. 

“It is a small number of families making life a misery for everyone else. Let us not confuse architecture with what the problem is.”

Mr Thurley has called on the civil servants running the Pathfinder programme to carry out a “proper comprehensive analysis of the benefits of keeping what is already there”.