FUEIMP'Agi CONSUMING INTEREST
Home Chat
By LESLIE ADRIAN
But then the whole balance of power in the housing business is heavily against the private individual. And the conduct of the suppliers of houses is downright mean. While the cost of materials and labour rises inexorably, the quality of both deteriorates, and is often the root cause of faults in the final structure. This week the intellectual spearhead (or arrowhead) of the Con- servative party. the Bow Group, sees the need for guarantees of quality in housing. In a pamphlet, Home Truths, by John Nelson-Jones (2s. 6d.), they call the provision of guarantees an 'overdue reform,' without which 'many house purchasers will continue to be disenchanted by what should be a pleasurable experience.'
The guarantee should run for a year, they say. But what of the young couple whose house started to flake to pieces after eight years? The builder had used sub-standard bricks, to speed up the work, he said. Though who ever heard of a builder in a hurry? A judge awarded the aggrieved couple damages, but he might not have. So what is needed is a version of the French strvice de l'agrement, whereby the guarantee covers house-buyers for ten years. A house is not a motor-car or a fridge. Most people buy them for life with their life savings.
The Gibson Committee recommended a guarantee system two years ago, a Private Mem- ber's Bill was tabled in 1964 to secure a House Buyers' Protection Act, Which? slammed into the National House-Builders' Registration Council for its inadequacy last year, and still there is hardly a sign of official interest, except for the rumour that the Minister of Housing will shortly come out in support of the idea that building societies should refuse mortgages to would-be buyers of uncertificated houses.
The Bow Group has a number of sensible sug- gestions (somewhat less extreme than Ian Nairn's cry last Sunday to 'Stop the Architects Now') and the professions come off poorly when they are all strung together. Mortgagees are quite likely to get stuck with two solicitors and two surveyors—the building society's and their own; lawyers overcharge for conveyancing to subsidise less lucrative activities; and the stamp duty levied on housing transactions is inequitable—nothing on a £4,450 house, 10s. per £100 on a £4,550 house. Yet the Bow Group complaints barely touch on the whole untidy mess, which is not simplified by the use of irresponsible (and I do mean irresponsible) sub-contractors.
Far too many houses, well or poorly built, seem to be designed without any expectation that they might be occupied by people in search of space, warmth and privacy. Elizabeth Gundrey, writing in the Daily Mail last October, described the findings of a local survey carried out by the Horsham Consumer Group into spec.-built houses on twenty different estate projects. Few of them had any outdoor storage, even where solid-fuel central heating demanded at least a coke bunker. Fitted cupboards obviously never occur to this kind of architect, either. So-called spare bedrooms seem designed for visiting dwarfs. So-called dining-rooms cannot seat more than four. Kitchens are too cramped to accom- modate the modern equipment that every house- wife craves. And the eternal architectural solution creates so many personal problems—the lavatory in the bathroom.
A Penguin handbook, Design to Fit the Family (4s. 6d.), that was published last year, says, in its introduction, 'We realise that every house has its drawbacks,' and adds that 'it is all too easy to accept the inconveniences. . . In a new house, say the authors, Phoebe De Syllas and Dorothy Meade, the architect's plan will show you how he expects you to use it: 'but perhaps a totally different arrangement would suit you better.' Some radical rearrangements right through the whole wretched business seem long overdue.
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