Terraced Houses - Renovation or Demolition

Housing experts ask for a fresh approach in the way we deal with the terraced houses

The vast amounts of money used to demolish terraced houses should be used instead to renovate them and reinvigorate these run down areas in our cities. Councils and housing associations are being urged to rethink the all too common policy of boarding up followed by demolition.

Professor Anne Power from the London School of Economics and co-author, with the architect Lord Rogers, of the book Cities for a Small Country said: "A huge amount of money is going into demolition - £17,000 per property. If this was spent on remodelling and upgrading we could do a huge amount."

They urge the Government to retain these well-built Victorian and Edwardian terraces especially in the cities of the Midlands and the North. Some £500 million has been made available by Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, in nine redevelopment schemes.
Called Pathfinder schemes, their aim is to regenerate areas including Merseyside and Stoke-on-Trent. The worry is that the majority of this money will be used for wholesale demolition followed by new-build.

"I have no idea why there can't be a major rethink," said Anne Power. "It won't be on the scale needed unless the rethink covers the removal of VAT on repairs and improvements and the environmental values being destroyed by demolition."

Both Lord Rogers and Professor Power favour the retention of existing buildings demonstrated by innovative schemes like those of Urban Splash in Manchester. This company has created public spaces and gardens by demolishing only alternate rows of terraced houses and knocking together others to create more adaptable and useful modern homes.

Wholesale demolition of these houses would also be a loss to the architectural heritage of our cities. Streets of terraced houses were often developed by several different builders, constructing a few houses at a time. The result of this is that each street may display a variety of  building decoration and design. For example, a single terrace can carry several name plaques which will vary from simple to very ornate.

If these terraced houses were in the South you could guarantee that they would be worth the cost of repair and renovation - and is the new housing which is replacing them likely to be as well built and last as long? Affordable renovated terraces could well be the solution for those first time buyers trying to get onto the housing ladder.

24th March 2005

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