An ideal home in an ideal town

I spent last Saturday at London’s Olympia exhibition centre, where the Ideal Home Show was on for the 113th time.

As one of the country’s longest standing shows, we’ve found the Ideal Home Show to be the ideal place to talk to homeowners about heat pumps – and this year, we also focused heavily on home air conditioning, which gained a lot of interest.

TV architect George Clarke was with us on our stand on Saturday and we interviewed him with Russell Dean, our Deputy Divisional Manager, for some promotional videos we’re making.  

Whilst he was here, he also held some webinars and I wanted to share a report on the second one, which was called An Ideal Home in an Ideal Town.

New town development

If you follow the news at all, you might be aware that the government has announced seven new towns that are to be built during the lifetime of this Parliament.

Each will create a minimum of 10,000 new homes, but it’s about far more than just new houses as this time, the government is making sure that the surrounding infrastructure is also in place.

So, in addition to the homes, we will see new commercial properties and the infrastructure to support everything.

This panel discussion focused on what the new towns are likely to look like and what will it be like to live in them?

One of the seven towns announced is Brabazon, which is just north of Bristol, and Russell Dean and George Clarke were joined on the panel discussion by Seb Loyn, who is Director of Planning and Development for YTL Developments, which is building the new town of Brabazon.

A brief history

Brabazon is being designed around community and connectivity and the discussion included George Clarke reminiscing about the town he grew up in.

George opened by admitting that he is obsessed with homes and has been since he grew up in the new town of Washington, which was developed in the 1960’s. George and his family moved in when he was 3 or 4 years old. His mum still lives there now, along with around 60,000 others.

He said that at the time, he didn’t even realise it how fantastic it was and explained how he could walk across his neighbourhood to school and the park and the shops, without ever having to cross a road, so it was a really safe environment. Growing up, all the children had their own safe space.

There were 2-storey 4-bed houses, like his home. 3-storey 6-bed, and single bungalows for the elderly and infirm.  It was built fast and built beautiful. The people working on it really cared and they were given a green light by the government and the local councillors.  

George now realises how visionary and utopian his town planners were. He recently met one of the planners who was 22 at the time and is now 80. He explained that they were given great freedom to develop 17 villages into one new town in about 15 years and how it had to have homes, jobs, schools and a real sense of community.

And it was really great.

However, no-one at that time was talking about conservation, energy efficiency and renewable technologies, so the houses had cavity walls and little to no insulation.

A proud history

Seb Lyon from YTL Developments explained how Brabazon is named after the innovative luxury aircraft designed and built at the Filton airfield that is the site of the new town.

Although it wasn’t the direct link to Concorde, it was a crucial technological forerunner. The propeller-driven Brabazon proved to be a commercial failure, but the development at the Filton airfield helped create the skills, expertise, runways and hangars to design and build Concorde.

Seb then talked about how the new town of Brabazon, just 4½ miles north of Bristol, is designed around connectivity and sustainability.   

A new railway station is currently being built which connects directly to Bristol Temple Meads and new roads and bus routes are already in place. There are also lots of jobs in the area already as this is the 6th most productive borough in the country, but in addition to this, Brabazon will help create around 30,000 new jobs.

Along with the new train station and the office block above, there will be three hotels, a Waitrose with a 7-storey office block above it, new schools, doctor’s surgeries, etc, along with shops, restaurants and a food court.

YTL Developments are also building what will become the 3rd largest arena in the country as they are very much planning for Brabazon to become a destination in its own right.

Key to the whole development is quality with the houses built out of high-quality brick with sustainability at their heart. Each house achieves an EPC A putting it into the top 2% in the country for efficiency.

Many of the homes will also be available for social rent as they are added to the housing association list. Seb said that this mix of social and private housing was really important to foster a community quickly and described how Brabazon is already feeling very well establish.

Living the dream

The houses have double height windows which is good for sustainability, and they include Ecodan air source heat pumps to deliver renewable heating and hot water.

At Brabazon there are 450 acres and the homes are already exceeding the new Future Homes Standard, with excellent insulation levels and the heat pumps helping deliver a 60% drop in embodied carbon.

As one of the Directors at YTL Developments, Seb chose to live in one of the new 1,600sq ft homes for a year and was delighted that they have developed an efficient and flexible space for families to grow in.

Seb explained that people need to feel part of the community and there are too many developments which are built around the car, but don’t provide enough parking. This seems a much more sensible approach, putting people first and designing around communities.

George teased that it sounded like they had followed the pattern of his mum’s house, but made them more sustainable, which is excellent.

George also explained that he has lived with a heat pump for eight years now and doesn’t even really think about it anymore. And his energy bills have genuinely come down.

The panel then took questions from the audience about radiator sizing and whether heat pumps can really deliver in winter, with George explaining that you don’t always have to have high temperature heat pump systems, but that ultimately, it all comes down to having the right system designed specifically for your own individual circumstances.

Russell Jones Content and communications manager