As Maidstone council progresses with its Local Plan Review, which will see the borough attempt to increase its housing targets by 40% and find room for 28,000 new homes by 2037, comes news that 75% of new housing developments across the country should not have gone ahead.

The astonishing claim is made by the Campaign to Protect Rural England, which commissioned University College London to carry out an analysis of the design of new housing developments in England since 2007.

The results of the study which looked at 142 large developments, with an average of 382 units, found that their design was overwhelmingly "mediocre" or "poor."

The report concluded that one in five of the developments should have been refused planning permission outright as their poor design was contrary to advice given in the National Planning Policy Framework.

A further 54% should not have been granted permission without significant improvements to their design having been made first.

The audit also found that less affluent communities were 10 times more likely to get a worse design, even though better design made living in the property more affordable.

Low-scoring housing developments scored especially badly in terms of character and sense of place, with architecture that did not respond to the context in which it was located.

The worst reported aspects of design included developments dominated by access roads and the poor integration of storage, bins and car parking, leading to unattractive and unfriendly environments with likely negative health and social implications.

However, the report acknowledged some positives with a number of schemes scoring highly for safety and security.

Professor Matthew Carmona from UCL, said: “Research has consistently shown that high quality design makes new residential developments more acceptable to local communities and delivers huge social, economic and environmental value to all, yet we are still failing in this regard across England.

“Planning authorities are under pressure to deliver new homes and are therefore prioritising numbers in the short-term over the long-term negative impacts of bad design.

"At the same time, house-builders have little incentive to improve when their designs continue to pass through the planning system."

"Some highways authorities, meanwhile, do not even recognise their role in creating a sense of place for communities.

“Collectively, house-builders, planning authorities and highways authorities need to significantly raise their game. This can’t come soon enough.”

Tom Fyans, campaigns and policy director at CPRE, said: “The Government has presided over a decade of disastrous housing design and must raise standards immediately.

"This research is utterly damning of larger house builders and their failure to build the homes our communities deserve."

Mr Fyans said that schemes which did not meet minimum requirements should be refused on design grounds and this should be supported, without question, by the Government regardless of progress towards meeting housing targets in the area.

The research examined 21 developments in the South East, including two in Ashford and one in Maidstone.

The full report can be found here.

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