Housebuilders might be starting to build again but massive schemes featuring thousands of homes are off the agenda. The emphasis is strictly on smaller projects. Yet even in these torrid times, not many housebuilders would want to take on a scheme featuring just 54 units spread across four tight town centre plots with an aggregate floor space of just half a hectare. In the Devon town of Totnes, Midas Homes has come away from what could have been an extremely difficult project in every sense, showered with awards. Its South Gate scheme not only took gold for planning in this year’s Housing Design Awards but went on to win the top award for a completed project and was also the overall winner.

A few years ago, when the local authority, South Hams District Council (SHDC), began looking at how to boost family housing provision in Totnes – one of the UK’s biggest second home hotspots – those all seemed impossible dreams. Jon Capel, architect for Harrison Sutton Partnership, explains: “In Totnes, you get rich people who come here for the weekend, educated people and those that come for an alternative lifestyle to drink yoghurts and walk their skinny dogs. You’re never going to unite them.”

That was evident when in late 2003 SHDC put in an outline planning application for more homes in Totnes town centre using FPD Savills as an adviser. The result, a furore: a local pressure group, Save Our Space, formed and asked SHDC to withdraw their plans but the council had already spent around £1 million on road improvements and Savills’ fees. The council simply could not afford to back down. Instead, the council took a different approach that would land one of those HDA prizes.

“The council gave Save Our Space three months to come up with some thoughts and said that they would withdraw if they had something sensible to say,” adds Jon Capel. In March 2004, Save Our Space morphed into Design Our Space, which would work in partnership with the council. The plans were withdrawn and what would eventually become a three-way process got underway. Not all the sites had been earmarked in the earlier scheme but with the new approach, four plots were identified. Just off a ring road circling Totnes were two former car parks either side of a road known as The Lamb, a former cattle market.

These two plots would be brought into the scheme along with two smaller plots lower down the hill: a small piece of public marshland and a large bungalow with a sizeable garden that the council purchased. Collectively, these sites were identified as the Heath Way sites. The council then brought Harrison Sutton on board and one of their first ideas was to ask the community, working in groups, to research the heritage, open space, car parking and housing aspects of the proposals. More than 200 people volunteered and the results formed a public exhibition. Harrison Sutton then brought all the architects in Totnes together.

There could surely only be so many architects in a town with a population of 8,000 but Totnes has a leftfield bent and 16 designers joined brainstorming sessions hosted – and paid for – by Harrison Sutton. A revised application was submitted only for a new, smaller pressure group to form driven by the familiar nimby obsessions such as loss of light, but the council unanimously approved the new plans.

partnership

The council then invited expressions of interest from the private sector and Midas won out. “We then took the detailed planning drawings, worked them up and gave them to Harrison Sutton to comment,” explains Clive Scourfield, project manager at Midas Homes. Midas and Harrison Sutton worked in a three-way partnership with Design For Space, the council joint venture with the community, but the land stayed in public ownership. Scourfield adds: “Part of our contract was that we built social housing and only got paid when we handed this over. Then we did the three commercial units and handed them back and South Hams still own them.”

For private sale units that involve a transfer of freehold, such as the townhouses, the freehold is sold directly by the council to the new owner. All the units were built tenure blind so there is no difference inside or out between the 26 social housing units – ten of which are shared equity, the remainder rented – and the 25 private units. With such a tight site, space was at a premium and Midas used one crane for the two Lamb sites but Clive Scourfield immediately saw this would present a major problem for one elderly resident, whose property adjoined the site.

“There was going to be a crane outside her front door for 12 months,” he explains: “So I told the council and they made her an open market offer and she sold. She still lives in Totnes and is really happy.” The scheme’s design features include jettying on the first floor levels to fit in with existing homes but no-one wanted a modern clone of Totnes. “The overwhelming response was that people wanted something contemporary,” says Jon Capel. “The main concern early on was that it would be pastiche.” The project included a zinc roof to get the pitch down to 20 degrees as opposed to the 30 degrees normally associated with a slate roof.

Further concessions were made by the introduction of metal security gates in the Lamb section after intervention by government quango, Secured By Design. Though South Gate predated the Code for Sustainable Homes, the development reached Ecohomes “Excellent” standard and won this year’s RIBA South West Arnold Sayer design award. “The only problem has been the marketing and getting people to walk round all of it,” says Midas Homes PR manager Emma Mackay.

The South Gate scheme was launched in summer 2007 and despite the scheme’s disparate form and a difficult climate for selling new homes anywhere, by mid- November only two apartments and two townhouses were left on the market. Between the Lamb North and Lamb South sections on the top of the hill and the lower part of the scheme, are another two car parks. South Hams District Council plans to build an upper deck on one car park – the steep gradient of the hill means this would not affect any views – and develop the other parking space into yet more homes. If the team behind South Gate are involved in this next development, the only problem could be meeting the standards of their first attempt.

FACTS & FIGURES

Scheme: South Gate
Housebuilder: Midas Homes
Architect:Harrison Sutton Partnership
Quantity surveyor: Randall & Simmonds
Ecohomes consultant: Linda Randall
Urban design: Lavigne Lonsdale
Highways & flood risk: Peter Brett Associates
Demolition contractor: Chris Wittle
Groundwork contractor: K & D Gilbert/Fred Champion
Main contractor: Midas Homes
Estate agent: Marchand Petit Estate Agents
Show home design: Sarah Caseley
Site acquired: Spring 2006
Planning authority: South Hams District Council
Planning permission submitted: October 2005
Planning permission granted: March 2006
Start on site: October 13 2006
Completion: December 2009
Site size: 1.25 acres (0.5 hectares) across four areas
New build units: 51 one, two, three and four bedroom homes
Parking spaces: 49 parking spaces across four sites
Refurbished units: 2 flats & 1 office
Social housing units: 26 units
Social housing partner: Sovereign Housing Association
Annual management fee: Approx £550 per townhouse, from £338 to £1,058 for the apartments depending on size
Ground rent: Not disclosed
House prices: £155,950 for a one-bed flat to £405,950 for a four-bed townhouse