Does your home pass the lockdown test?

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With the lockdown easing, homes with their own outdoor space and good wif-fi will be in demand

Does your home pass the lockdown test? Not something many of us had considered before 23 March this year ? unless you happen to be one of those survivalists with a bunker full of canned food and bottled water! During the last seven weeks, access to food hasn?t been an issue for most of us. Even vulnerable households have been well served by supermarkets delivering to their door. But what has become painfully obvious is that many people are living in very confined spaces with little access to fresh air ? let alone outdoor space. With more pandemics predicted, in future homes with gardens and reliable broadband are likely to be in demand.

An article in Inside Housing this week raises some important points about the way many of us live, particularly in urban areas. With thousands of households across the country living in flats, both in the private and social sector, and Parker Morris space standards a thing of the past, much of our housing stock is small. Many households have little or no space for home working ? which is now the new normal for many of us ? and even less for indoor exercise. Not all flats have a balcony or shared private outdoor space, and not all of us have access to a fast, reliable broadband connection.

As Alison Inman, former president of the Chartered Institute of Housing writes in her article: ?When people are asked to list the things that have helped them cope with the lockdown, among the most mentioned are gardens, access to outside space, and keeping in touch with family and friends over the internet?.

It?s likely that this won?t be the last pandemic many of us experience in our lifetimes. So Alison makes a good point when she says whether or not the homes we rent and sell would pass a ?lockdown test?, should be part of the way we think about and design our properties.

In London, more than half of all homes are flats. How do we give tenants and buyers access to fresh air and outdoor space, indoor space that?s big enough for our children to play and exercise without going stir-crazy and enough room for a desk; all supported by wi-fi that?s good enough to support home working, while making developments stack-up financially? It?s a big ask.

Our view at Ringley is that, as the High Street continues to collapse and we prove that working differently is an option, our call to re-purpose the ground floor of buildings for co-working, community and amenity space is as important as ever. Maybe even more so now that lockdown has helped many of us realise there is a different way to run our businesses.

Grown-up workspaces can be physically but not visually separated from play dens for children and hangout zones for teens, as society learns to come together in new ways. These spaces should not be subject to tax in the same way as income-generating spaces and subject to business rates, but made part of a new national wellbeing strategy.

www.ringley.co.uk
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