Where We Find Ourselves: A Snapshot From 2009
The town of Totnes was built in a series of phases. Onto its original Saxon settlement layout, the Elizabethan core was built with timber frame and wattle-and-daub, and later brick, infill. This was followed in turn by brick-built Victorian and 1930s semi-detached properties, and, in the 1960s, by widespread use of concrete-block and panel construction. Although the more recent properties were drier and lighter, they weren’t necessarily warmer, as Part One of this Plan has revealed. Much the same pattern can be found in the parishes, although being further from transport routes and railway lines, the more rural areas feature more vernacular buildings, constructed with a higher percentage of local materials. Totnes and District contains 9,481 houses and with 0.5% of those houses being replaced annually, the houses of the future are, to all intents and purposes, already here.
Although we do not currently have accurate survey data for the number of non-domestic buildings in the district, we know that many of these are large and consume a lot of energy. The following is a rough estimate of these buildings in T&D (see Appendix B4 for details):
- 10 very large buildings (multiple connected buildings, e.g., Follaton House)
- 515 large buildings (essentially single large building, e.g., a church, school)
- 1,248 medium buildings (about the size of a three-roomed flat, e.g., a restaurant)
- 65 small buildings (e.g., a pair of public toilets).
Non-domestic buildings vary widely in their construction and energy efficiency requirements as some are used for human occupation (e.g. schools), others for animal use, storage or operating machinery. But adding the total of 1,838 non-domestic buildings to the rest, results in an estimated total of 11,284 buildings in Totnes and District.
Totnes, like most other parts of the country, is under enormous pressures from the Spatial Strategy, to find space for hundreds of new houses, based on forecasts which are in turn based on assumptions which contradict those of this Plan (i.e. continual economic growth and the perpetual availability of cheap energy). The community response to the proposals set out in South Hams District Council’s (SHDC) Totnes and Dartington Development Plan Document (which identified over 30 potential development sites) was comprehensive and, under the co-ordination of the Totnes & District Community Strategy Group, unprecedented in its depth and professionalism. However, local consultation came to an unexpected impasse when the Community response was shelved (in June 2008) until 2011 . The subsequent process of Enquiry by Design (EbD) in June 2009 under the Prince’s Foundation attempted to bring clarity to these issues, but, at the time of writing, the jury is still out on the success or otherwise of this process to consult widely and agree suitable development sites.
The area suffers from low wages and very high house prices, exacerbated by the failure to provide much in the way of affordable housing. A recent Oil Vulnerability Audit carried out by TTT for a commercial business in the town found that all but one of their staff were unable to afford to live in Totnes, and that if the rising price of oil made it unaffordable to drive, they could lose most of their key staff. The lack of affordable housing in the area is not only a housing issue, but also key to the vulnerability of the area’s economy, particularly that of the town itself.
There is little assistance (apart from small discounts) for homeowners who want to insulate their homes, unless they are elderly or in receipt of benefits. Across the area, hundreds of thousands of pounds a year are spent heating the sky above our homes, as expensively-generated heat pours out of windows, roofs, walls and draughty doors. At the same time, new buildings are still built using high embodied energy materials such as concrete, steel, PVC (a toxic product already banned in some European countries due to its health impacts ,) and a wealth of other industrial building materials. The complex web of well managed woodlands, slate quarries, craftspeople, artists and builders that produced the older buildings we so treasure, has been all but entirely dismantled. Most modern building materials are manufactured elsewhere, and most of the money generated by their sale, like the heat from the buildings, pours out of Totnes.
Leave a comment
If you wish to comment on a particular paragraph
and quote the relevant number in your comment.