The largest ever housing estate to be built in a UK national park has won planning permission – and it is fantastic. In a breakthrough for British sustainable housing, a new district of 685 super-insulated homes and workspaces on the site of a former ironworks in Lewes, East Sussex, got the green light from the South Downs National Park authority last week.
New homes that can ease Britain’s housing crisis are a good thing, but it’s rare to feel genuinely excited about a large housing development these days. Most projects currently approved in the UK tend to be the usual car-dominated and shoddily constructed identikit new-build suburbs, built by one of a handful of mega-developers that dominate the industry. However, Lewes has a different approach – one that offers an environmentally sound model to rescue Britain’s broken private property sector.
