Introduction
The Sustainable Housing Design Guide for Scotland, written by Fionn Stevenson and Nick Williams, was first published in 2000 by The Stationery Office. The content was commissioned by Communities Scotland (then Scottish Homes) with additional support from Scottish Natural Heritage. The online version has been developed with the purpose of widening access to the Guide and providing users with a more interactive way of interrogating the content.
Please use the navigation menu on the left to browse through each of the main chapters. Links to all sub headings throughout the guide are available from this menu once you click into a main chapter heading.
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Sustainable development means economic prosperity and security, enhanced social welfare and social inclusion, and a healthy natural environment. These are all connected; success in one policy area is dependent on success in others. Successive UK Governments have recognised the importance of sustainable development to quality of life and the achievement of policy objectives across a wide range of issues1. This will have important implications for all those involved in housing in Scotland and will require placing sustainability at the heart of housing practice. This has been recognised by Scottish Homes in their Sustainable Development Policy2 which aims to encourage, support and fund development that is more sustainable in terms of its production and use, and to facilitate a change of culture which puts the concept of sustainability centre stage.
Against this background this design guide is intended to provide comprehensive and user friendly guidance to the incorporation of sustainability principles into maintaining, rehabilitating and developing housing.
How to use this guide
This guide is not a detailed technical manual, but a first source to consult for housing providers who wish to move toward more sustainable development. Comprehensive references and a bibliography are provided from which detailed technical information can be obtained.
We strongly encourage Registered Social Landlords (RSLs) to adapt their own design guides to incorporate the principles contained in this guide (Box 3.1).
Some RSLs in Scotland have already begun to move toward more sustainable housing. The benefits of their experience have been incorporated in this guide in an Appendix as case studies for use by others.
The Guide has been broken down for convenience into separate chapters dealing with specific issues of sustainability and housing. It is vitally important to appreciate however that all these issues are connected and it makes little sense to deal with them in isolation in real developments. Developers should use all of the guide when planning actual developments. The gains made from building energy efficient dwellings can be lost, for example, if they are built in a location remote from public transport and their residents are as a consequence highly car dependent.
Chapter One explains how housing can both make a contribution to the achievement of sustainability objectives, and also benefit itself in terms of quality, performance and value for money by incorporating sustainable design principles.
Chapter Two deals with those aspects of sustainability connected with the location, form and function of residential developments considered as a whole. This covers land use planning, transport, social cohesion and community issues.
Chapters Three to Seven deal with the functional design of dwellings. This covers the systematic environmental evaluation of dwellings, including energy and physical resource efficiency, and health issues. Chapter Seven deals specifically with rehabilitation and maintenance issues.
Chapter Eight examines the financial and management implications of sustainable housing design, including procurement and life cycle costing.