The early stage benefit planning of housing rengeneration projects: The gap between theory and practice

The UK government renewed its commitment to invest in the regeneration of the pre-1919 terraced housing stock through its sustainable communities' agenda. The majority of such dwellings have signs of serious disrepair and are predominantly located in deprived communities. The refurbishment or demolition, of such housing is central to the government’s sustainable community’s agenda and as such, the long-term sustainable re-use of pre-1919 dwellings is core to the policy’s success. It is suspected, that the lack of research dedicated to the achievement of sustainable housing refurbishment, may impede this outcome. Critical to the achievement of sustainable communities through housing regeneration projects is, their reliable early stage sustainable benefit planning. The general area of investigation of an on-going PhD study relates to the development of such an evaluation model; for use at project and programme level of housing regeneration schemes. Work in this area will contribute to the development of theory and practice in the field of early stage construction project evaluation and its integration with sustainable housing redevelopment practices. Relevant literature on early stage construction project evaluation as well as sustainability in regeneration projects is reviewed. The results of an initial exploratory study, which collected qualitative data from built environment regeneration professionals actively, engaged at both project and programme level is reported. Analysis of the collected data established the current understanding of sustainability and its early stage evaluation in practice revealing a gap in both understanding and application of sustainability between actors involved. The paper concludes that due to the number of barriers present within the sector, further research would not be viable until the major restrictions associated with the availability of funding and the existing legislative framework are corrected.