A beautiful, free and highly informative new booklet about the history of housing and planning in a social context in Britain since the 19th century has been published by the NHBC Foundation in Britain and can be downloaded in PDF form.

It has been compiled by Clive Turner, NHBC Foundation and Richards Partington Architects (RPA) and covers housing from the Victorian era to the present day and looks further into the future to see what kind of home we might be living in later this century.

I found it fascinating and have attempted to summarise it below.

19th Century

This was a time of massive social change as people flocked to the cities, which experienced overcrowding and consequence expansion in many cases due to cholera epidemics. By the end of the century the basic needs for housing of workers and their families had been recognised and embodied in new Model Home designs.

Right: Typical Victorian terraced housing with chimneys.

Sewage systems had been implemented. And from the early Edwardian period after the turn of the 20th century homeownership became possible for more people through the first mortgages offered of up to 90% on middle bracket homes. Apartment living which had been stigmatised was also recognised as respectable.

By and large, there was no electricity. Heating was by burning coal. Air pollution was terrible. Industrial workers were crammed into two room back to backs in densities of up to 250 houses per hectare.

But as a reaction to this the Garden City Association (which later became the Town and Country Planning Association) was established by planning reformer Ebenezer Howard.

• From 1800 to 1900 the UK population grew from about 11 million to 32 million. The urban population increased from around 2 million to over 20 million
• In the new urban areas, workers lived in overcrowded houses. Lack of sanitation and fresh water, and poor food often contributed to a depressing downward spiral towards slum conditions
• Victorian mains sewers, flushing WCs and waste collections were breakthroughs in public health
• Public health concerns drove the development of the 1878 Model Bye Laws, which consolidated a process of building control
• Henry Roberts' Model Home established new standards for workers' dwellings.

1919-1939

Social housing took off. Local authorities, funded by the government, built over 1 million homes for rent. Private housebuilding also grew rapidly as mortgages became affordable. Working families moved to the new suburbs. Sprawl increased. Tight-knit urban communities were lost in the process.

Suburban development: Braunstone Park Leicester aerial photo taken in the 1930s.

Semi-detached homes were invented (right). They were designed for families and had generous gardens with indoor toilets. By the 1930s the modernist movement was spreading which included, towards the end of the period, experiments in open plan living.

After the First World War there was a major council house building programme, which continued after the Second World War. By 1979 nearly 32% of all homes (about 6.5 million) were public rented.

• From 1919 the role of housing, in both the social and financial stability of the nation, assumed growing political significance
• The UK embarked on a large-scale post-war council house building programme. By 1939 this was accommodating about 1 in 10 families
• British people embraced private ownership. Compared with just 10% in 1914, around 25% of all Britons owned or were paying for their own home by 1939
• New housing was typically of cottage style, semi-detached and suburban. While traditional materials were mainly adopted, the distinctive, streamline 'Moderne' style emerged in the 1930s
• In the mid 1930s, concerns over the variable quality of new homes for private buyers triggered the establishment of a national registration scheme for house builders.

1945-1960

Nearly half a million homes were destroyed by the war. To build at scale following this, prefabrication was developed. The first housing standards set the pattern for close conformity between the quality of public and private homes. The 1949 Housing Act enabled local authorities to provide housing for everyone.

Somerford estate, Hackney: Prefabricated terraced housing 1952.

The Town and Country Planning Act of 1947 halted the uncontrolled expansion of the suburbs and established planning principles that apply to this day.

So-called 'Mark 1' New Towns appeared beginning with Stevenage in 1946. The neighbourhood unit approach established the idea of towns for 5 to 10,000 people with their own dedicated facilities.

• Following the Second World War, the nation endured a protracted period of recovery, with food rationing continuing until 1954
• The population united behind a post-war reconstruction to 'win the peace'
• A large number of non-traditional homes were built using a range of prefabrication approaches. These helped to boost housing output to a high level (just under 354,000 homes were built in the UK in 1954)
• Centralised planning introduced new principles for establishing communities and social interaction
• Successive Housing Manuals (in 1944 and 1949) introduced new standards which shaped a distinctive new generation of housing.

1960-1970

To rehouse people in substandard homes local authorities built tower blocks. High-rise living was intended to be utopian, but unfortunately the dream turned sour with many of these blocks becoming social and financial failures.

Tower blocks replacing Victorian slums in Manchester.

Vertical slums replaced horizontal slums. Many were demolished but 20 years later. Meanwhile much older housing continues to be serviceable. However, designers had guidance to help enhance the usability of space and thousands of books like homes were constructed of questionable thermal performance.

• In the 1960s and 70s more homes were built in the UK than at any other time, including over 425,000 in 1968
• Residential tower blocks were a major part of the new housing mix: about 55,000 were built in this period – over 400,000 homes
• Public disapproval of tower blocks quickly grew. Poor design for community security, austere, repetitive concrete exteriors and technical deficiencies all contributed to dissatisfaction
• In 1964, Scotland introduced Building Regulations. England followed in 1965 when the longstanding local Bye Laws for building were replaced by national Building Regulations
• Two further waves of 'New Towns' were designated. The early 1960s group included Telford and Washington and the final group in the late 60s included Milton Keynes and Warrington.

 Dwelling stock by a tenure in England since 1918.

1980-2000

In the 1980s Margaret Thatcher gave people living in council houses the right to buy their homes. This both increased social mobility and resulted in a lasting shortage of housing which continues acutely to this day because councils were not allowed to reinvest the money they took from the sales in new housing.

Right:  Housing Association homes: Mallard Place in Twickenham 1980s.

Housing associations replaced local authorities as providers of social housing. Planning and design became more closely linked with urban design principles incorporated into schemes.

Medium rise with a more human scale became more acceptable.

Building regulations made homes become more energy efficient in average temperatures in homes increased by 5.5°C over two decades. Safety and security improved. Computer aided design tools became more widely used. Building Regulations were supported by detailed guidance and the Approved Documents.

To combat urban sprawl in 1998 the government pressed for 60% of all new homes to be built on brownfield sites. This involved a revised version of Planning Policy Guidance 3.

• In the 1980s, incomes improved for most people. It was a time of entrepreneurship and innovation
• Economic success drove up house price inflation, which reached 32% in 1988. The bubble burst in 1990 resulting in negative equity for many. In 1992 alone 75,000 families had their homes repossessed
• The Right to Buy scheme was launched in the 1980 Housing Act. By the end of the 1990s about 1.9 million council homes had been sold
• There was a huge expansion in technical information. Radically new, performance-based Building Regulations appeared in 1985. In 1992 the new 'NHBC Standards' were published
• Safety standards in homes were improved significantly and set a path for much safer homes today.

2000-2015

Increased environmental awareness particularly of climate change meant that housing had a key part of play in carbon reduction. Performance targets were set for low and zero carbon homes. There has been much innovation by manufacturers, architects, designers and builders.

Right: Low energy homes at Derwenthorpeby Richards Partington Architects.

On social sustainability, the quality of new neighbourhoods was scrutinised under the CABE 'Building for Life' criteria, and the 'Decent Homes' standard was introduced for all existing council and Housing Association homes.

Sustainability is now mainstream. Homes have to meet an environmentally sound criteria. But affordability became a major issue. Mortgages became progressively harder to get especially for younger people.

Since 2013 a Housing Standards Review consultation has encouraged wide debate on technical standards for new homes. The thermal performance of the building envelope has been enhanced significantly. Airtightness is important. Many homes now generate their own electricity.

The big challenge now is to bring the existing housing stock up to the same standard of energy performance as new homes.

• Globalisation, through the internet and improved communications, has driven commercial and social change, but also played a part in the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent deep recession
• Potential economic impact of global warming is highlighted in the Stern Review - Government and the business world start to engage with sustainability and to promote principles of sustainable living
• Government supported the development of the Code for Sustainable Homes, which set out a range of environmental sustainability standards for new homes
• The Zero Carbon Homes policy is established, with the ambition of establishing zero carbon standards by 2016. Delivery would be facilitated by the Zero Carbon Hub
• Low energy housing designs and low carbon energy technologies both evolve rapidly. However, in 2010 housing output declines to the lowest level since the Second World War.

Average household energy spend England from 1970.

Innovation will no doubt continue but it must be as hard for us to imagine what people will be living in an hundred years time as it must've been for those in Victorian homes to imagine homes today.

Meanwhile is instructive to think that living conditions in many countries in the world correspond quite closely to those found in Britain 200 years ago. These countries have the opportunity to learn from Britain's 200 years of development and experimentation with different housing styles and housing patterns.

This brief history summarises in a very accessible fashion the successes and failures of these experiments. It is beautifully and profusely illustrated and includes architectural drawings of typical buildings from each of the periods above. Download your copy here.