The gold standard in social housing design | Letters

After Norwich’s Goldsmith Street was awarded the Stirling prize, readers discuss the ability of councils to build more homes, what constitutes high-quality housing, and the insecurity of being a private tenant

It was gratifying to learn that the RIBA Stirling prize has been awarded for Norwich council’s Goldsmith Street during the centenary year of Christopher Addison’s Homes Fit for Heroes initiative (Award for best new UK building goes to council housing project for first time, 9 October).

As Oliver Wainwright reports, the council could build more housing if right to buy was reformed – or, better still, abolished. When the scheme was first introduced in 1979, Norwich councillors – led by their housing chair, the late Lady Patricia Hollis – took a stand against the Thatcher government by refusing to treat sales as an urgent priority. The minister responsible, Michael Heseltine, sent in Whitehall officials to oversee sales for several years. Let’s hope that in future councils will be able to circumvent legislation on forced privatisation.
Dr Michael Passmore
Greenwich, London

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A green thought in every different green shade

Never overlook the loveliness of green, most delicately nuanced of colours

They say if you find a job you love, you will never work a day in your life. However, what they don’t tell you is that it works both ways. As someone lucky enough to have their passion as their profession, believe me when I tell you it means you never, ever switch off. At the cinema with my mates, just as I am losing myself in the action, a forest of British birch trees will suddenly appear in the backdrop of what is meant to be a camp of Congolese mercenaries. I’ll go on holiday and find myself fishing mystery leaves out of cocktails to see if I can identify them. I’ll be sat at lunch with non-plant people and if the conversation turns to food, I have the irrepressible compulsion to tell them facts about vegetables. Trust me, it’s a curse.

Human eyes are great at distinguishing shades of green because it allows us to tell the toxic from the tasty

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A green thought in every different green shade

Never overlook the loveliness of green, most delicately nuanced of colours

They say if you find a job you love, you will never work a day in your life. However, what they don’t tell you is that it works both ways. As someone lucky enough to have their passion as their profession, believe me when I tell you it means you never, ever switch off. At the cinema with my mates, just as I am losing myself in the action, a forest of British birch trees will suddenly appear in the backdrop of what is meant to be a camp of Congolese mercenaries. I’ll go on holiday and find myself fishing mystery leaves out of cocktails to see if I can identify them. I’ll be sat at lunch with non-plant people and if the conversation turns to food, I have the irrepressible compulsion to tell them facts about vegetables. Trust me, it’s a curse.

Human eyes are great at distinguishing shades of green because it allows us to tell the toxic from the tasty

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Inside the Welsh Hobbit House that could be yours for £385,000

It's a very precious property.

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New lessons on the old plot

It’s never too late to try something new, whether it is ‘super plugs’ or wire tunnels…

It seems you are never too old to try new gardening thinking. For the first time I have veered from seed, succumbed to an email ad and bought Organic Gardening Catalogue ‘super plugs’. Specifically: 10 Winter Density lettuce, 20 Bright Lights rainbow chard and 20 Nero di Toscana kale.

All organically grown, of course, and all replanted now on the plot in space opened by fallen sunflowers – felled at last by the first heavy rain and winds – and by lifting the last of the beetroots.

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New lessons on the old plot

It’s never too late to try something new, whether it is ‘super plugs’ or wire tunnels…

It seems you are never too old to try new gardening thinking. For the first time I have veered from seed, succumbed to an email ad and bought Organic Gardening Catalogue ‘super plugs’. Specifically: 10 Winter Density lettuce, 20 Bright Lights rainbow chard and 20 Nero di Toscana kale.

All organically grown, of course, and all replanted now on the plot in space opened by fallen sunflowers – felled at last by the first heavy rain and winds – and by lifting the last of the beetroots.

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Our forever home on the Kent coast

Remodelling an old house by the sea gave this family the chance to shape their future – and meet the community

Marine Parade is a dead-straight road that faces the cliff-top lawns of Tankerton Slopes just outside Whitstable on the north coast of Kent. The grassy slopes, popular with cyclists, dog walkers and joggers, lead down to a row of wooden beach huts and a quiet, shingle beach divided by wooden groynes. At low tide, a natural causeway known as the Street appears, making it possible to walk along the shingle spit with the estuary’s waters on either side. Six miles out to sea, the turbines of the Kentish Flats wind farm are just about visible. This is the view from Mel Payne’s first floor.

“We were looking for something that was a bit life-changing,” she explains. “We’d lived on an island for quite a long time. Autism and twins will do that to a family, I think. You can be accidentally isolated, and this house takes us off that island.” Mel lives with her husband, Steve, a project manager for the NHS, their 11-year-old son Gus, who is autistic, and their seven-year-old twins, Tess and Elsa.

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