Graham Norwood Journalism

Poundbury: Has Prince Charles' Utopian Vision Come Of Age?

Daily Mail

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Poundbury, Britain's foremost environmentally-friendly town, is 21 years old this month...and it is celebrating with a Royal seal of approval.

Although construction work did not start for some years it was back in February 1987 that the Duchy of Cornwall announced the creation of a 'model' urban community on 400 acres of land that it owns on the southern edge of Dorchester, a market town in Dorset.

A year later, in 1988, Prince Charles personally appointed architect Leon Krier to design the community.

The scheme Krier created - vetted, changed and ultimately approved by the Prince himself - is described by planners as 'a high density urban village' rather than a suburban community, and focuses on integrating privately-owned and rented housing with shops, businesses and community facilities. These have been built cheek-by-jowl with each other to minimise the need for people to use cars.

There has been a deliberate emphasis on what planners call 'vernacular styles' - buildings that are reminiscent of older architectural movements, especially those from mainland Europe. So some houses look like a classic 200-year-old French village, others have the clean-cut appearance of a Swiss town centre, and some are smaller-scale versions of British buildings styles that you see in unspoilt cities like Bath and Harrogate.

Developers who construct there - and local firms have usually had priority over larger, volume builders - have to follow strict design guides drawn up by the Prince and the Duchy of Cornwall to ensure they stick by the eco-friendly principles of the place. As a by-product, the properties become more sought-after and are worth more, too.

"I'm trying to demonstrate the long-term value of building in an ecologically-sustainable way at Poundbury. Not only can 'green' buildings earn higher rents and prices, but they can also cost less to operate and maintain. I hope this will go some way to convince even the most hard-headed commercial operators that sustainability is something worth thinking about" the Prince said last year.

So what is it like to live there?

"It's fantastic. But the people who live here - and there are more moving in all the time - are all indebted to the pioneers who came in the 1990s. They set up the community structure which is here today, complementing the physical surroundings" says Fran Reaper, who moved from Durham to Poundbury four years ago and is now chairman of the town's residents' association.

That community structure includes an extraordinary social life - there are over 20 loal groups including fitness clubs, women's groups, reading and writers' bodies, a local TV service and quarterly residents' newsletters - which mean newcomers can immediately become involved, find new friends and stake a claim to the local area.

"It's all part of the philosophy to have a self-sufficient community. There are plenty of people who work from home - there's high-quality broadband in every house and many have home offices" explains Fran, who has recently retired.

As a result of the Prince's involvement, there has been a spotlight of publicity on Poundbury. It gets around 30,000 visitors a year and attracts new residents from throughout the country.

"It's got wide-ranging appeal. There are a lot of what I call 'early retireds' in their 50s from the south east in particular, and they're drawn by the active social life. Then there are families who move in, who support the sustainable philosophy of the area and want more green space for their children to enjoy" explains Fiona Elder of Elder and Froy, a Dorset estate agency which has had an office in the centre of Poundbury for four years.

The property market is relatively strong in the town, despite a lot of new building as the town expands in accordance with its Royal master-plan. Agents across Dorset say that Poundbury's prices are perhaps 10% higher than for similar properties elsewhere in the county, because of the town's desireability.

There are almost always new properties on sale as developers complete phases of the town, plus a trickle of 'resales' as existing owners move. Prices range from about £125,000 for a small apartment to £500,000 for the largest houses.

Newcomers automatically join a management company, paying £100 per home towards communal improvements. Those who leave the town pay a small levy on profit they make from the sale of their homes.

"The early phases of the town built in the 1990s were mainly two-storey, and the newer phases are marginally denser - usually three storeys. When the market's strong across Dorset it's usually a little stronger here, and if it dips across the county we think it may stay a little healthier here because of the high demand to live in the town" says Fiona.

But there have been problems in Poundbury, too.

A group called Poundbury Residents Opposed to Density - PROD - sprung up in 2004 to oppose a scheme by a local builder to pack a large number of flats into a previously-empty site in the town. More recently there has been opposition to a recycling centre and long-term roadworks.

Residents' association chief Fran Reaper says there are also incidents of anti-social behaviour and complaints about dog-mess on the streets and disappointment amongst some buyers at how small the courtyard gardens have become in recently-built homes.

"In other words, people need to be disabused of the belief that Poundbury is perfect. It may be a great place but it's not complete paradise. We do have the problems that affect the rest of the world, too" she says.

But despite some hiccups, Poundbury is seen as a major success story and a model for how other communities should be created in the future.

Prince Charles has already exported the idea of carefully-managed development to a scheme called Upton One on the outskirts of Northampton, where his regeneration body, the Prince's Foundation has a major involvement in the design of homes.

Meanwhile on Duchy of Cornwall land near Newquay in the far south west, there is to be another environment-friendly community built - it has no official name yet but it has, inevitably, been dubbed Surfbury.

The Prince last visited Poundbury in 2007 and Prime Minister Gordon Brown has also been shown around. But the biggest complement was paid last year by the outgoing deputy prime minister John Prescott, who had a long-standing interest in housing before stepping out of the spotlight.

He described Poundbury as "fantastic" adding: "Why can't every housing estate in Britain look like this?"

Now there's a thought.

Prince Charles' masterplan:

• by 2015 Poundbury will be a 'live/work' community of 2,500 homes, at least 35% of which will be social housing for rent, allocated to residents on local waiting lists;
• properties will be densely built, not just to meet planning guidelines but to ensure people's homes overlook each other and nurture a sense of community;
• one-third of the 400 acres will be landscaped open space, and every street will have 'native' trees such as beech, plane, horse chestnut, ash, cherry and whitebeam;
• 'ugly' features are hidden away - so for example telephone, electricity, gas and drainage lines and pipes are housed in 'channels' in the courtyards of homes, and properties have cable rather than satellite TV;
• The street design, personally approved by Prince Charles, emphasises continuous terraces and facades, largely uninterrupted by parking bays and garages. Therefore car parking is at the rear of houses and businesses, not the front;
• buildings must have energy-conserving features such as above-average insulation, double glazing, condensing boilers and water meters - some go much further with solar panels, photo-voltaic tiles on roofs, ground-heat recovery systems and rainwater recycling;
• when new residents move in they are automatically made members of a management company that maintains communal facilities.

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