Allerton Bywater (Area 3B)
Castleford, West Yorkshire
This innovative housing scheme is a small part of a much larger regeneration project and is at the south eastern corner of the Allerton Bywater Millennium Village which is being developed on the reclaimed site of a former colliery.
It features five house types, and incorporates the second Summit House prototype commissioned by English Partnerships (EP), the first of which was constructed in nine hours at the 2005 Creating Sustainable Communities Summit.
These 23 houses, including 4 affordable units, have been built to demonstrate the advantages of Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) while achieving Lifetime Homes standards and Ecohomes "Excellent" level of energy performance, and all have rear gardens and parking places. Four houses have detached atelier units built above car spaces, giving additional flexible accommodation. Site constraints have resulted in a complicated layout for a relatively small number of dwellings, but the houses are exceptional in terms of the quality of the interior spaces, and it is to be hoped that the same house designs can be used on larger, less constrained sites.
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