Risk Transfer, Homeowner Resilience, and Sustainable Urban Development in the UK

The United Kingdom faces a critical, dual imperative: to dramatically increase housing supply to address a long-standing national need (targeting 1.5 million new homes) while simultaneously delivering homes that meet world-leading standards for sustainability and climate resilience (e.g., the Future Homes Standard) against the growing threats posed by climate change. However, in the built-to-sell model, while developers are mandated to account for resilience in land acquisition, design and construction stages, homeowners ultimately carry the burden of climate risk across the housing lifecycle. This PhD project investigates the fundamental risk transfer dynamics within the UK housing development ecosystem.

Specifically, it aims to understand how design and construction decisions - driven by market pressures, policy signals, and cost control - ultimately impact the long-term resilience of newly developed building stock and reflect on the (long-term?) vulnerability of the home buyers/risk holders in the face of flood and extreme heat. Scope: Urban Development, Sustainability Governance, and Homeowner Vulnerability. We seek a highly motivated candidate to explore mechanisms, governance structures, and organisational strategies within the UK housing development sector that influence homeowners.

Potential research questions/topics include: 1. Risk Creation Dynamics. Analysing the non-resilient features embedded in new housing developments, and how sustainability and resilience in housing developments are marketed to individual homebuyers.

2. Risk Transfer Dynamics: Analysing whether and how risks associated with non-resilient features (e.g., overheating due to climate change, direct flood damage, high operational costs) are transferred from developers and financial actors to individual homeowners and public services through legal frameworks, insurance mechanisms, and valuation metrics. 3.

Homeowner Resilience Assessment. Developing metrics to assess the financial, social, and structural resilience of new housing developments from the perspective of the end-user. This includes investigating the impact of building-level and site-level design choices (e.g., passive cooling, water harvesting, flood-resistant ground floors, Sustainable Urban Drainages, ecosystem restoration) on occupant/resident well-being and long-term costs.

4. The Policy-Market-Homeowner Nexus: Unpack (i) how effectively national planning policies and sustainability standards (e.g., flood risk assessment, future homes standards, energy regulations, nutrient neutrality, revised NPPF) protect homeowners from future climate risks, and (ii) how the current construction policies and mortgage/insurance market either incentivise or penalise resilient building practices. 5.

Closing the Accountability Gap: Investigating the systemic failures that lead to the persistent ‘performance gap’ (the difference between intended design performance and 'as-built' reality), particularly regarding resilience