Christmas time and the approaching new year are a good time to take stock and do a bit of reflection on the future and the long-term view.

To do that you sometimes have to look back. This month we at the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence (Cache) published a report called Delivering Design Value: The Housing Design Quality Conundrum. It was based on extensive interviews with all the people we could find who were prepared to talk about the delivery of an average set of average housing estates in all four countries of the UK.

One thing I found particularly striking in doing this research was how few people wanted to talk to us about the estates they had delivered and how difficult it was to trace the histories of their construction. I think we need a return to the practice of putting a big stone at the gateway of developments, just as our antecedents used to do, making long-term responsibility for these places very clear.

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