<p>This year’s Housing Design Award winners are truly inspiring cutting-edge homes. But what is just as striking as their carefully crafted architectural forms is the success of the partnerships that have come together to produce them.<br>Accordia in Cambridgeshire, which scooped this year’s overall prize, involved not one but three architectural practices, along with Countryside Properties and Kajima Construction, plus Wherry Housing Association and not forgetting Cambridge city council. The awards highlight the contribution of all parties, recognising that enlightened local authority planners, for instance, are an essential ingredient in bringing the schemes to fruition.<br>The winners this year are notably also mixed tenure, high density developments: Accordia provides spacious family homes at a density of 65 units per hectare.</p> <p>Presenting the awards must have been a dream engagement for communities and local government secretary Ruth Kelly, considering the tumultuous time she has been through lately. Along with the embarrassing headlines that followed the scrapping of compulsory home condition reports, her department has delayed the publication of PPS3, apparently because it has failed to resolve the size, type and density issues.</p> <p>The industry must now wait until autumn to discover what PPS3 has in store. But the minister’s comments at the awards …