The £60k challenge

It is more than four years since John Prescott challenged house builders to construct family-sized properties for £60,000.

Within months of the government’s Sustainable Communities summit - a brainchild of the former deputy prime minister - the Design for Manufacture competition was launched. It aimed to spawn 1,000 new, cost-effective, quality homes.

But after all the fanfare, what happened next? How many homes were built, are they any good and have they shaken up the design landscape and thrown down a blueprint for future low-cost housing? In short: is Mr Prescott’s £60k contest worthy of a prize of its own?

First up, the numbers. And at a glance, they’re good. The 1,000 target looks set to be exceeded, with 1,200 homes expected to be built for £60k or equivalent (see box: the rules) at 10 sites across England. Two sites at Upton and Newport Pagnell are finished. Meanwhile at the seven sites where work is complete or ongoing - in Milton Keynes, Upton, Allerton Bywater, Newport Pagnell, Dartford, Maidstone, Basingstoke - 451 homes have been built, including 191 for £60k. But thanks to the recession, as with developments nationwide, progress has slowed at some sites. And work has ground to a halt at three of the 10 schemes that reached the final of the competition.

The collapse of builder William Verry, which went into liquidation in May, stopped work at two schemes, in Aylesbury and Hastings. At a Crest Nicholson consortium development in south London, all 217 anticipated homes remain unfinished thanks to the recession. The consortium is behind two other schemes including the 68-home Renny Lodge, a former hospital at Newport Pagnell and one of the two schemes to complete so far.

It’s good news as well at Oxley Park, near Milton Keynes. Paradigm Housing Association has been selling £60k homes on a shared ownership basis for 18 months. Solar power ventilates homes and heats water, while residents are encouraged to recycle and grow their own food. ‘People are buying into the sustainable lifestyle,’ says David Broker, project manager at Paradigm. Most of the 25 properties, designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners and built by Taylor Wimpey for £60k, are sold or reserved (see box). A further 14 houses or flats should be let to tenants shortly.

Quality street

The contest also seems to have provided an unexpected boost to social rented supply. While roughly half the 1,200 homes expected to be built are meant to be affordable, only about 10 per cent were due to be for social renting. In some cases that is changing. At Park Prewett, Basingstoke, 47 homes are being let by Sentinel Housing Association, more than required by the site’s original section 106 agreement. Developer Persimmon made the change to keep production going through the downturn.

Supply-wise, the overall prognosis is good. Jayne Lomas, the programme manager now running the contest at the Homes and Communities Agency, is optimistic that all schemes should be complete within two years.

Ms Lomas is also positive about the quality of the £60k designs and their legacy. The competition, she says, ensured that homes were designed to the highest standards while builders reduced costs by, among other things, cutting waste. All the completed homes meet the Ecohomes very good standard, and some would achieve level 4 of the new code for sustainable homes.

More recent HCA programmes, such as the Carbon Challenge, have built on lessons learned from the Design for Manufacture competition, adds Ms Lomas. In particular, she says, companies such as Barratt have modernised their operations after working with architects at two schemes - Upton and Allerton Bywater. ‘They’re looking at where they want to be when the market recovers,’ says Ms Lomas.

Sarah Allan, head of enabling for urban design and homes at the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, is also impressed by the quality of homes built for £60k. But she warns that local authority planners must insist on the same quality for other developments. ‘We never felt that the competition was about cutting costs,’ she says. ‘It’s not just about the design of the house but the layout of housing on the site.’

Alan Shingler, a partner at architects Sheppard Robson, part of the same £60k consortium as Crest Nicholson, believes sustainability and contemporary design ‘should not cost money’ providing designers and builders work closely with their supply chains and use familiar models. ‘You shouldn’t design one-off elements that complicate things,’ he adds.

So was it really a big deal for developers to build homes for £60k? Apparently not. Using modern methods of construction, such as factory-built panels, firms cut costs by reducing the time workers spent on-site.

Darren Dancey, a production director at Crest Nicholson, says the company does not expect to spend more than £60k building a two-bed, family home and that this competition was more for architects than builders. ‘There were some very modern, contemporary things going in, but they wouldn’t be allowed by many planning authorities,’ he adds.

Whether or not the competition will prompt developers to replicate their £60k designs elsewhere remains to be seen, particularly with development in the doldrums. One thing is for certain: the end product is unlikely to be as affordable to buyers as the cost of building it was to its vendors.
There is little differentiating the price tags of the £60k properties from other new homes nationwide. Many prices start above the £157,934 average cost of a brand new home in the UK, according to the latest figures from Nationwide.

‘Unfair’ is how HCA spokesperson Robert Davies dismisses criticism that the £60k contest has done little to make new homes more affordable. ‘That doesn’t reflect the point of the competition,’ he insists, reiterating that the £60k figure accounts for construction alone (see box). ‘You need to have some kind of profit margins and the market in any given area dictates the prices.’

If indeed the £60k contest has thrown down a blueprint, it looks like the only real winners will be the house builders.

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