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Time to rethink the types of homes we build

The housing sector needs to learn from the automotive industry to deliver homes that are at the cutting edge, says Matthew Gardiner

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Time to rethink the types of homes we build, by Matthew Gardiner

At a time when the country’s agenda is Brexit led, there isn’t much room for any domestic issues within the scope of ministers and civil servants.

All the more credit, then, to the government for placing fixing the broken housing market at the centre of its domestic policymaking.

The news of £2bn of extra capital and an inflation-linked rent settlement for the sector were a very good start towards Theresa May’s personal aim of solving the housing crisis.

You could say “about time too”.

After all, the statistics and reports – never mind the prices in estate agent windows – have all been telling the same story for a long time.

We aren’t building enough houses, and when we do build them they are neither in the right places nor available at prices people can afford.


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The use of land, the priorities for allocating money, and effective application of modern technology could all usefully be looked at again in the light of this renewed commitment to addressing a crisis that has been generations in the making.

Only then will the real problem – that many people have no affordable housing solution – stand a chance of being solved.

Shortage of supply is not just a problem for London and the South East. In the 10 local authority areas of Greater Manchester alone, 227,000 extra homes are needed in the next 20 years. That’s new urban settlement within the existing conurbation boundary that is equivalent to around two additional boroughs constructed within a generation.

Land will be at a premium, and while ‘densification’ of struggling town centres will provide some of it, loss of some green belt seems to be an inevitability if the target is to be achieved. Prioritising public land for future homes is part of the equation too; as is using the tax system to put pressure on or give incentives for landowners who, having received a planning consent, do or do not build homes quickly.

“In the 10 local authority areas of Greater Manchester alone, 227,000 extra homes are needed in the next 20 years.”

The announcement of extra money for affordable and even social housing is clearly extremely welcome. But we would do well to examine where all the money goes – if supply of new homes is choked, demand-side measures such as Help to Buy and Right to Buy just increase house prices, while handing a few golden ticket-holders disproportionate gains.

And government support to the housing market takes the form of revenue payments – surely somebody will soon notice that housing benefit for many private rented homes is simultaneously lining the pockets of poor-quality landlords and relieving companies of their responsibility to pay a wage or salary that their employees can live on. Neither will help fix the housing market. Some redirection of these resources so they support the creation of stable, decent and affordable places to live is long overdue.

But even if land supply increases and money gets pumped in the right direction, there are still two big questions for me.

First: who will build these homes? Continuing the accepted approach of ‘bricks and mortar’ construction, old answers are being resurrected.

We could have a self-build revolution; small and medium-sized companies have got latent capacity, but if construction rates are to double, the reality is these will do little more than scratch the surface of higher rates of construction.

Increasingly, attention is focused on factory production – but this has its limitations too. So far, even the larger-scale factories are more akin to kit-car production than the slick production lines of the modern automotive industry. One of the most high-profile factories even self-proclaims to be “doing what Henry Ford did for the modern automotive industry”.

And it’s the automotive industry that perhaps provides a glimpse of answers to the second question. What kind of homes should we build?

Audi launched its first post-War car – the F103 series – in 1965. Seats, lights and indicators were about all that car had – no radio as standard – and everything else was bent sheet metal on four steel wheel hubs.

“The most effective and efficient homes of the future will be built by those associations that really embrace creative collaboration across an increasingly broad spectrum of enterprises.”

Its most recent luxury car, the new A8, goes on sale this month. It has 41 driver assist technologies; sensors and scanners embedded in its door panels, roof, lights and windows; automatically adjusting suspension; and the facility to drive itself in traffic up to 31mph.

In 50 years, not only has the technology used to produce cars changed out of all recognition from human to robotics, but the technology embedded in the car has as well. Quite a contrast with what’s happened in the housebuilding sector.

So where are our sector’s equivalents of Elon Musk? The visionaries who can pull together modern self-repairing and self-cleaning materials, embedded Internet of things enabled sensors, and flexible lifetime design, perhaps with robotic assembly, to create a high-volume production line of durable, sustainable and personalised homes?

The most effective and efficient homes of the future will be built by those associations that really embrace creative collaboration across an increasingly broad spectrum of enterprises, both social and private.

Just as Audi has embraced tech, design, ergonomics, customer insight, new engineering solutions, new materials and environmental factors, housing entrepreneurs will need to do the same, getting future solutions from new sources within a more flexible and further-reaching partner ecosystem.

As Trafford Housing Trust ramps up our production of new homes, these are the entrepreneurs we want to meet next.

Matthew Gardiner, chief executive, Trafford Housing Trust

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