‘Spirit of ’45 – social housing at scale’

There is a current and growing emergency facing the number of children in temporary accommodation.Almost two-thirds of the 132,410 households in temporary accommodation in England now have dependent children. The total number of households living in temporary accommodation has been hitting record highs since March 2023.

This is a National disgrace. It is not Labour’s fault but it is now our responsibility.

We have pledged to build 1.5 m mostly social and genuinely ‘affordable’ homes. A massive shift of emphasis, however, in housing supply appears to be increasingly essential and urgent, given the pessimistic outlook from the traditional building sector.

In a letter to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the Home Builders Federation (HBF) said that its forecasts for economic growth from house building were too optimistic. CEO, Neil Jefferson, reportedly said the OBR’s numbers would only be achievable if ministers gave more help to first-time buyers to stimulate demand and slashed planned taxes on new homes, which he said were making many sites ‘unviable’.

READ MORE: ‘Stop protecting golf courses, start building homes’

Further,  Steve Turner, executive director of the HBF said on Sky News that a combination of rising building costs and weakening house prices has left “half of the country unviable [for development projects] and the other half of the country unaffordable… Additional housing is now at around 200,000 homes a year and is at best flatlining. We’re still some way away from where the government wants to get to, to meet the nation’s housing need,” Mr Turner said. 

At the same time, higher interest rates since 2022 have increased the cost of financing development, in addition to weakening buyer demand, as mortgage rates have soared. As a result, the sales value of homes has not kept pace, eating into profit margins in a trap described as the “jaws of death” by housing developers.

We know that ‘unviable’ is developer code to stop delivering affordable and/or social homes. If our Government fails to deliver decent homes to families on modest incomes, we will have failed them, failed to address the housing emergency and will probably lose the next general election.

It is time to revisit what the Attlee years accomplished – Prefabs, prefabs, prefabs.

Importantly, modern prefab – modular housing – assembly sidesteps many of the serious skill shortages in the building industry. Traditional building methods just won’t meet the need.

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I have been lobbying for ‘prefabs’ for several years. I was born in 1950 and grew up close to Heathrow surrounded by estates of council prefabs and airport housing. Modern modular housing of ‘passivhaus’ standard can achieve very low energy consumption – and doesn’t need the ‘brickies’ currently in short supply.

Consider the plight of thousands of families and children stuck in temporary accommodation right now. After 1945 we rehoused thousands of bombed-out families – we can and must do the same now for those stuck in temporary accommodation.

We now have a great opportunity to show real ambition and take a lead with the National Government, working across departments and with local authorities and Metro-Mayors, acting as a catalyst of economic growth by setting up manufacturing facilities to make the components for ‘passivhaus’/eco design modular homes right across the country.

These proposals also include a strong Co-operative theme by investing in SME’s already in the sector, and oing this while encouraging Social Enterprise/Co-operative organisation wherever possible.

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This is an ambitious plan, but, I believe, necessary and achievable. The money is already allocated. 

We have a good record already on a local scale across the country delivering sustainable homes that enhance communities and improve lives. The ambition is to scale up to manufacture and assemble thousands.

Lets get it done now.

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