There are two ways to build a house – brick by brick or in manufactured modules. With modules we could create more affordable homes and support UK manufacturing.

The theory for manufactured homes is straightforward. Cars today are more complicated than houses, yet cars can be made for a few thousand pounds. At scale, houses could be manufactured at this cost too.

The manufacturing of affordable housing will require new investors to be prepared to make initial losses and to have the courage to face the storm from current stakeholders. There is a cluster of expertise around Hull which has specialised in manufacturing static caravans, now threatened with the recent addition of VAT. While home extensions costs include VAT, new homes are zero rated. The manufacturing firms around Hull in particular could be well placed to disrupt and sell into this new market.

The transportation costs and delivery costs would be higher than for cars, and these logistics favour UK manufacturers with shorter supply chains over importers. Delivery by road is limited to loads which are under three metres wide, so modular assembly on arrival is standard. The modules are placed on compatible foundations with service connections. Some sellers may integrate the foundation making within their service; others may outsource the groundworks to specialists.

The benefits of offsite manufacturing include good design, ultra-high energy efficiency and a culture of zero defects. Air-tight final assembly and good insulation are key to the long term performance of houses similar to the Passivhaus standard, with a ten year warranty as for traditionally built homes.

Software could ensure that design choices comply with local planning requirements, both in terms of the foundations (distance between properties, setting back, orientation, height, street overlooking) and in terms of finishes (brick type, slate and ceramic tiles, rendered walls, sash windows in conservation areas). Architectural practices could design bespoke exteriors. Vertical integration can include the decorations and curtains, as well as design options for the exterior shape and finishes.

There could be open-source standards for compatible foundations, with templates for small bungalows, large bungalows, end terraces, mid terraces, semi-detached and others. Most UK houses are not detached, so a process would be followed for the second half of two semi-detached houses to be matched to compatible buyers.

A public body with land and with an interest in affordable housing could provide new homes at a low cost to people, with covenants to prevent future super profits being extracted by others. A social landlord or an owner-occupier could probably buy a new house in this way for under £50,000 including the land rights.

Disruptive technologies

So, what is wrong with the theory? Offsite manufacturing could be a disruptive technology which changes the market fundamentals. We say housing is being treated ‘as a commodity’ when we wish to caution against a policy or a practice which ignores the social dimension of housing. Yet an item ‘becoming a commodity’ also means that its high price and exclusiveness has ended, and it can now be made in high volumes for a low unit price and profit margin.

A classic reason for a disruptive technology not being able to change the market is that the barriers to entry are too high. The ownership of land is one example, where large companies hold on to land banks to protect their market position by drip-feeding new houses to maintain scarcity. The lack of information known to buyers, especially first time buyers, also provides rich pickings for the dominant players.

But it isn’t just the private housebuilding firms that have extracted super profit from new buyers. Public bodies have also looked to new homes as an income stream, whether from section 106 payments, from new public buildings within the development, or for compulsory highway improvements. The utility companies have extracted their share too. And political parties have extracted value, especially with compulsory discounts such as the right to buy.

Affordable renting

Which begs the question, how many young adults today would risk becoming an owner occupier so soon after the 2008 property crash, rather than renting?  The number of people renting in the private sector is still growing fast, and expected to soon exceed the number of people renting in social housing. The pressure to protect standards by better regulation will continue to grow, as is already seen with the ‘sheds with beds’ issue of unregulated development.

Many young adults already see housing as a commodity to the extent that they do not trust it to be an investment in the way their parents did. In retirement the value of your house is reduced by the local authority looking to recover social care costs. The value can also be reduced by central government in terms of reduced eligibility to welfare benefits when compared with renting. Being able to sell your home in retirement to gain a lump sum is less of an option now. Your home may be your castle, but every stone can have someone else’s name on it. Lower cost housebuilding will enable affordable rents and affordable purchases.

 First published: 08 May 2012

In Britain we do not do revolutions, at least not since the 1700s. Big changes do happen of course, but they take their shape slowly.  The end result of such changes is easier to understand in retrospect because at the time there was no announced grand plan.

I would suggest that we at one of these moments of big change. We have the longest domestic recession since the 1920s and financial crises continue to reverberate around the world. As we know, the property market has a front row seat for these economic pressures and property remains a troubled sector of the economy. The London core property market continues to defy gravity, rocket fuelled by the devaluation of sterling against other major currencies which has drawn in even more international investors. But a rocket designed, it seems, without a re-entry component. Elsewhere, it is patchy at best and grim at worst. For residents, ever-rising energy costs are a growing pressure on household budgets, which will only get worse for many when mortgage interest rates start to rise from their current lowest point in centuries.

Next we have a general breakdown of trust. This collapse includes energy companies as well as banks, politicians as well as journalists. This makes it very difficult to sell energy conservation to householders, for example. The sale is based on trusting the future performance of the supplier, that they will not ‘twist the knife’ with complex contracts, small print, unfair terms and conditions, rigged benchmarks, empty warranties or whatever is next. I suspect one of the reasons why Twitter is so successful these days is because it is the trusted voice of your neighbours, your mates, your clubs, and not your government and not your bank.

So, in terms of the triple bottom line, the economy is very weak and society is struggling – can the environment pick up the slack?

At the Centre for Construction Innovation (www.ccinw.com), from our small office and gallery at CUBE in Manchester, we see some hopeful straws in the wind. Few of the leaders in construction we speak with are basing their business plan refreshes on a simple return to ‘the good old days’. They know that model is truly bust. They are now interested in OSM (off site manufacturing) because it is more efficient, profitable, and generates far less waste, with construction and demolition waste being 36% of all UK waste tonnage. They are interested in BIM (building information modelling) again because it is more efficient to get high performing buildings designed right first time, instead of paying for design mistakes later. Young workers ‘get’ BIM straight away, and the best design teams currently are those with a mix of younger and much-older staff. And they are interested in WLC (whole life costs), including eventual ease of demolition and reuse (so called, cradle-to-cradle instead of cradle-to-grave) which is where true environmental impacts and performances of our buildings and their occupants can be fully understood and ethically controlled.

Importantly, these trends in OSM, BIM and WLC are of interest to infrastructure construction company leaders just as much as it is to those whose firms are focussed more on houses, flats, civic and commercial buildings. In my view, the implications of these trends for manufacturers of construction products has yet to be fully explored, and it would be a mistake to think that BIM, for example, just means supplying the data sheet as a spreadsheet. The best results will come from construction products manufacturers who see themselves as part of the BIM design team. Another early BIM lesson learnt is that measuring the build quality is key to understanding why some buildings perform worse, or even better, than on paper. Air tightness is the obvious example here, but the build quality also influences people and their behaviours as well as the performance of the fabric and the fittings. We may also see more growth in the trend within OSM for the clustering of component manufacturers very near to those companies making the larger panels and structures, because it is more effective in terms of innovation.

Turning to the planning system and building regulations, firstly I think it is fair to say that the construction industry does not see planners as the barrier to renewed and sustainable growth. The call to get planners ‘off our backs’ was not one that came from the industry leaders we know, though I imagine that if you have land banked a lot of the green belt then of course you’ll be moaning about planning to the government seven days a week. And yes, big schemes have complex planning conditions, but you cannot fairly blame the local planning officer when there are issues around CIL (Community Infrastructure Levy) contributions towards CrossRail in London.  That decision was made much higher up the political food chain.

Up to a few years ago, I would have argued that building regulations are the unsung heroes of environmental performance, the one part of our sector where delivery ‘at scale’ was undeniable. However, as time goes on I am getting more concerned. In terms of space standards and their abandonment, along with small windows and single aspects, I feel we are storing up some very real mental health issues for future generations. We are also building properties which are highly insulated but with little thermal mass, causing unwanted and even dangerous overheating in the summer months as well as the desired warmth during the winter. We are now seeing some public discussions on ‘sweat boxes’ which is not good for encouraging innovation. It is worth humbly reminding ourselves of the highly insulated ‘thick’ homes built in Salford many decades ago to Parker Morris standards. Interestingly, the owners reported having to install unnecessary central heating some years later because they could not each sell their homes and move otherwise.

So, if in Britain we do not do revolution and grand plans, where do we go from here?

I would suggest that the key trend now will be for off site manufacturing, certainly panels as now and possibly soon becoming predominantly 3D units such as rooms and pods. We hear informally of car manufacturers who can construct a family car for less than £1500 cost price. We know that some cars are far more complex than many buildings. And we’ve seen how the reliability and performance of cars has increased decade on decade. The old Ford Cortina at a show looks sweet, but would you really still want to try to start it on a cold winter’s morning. Someday soon a well known firm will offer a catalogue of OSM homes along with local contractors to arrange the foundations, permissions, services and land purchase. The old stigma of prefab homes has long gone, and land value discounts for key workers is a credible policy option for urban regeneration.

Perhaps the government was near the mark on one thing then – the future might not be self-build, but it might be self-manage.

This note is to set out some ideas for discussion on the role of High Streets in Britain.  In summary, some High Streets risk being unsustainable but could have a great future if they can become

(a) more compact, walkable[1], accessible[2] and people-centred, and

(b) reconfigured to be usable for a range of ‘new’ non-retail uses such as meeting, adult learning, exchanging, campaigning, as well as the important ‘traditional’ non-retail uses of leisure, public service[3] outlets, worship and transport interchanges.

DRIVERS

Firstly, one aspect of the current economic recession is the increasing number of empty shops on High Streets.  This is an opportunity for change as well as a perceived threat.

Secondly, there is a growing sense that solely consumption-lead growth is evidently unsustainable, which leads to new conclusions around local retail strategies and their limits for driving local economic development, and which leads away from the Clone Town[4] approach to retail development.

Thirdly, techniques in urban design[5] and forming sustainable communities[6] indicate that compact, walkable places can reduce energy and materials consumption while achieving the same social and economic outcomes, exemplified by the Transition Towns movement.

Fourthly, there are social capital gains from human interactions within the public realm when the quality is sufficiently high, and these benefits are both individual ones, such as in wellbeing, and collective benefits such as improving community cohesion[7] and promoting diversity as a welcome strength.  There are tensions, for example between teenage and older people, where urban design along with community development could maybe go further in seeking mutual solutions.

Fifthly, there are social value gains to be secured and which can be quantified, for example by deciding not to close a Post Office there are savings to the public purse gained in other public organisations such as adult social care services[8] spending less staff time on unrewarding ‘service failure’ costs.

Finally, High Streets form the natural centre to a neighbourhood, giving a community a coherence and sense of place that is more authentic and lasting than an administrative boundary.

TOOLS

Local authorities have a leading role in place-shaping.  Planning powers are one method, using the ‘change of use’ provisions it may be possible in many places to reduce a sprawling and struggling High Street to a sustainable, mixed-use and delightful core by encouraging changes from shops to housing, either as flats or as town houses.  The quality of these conversions is key, along with reconfiguring the spaces to the front and rear of the premises as small gardens or similar semi-private places.  This may require some new pilot projects with local economic development functions which, to date, have serviced High Streets with shop-front improvement grants, public realm refurbishments and better cleaning and security regimes, but where some shop owners may now need help in how best to ‘exit’ from the edges of the High Street core, especially where land values are not generous.

Registered social landlords also can have a place-shaping role, and can bring additional resources into this area.  In particular, converted flats to a high quality may be attractive to elderly people[9] who do not (or no longer) drive and value proximity to the High Street provided that good urban and property design ensures that noise and nuisance are minimised.  Local authorities may soon be given an incentive to start building social housing again by being allowed to keep the rents as income rather than as now having to forward rental income into a national account.

This kind of refurbishment and in-fill development is also well suited to smaller, local construction firms rather than volume housebuilders.  By providing the right support from the local authority staff (planning, building control, economic development) to local firms, councils could enable high standards in design and build to be secured, helping to promote a greater sense of hope for and delight in local places.

The public sector generally can have a major influence here, because locating not just the service outlets but also the ‘back office’ teams within High Streets has a sustaining effect. 

Some degree of car parking will often need to be managed, and the use of ‘liner’ buildings where shops, flats, etc are wrapped around car parks (and big box stores, if any) can help to retain the High Street benefits, so long as the design starts from the existing High Street and not from a proposed new-build major development outside the core.

In some circumstances it might be best to replace redundant shops with pocket parks to improve the green infrastructure[10] within the town or city, provided that design quality continues to be central to the scheme, rather than crude landscaping as a holding operation until a viable plan may come along.

Tony Baldwinson, June 2009
Manchester, UK