LONDON ASSEMBLY NICKY GAVRON
DESIGNED, SEALED, DELIVERED The London Assembly Planning Committee recently published its milestone report into the contribution of offsite manufactured homes as a part of the solution to London’s housing problems. Nicky Gavron AM provides an overview on the report’s findings and recommendations.
1 Housing is London’s top priority – and we have a Mayor who is determined to do something about it. London needs at least 50,000 new homes per year to meet its growing needs. Despite recent improvements in housing output, traditional housebuilders and developers are delivering half that. This underperformance is likely to get worse given the skills challenge; we have an ageing construction workforce and the threat of a hard Brexit would harm London as 27% of the construction workforce comes from the EU. We clearly need some innovative solutions and I set out to explore how far offsite manufactured homes (OSM) could contribute towards closing the gap between supply and need. The last time we came anywhere near to reaching high housing targets was in the late sixties and seventies, when prefabricated housing contributed significantly to supply. Over 425,000 homes were built in 1968 alone, and much of this was substantially
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manufactured offsite. The new model of factory manufactured homes is light years away from this era. They are now ‘precision-manufactured’ homes that can offer an increased level of consistency and quality control and additional benefits in terms of speed of delivery, cost, eco-efficiencies and safety on site. There are many reasons why OSM has failed to take off in England: • • •
To date there has not been the volume of demand and continuity of supply to justify the up-front capital investment needed to build the plant to manufacture the product Traditional funding and financing models are not geared to the requirements of OSM where there is a need for greater ‘upfront’ finance and where smaller manufacturers can access credit at the risk levels involved There is very little guidance anywhere that applies specifically
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to OSM housing, and this may be reinforcing the slow pace of adoption by local authority elected members and technical officers Innovation is a feature of OSM and this has led to a plethora of designs and systems bringing with them issues of intellectual property rights that often challenge the conditions required by manufacturing in volume and is a deterrent to contractors and lenders. Furthermore, the absence of OSM specific design codes and standardisation is holding back the development of the sector London lags behind the rest of the country, lacking collaborative partnerships that can deliver at the scale required. Existing housing partnerships, or indeed organisations such as the G15, that might offer the basis of collaborative partnerships have yet to demonstrate a successful approach in London.
WWW.OFFSITEMAGAZINE.CO.UK | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017