Range of Housing (Supplementary) [11]

I think I saw the same home; I may well have done if it was at the Store Street Building Centre.

Yes, and like you I thought it was very encouraging and quite a large unit, actually, and looked very comfortable. There is a lot of interest in this approach: more modular construction, more offsite construction. It can help to bear down on the issue that I think was raised at the very beginning of the discussion, about the need to increase housing supply at the same time as there are some constraints in terms of construction labour for traditional building.

Also, of course, if one can get this form of building and construction correct, then it is actually much more efficient and usually much more reliable than relying on old fashioned wet trades which is, I think, one of the reasons why if you go to many other parts of the world where house building is done arguably in a more intelligent fashion, they rely on these sorts of modular approaches - factory construction approaches - more than we do.

In London there has been a lot of interest in recent years. I cannot remember the figures offhand but there has been a very substantial increase in the numbers of new homes which are being constructed with techniques such as the ones you described. There are some quite high profile examples being put together at the moment, with support from English Partnerships, for first time buyer units, with modular construction. It is something the Mayor supports and is very keen to use the land holdings of the LDA in particular to try to do more to encourage this approach to building, because I think it is only by making it more mainstream, more of the default position, that will get the scale necessary to actually make this a consistent and reliable form of construction.