Whitehall acts to speed up move to factory housing

The government is to publish its report on modern methods of construction a year ahead of schedule as part of an effort to deliver homes to the timetable set in the Communities Plan.

The report into the limitations and potential of MMC, ordered by Treasury economist Kate Barker in her review of housing supply last year, will now come out this summer instead of next.

The government is urgently seeking answers on whether MMC can provide fast-track sustainable communities.

But one source on the working party warned that speeding up the review could result in pooling existing knowledge rather than delivering original thinking about MMC.

The source said: “We thought we had two years to do the report and it ended up being six to nine months. It could be a pulling together of what we already know.

“If we’d had longer we could have come out with some new ideas over what to do, visited sites and got some hard figures.”

Ashley Lane, the director of Westbury Homes who is heading the 60-strong working party, said the group had resisted attempts to get the report out too quickly and it would be able to carry out a proper assessment of MMC.

He said: “There was initial pressure to do it quickly, because there was concern from the government that they wouldn’t get anything for 18 months. But the civil servants on the party soon realised that it did take time [to consult the industry properly].”

Lane said that the authors of the report, which is now due to be published in June, had been given enough time to consult widely. He said the report would be the first to gauge opinion about MMC across industry and government.

It could be a pulling together of what we already know

MMC working party source

The government sees MMC as vital to its push to build high quality housing more quickly. It is hoping that the increased use of factory-built housing will speed up its efforts to build 200,000 extra houses by 2016.

The news follows details of a proposed “kitemark” standard for MMC being developed by the BRE, the Association of British Insurers and the Council of Mortgage Lenders.

n Housebuilders that participate in the government’s £60,000 home initiative must factor all design and construction profits into the target cost. The £60,000 budget will also cover foundations but not the cost of site preparation or servicing.

The guidelines for the Design for Manufacture competition, announced by English Partnerships last week, also dictate a minimum internal floor area of 76.5 m^2.

The sites are at Allerton Bywater, near Leeds, Milton Keynes and Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire and Upton, a suburb of Northampton.

The second tranche of sites will all be in southern England. EP wants all projects on site by next summer.

EP also identified 67 of about 100 former National Health Service sites it is buying to develop housing for first-time buyers and key workers. Deputy prime minister John Prescott unveiled the details of three shared ownership schemes aimed at social housing tenants, key workers and prospective first-time buyers.