Posted: May 14, 2019 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housebuilding, Prefabrication | Tags: Homes England, Sekisui House, Urban Splash |
Originally posted on insidehousing.co.uk on May 14.
The entry into the UK market of an overseas company that last year built almost as many homes as Barratt, Taylor Wimpey and Persimmon combined is by any standards a big deal.
That’s even before you add what looks like a major step forward for modular building in the UK and one of the most eye-catching individual investments yet by the self-styled disruptors at Homes England.
The £90m deal involves Sekisui House, the biggest housebuilder in Japan, taking a 35% equity stake in Urban Splash’s modular House business. The Manchester-based developer will retain 60% with Noel McKee, one of its existing investors and founder of We Buy Any Car, taking what’s described as an incremental 5% stake
Homes England will take a 5% stake worth just over £3m in the company and will also be providing a £27m loan from its £4.5bn Home Building Fund.
Sekisui House built almost 44,000 new homes last year, almost 5% of all those built in Japan, where new build numbers and demolitions alike are much higher than in the UK.
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Posted: May 14, 2018 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Construction industry, Council housing, Grenfell Tower, Prefabrication | Tags: Ronan Point |
Originally posted on May 14 on my blog for Inside Housing.
This week marks the 50th anniversary of what was seen until recently as the biggest disaster in the history of council housing.
At 5.45 in the morning on May 16, 1968, a cake decorator called Ivy Hodge put the kettle on for a cup of tea. A gas explosion triggered by a faulty connection to her cooker blew out the walls to her flat and triggered the progressive collapse of one corner of the 22-storey Ronan Point tower block in Newham in east London.
Four tenants were killed and several more had miraculous escapes but the fact that the explosion happened so early in the morning prevented an even worse disaster – most people were still asleep in the relative safety of their bedrooms rather than exposed to the collapse in their kitchens.
That aside, the most shocking thing about the disaster was that it happened in a new building and the first tenants had moved in two months before.
A public inquiry quickly established not just the fault in the gas connection but fundamental flaws in the large panel, system-built design. The collapse could have been triggered not just by an explosion but also by high winds and fire
That led to reform of the rules on gas safety and a shake-up of the building regulations to ensure that the structure of tall buildings became more robust.
Over the years, Ronan Point came to be seen as the high water mark of both council housing and modernist architecture.
As time went on the blame was increasingly laid at the door of architects, local authorities and even the whole idea of council housing. It’s certainly true that some designs were flawed and untested and that some councillors arrogant, self-aggrandising and even corrupt.
But some important factors are edited out of that account.
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Posted: February 10, 2017 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Build to let, Housebuilding, Prefabrication, Social housing, Tax, Temporary accommodation | Tags: Housing White Paper |
Originally published on February 10 on my blog for Inside Housing.
So have Gavin Barwell and Sajid Javid finally grapsed the nettle on the housing crisis?
Critics lined up to call the white paper a damp squib, a white flag and (my personal favourite) like a wet Tuesday in Bognor. Some had even read it first.
Supporters called it a pragmatic shift away from policy under David Cameron and ‘a blueprint for change’. And there was the inevitable ‘cautious welcome’ from housing organisations.
In some ways, the responses of two of the architects of previous Conservative housing policies were the most interesting ones. Former housing minister Grant Shapps said previous plans had not made much difference and this one probably wouldn’t either. Former No 10 adviser Alex Morton revealed the cynical political calculation at the heart of previous policy when he warned that ‘if you get dragged into an argument about renting versus owning, it will quickly become about the need for more council homes’.
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Posted: January 12, 2017 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Build to let, Housebuilding, Land, Local government, Planning, Prefabrication, Social housing, Tax | Tags: Gavin Barwell, Sajid Javid |
This is an updated version of a post originally published on January 12 on my blog for Inside Housing.
The moment is finally here but will radical plans to boost housing supply live up to their advance billing? Here are my tests.
- How half-baked is it?
In one very important way, ministers have already passed my first test. Publication of a White Paper seems to mark a return to an earlier era of government when policies went through consultation and scrutiny before they were enacted.
Contrast that with the way that half-baked ideas from thinktanks were turned into equally half-baked legislation in the back of a fag packet Housing and Planning Act.
Speaking of which, how much will we hear about the loose ends that still need tying up from the act? Pay to Stay may be dead in its compulsory form, and the extension of the Right to Buy delayed by another pilot, but we still don’t know what’s happening with forced sales of higher-value council houses or to the receipts they raise.
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Posted: October 31, 2016 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Benefit cap, Homelessness, Housebuilding, Housing benefit, Prefabrication | Tags: Gavin Barwell |
Originally posted on October 31 on my blog for Inside Housing
The last four months have seemed to offer a series of new possibilities for housing from Theresa May’s new government. From the prime minister’s rhetoric about ‘a country that works for everyone’ to housing minister Gavin Barwell’s emphasis on the importance of all tenures, the signals have been pointing to a significant shift away from the stance of the previous Tory administration. Friday brought good news when the Homelessness Reduction Bill won a second reading with the support of the government.
But events in the next month or so will go a long way to determining where those signals are really leading us. For all the rhetoric we don’t know much more detail than when the government went back to work at the beginning of September. While the dates of some events are already set, others are expected “shortly”. Here’s a selected list:
November 7
A week today sees the start of the reduction in the overall household benefit cap from £26,000 to £23,000 in London and £20,000 elsewhere.
An updated impact assessment published in August estimates that 88,000 households (107,000 adults and 244,000 children) will be affected by the lower cap, including 64,000 who would not have been covered by the original cap.
That is much less than in the original impact assessment, one reason being that the government has introduced new exemptions for guardians and carers in response to defeat in the courts. It also seems on the low side given that it means housing benefit will not cover the rent for families in more expensive areas and with higher rents and for larger families everywhere, even in social housing. And it will only encourage more landlords to restrict their lettings of ‘affordable’ homes to ‘working families’.
To borrow a line from Steve Hilditch, if October ended with the Homelessness Reduction Bill’s second reading, then November will kick off what can only be a homelessness expansion policy.
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Posted: October 19, 2016 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Build to let, Construction industry, Housebuilding, Prefabrication, Private renting, Social housing |
Originally posted on October 19 on my blog for Inside Housing
Sometimes powerful arguments for a change of direction in housing policy come from unexpected places.
The Farmer Review of the UK Construction Labour Model is a case in point. Before your eyes glaze over at the title, bear with me because it has profound implications not just for the way we build homes but also the sort of housing we build and who we build them for.
Subtitled Modernise or Die, the report was commissioned last year from the Construction Leadership Council by housing minister Brandon Lewis and skills minister Nick Boles. By the time it was published this week, both had moved on, but the policy context had also shifted on its axis.
Back then, the Treasury and George Osborne dominated housing policy and everything was about home ownership and Help to Buy. Now other departments have much more influence, we have a housing minister calling for a balanced approach to tenure and attention has turned to modern methods of construction for new homes.
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Posted: September 23, 2016 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Brexit, Construction industry, Europe, Housebuilding, Labour market, Prefabrication |
Originally published on September 23 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
If ‘Brexit means Brexit’ should it also mean a new programme of investment in social housing?
After a referendum that saw 63% of social tenants vote to leave the European Union, the attractions should be obvious. For ‘left behind’ voters it could mean both homes and jobs. For the government, now apparently edging away from an obsession with home ownership, it could offer a big pay-off from Philip Hammond’s ‘fiscal re-set’. For the purposes of this blog I’ll ignore all the other arguments in favour.
But it could also play into the wider politics of Brexit. Theresa May’s soundbite has yet to be translated into anything substantial but seems to be heading towards a ‘Hard Brexit’ outside the single market on the grounds that the referendum was a vote for controls on immigration.
That has huge implications for the housebuilding sector and the wider construction industry. Berkeley Homes boss Rob Perrins even claimed last weekend that a block on EU immigration could cut new homes by half. That is an exaggeration that could say more about his own workforce in London than the industry as a whole but this is still a huge issue. An alliance of construction organisations warned Brexit secretary David Davis earlier this month of a skills crisis if he does not make it a priority in the negotiations to come.
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Jules Birch 