COMMENT Editor: David Chadwick (cad.user@btc.co.uk) News Editor: Mark Lyward (mark.lyward@btc.co.uk) Advertising Sales: Josh Boulton (josh.boulton@btc.co.uk) Production Manager: Abby Penn (abby.penn@btc.co.uk) Design/Layout: Ian Collis ian.collis@btc.co.uk Circulation/Subscriptions: Christina Willis (christina.willis@btc.co.uk) Publisher: John Jageurs john.jageurs@btc.co.uk Published by Barrow & Thompkins Connexion Ltd. 35 Station Square, Petts Wood, Kent BR5 1LZ Tel: +44 (0) 1689 616 000 Fax: +44 (0) 1689 82 66 22 SUBSCRIPTIONS: UK £35/year, £60/two years, £80/three years; Europe: £48/year, £85 two years, £127/three years; R.O.W. £62/year £115/two years, £168/three years. Single copies can be bought for £8.50 (includes postage & packaging). Published 6 times a year. © <strong>2021</strong> Barrow & Thompkins Connexion Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of the magazine may be reproduced, without prior consent in writing, from the publisher For more magazines from BTC, please visit: www.btc.co.uk Articles published reflect the opinions of the authors and are not necessarily those of the publisher or his employees. While every reasonable effort is made to ensure that the contents of editorial and advertising are accurate, no responsibility can be accepted by the publisher for errors, misrepresentations or any resulting effects Comment Affordable is a relative term by David Chadwick Iwent on a mini-cruise a couple of weeks ago, taking in a steam train trip from Paignton to Kingswear on the River Dart and then a jaunt on a 100 year-old steam driven paddle boat. The steamer crew's commentary was quite illuminating as it pointed out a (quite literal) wealth of riverside homes being built, but in local stone so that they blended in to the rocky shoreline. Apparently, being on the shoreline, there was little access from Devon's network of lanes, and all building materials had to be shipped in by boat or, in one case, rolled down on steep, custom-built rails from a nearby track in the overhanging woods. Hardly a problem for the owners, as the property values in this neck of the woods are already going through the roof. Further upstream, he pointed out a local shipbuilder's yard which had been bought out, and which was being converted into a new housing development. The original, approved plans were for a resort centre with plenty of amenities - but you know how these things go. The local population was delighted to hear that the development would incorporate a number of 'affordable homes', but their delight turned to dismay a week later when the local paper revealed that their starting price was around £750,000. The housing market in the UK is in disarray. The cost of getting on the property ladder is soaring and private renting is a minefield of increasingly expensive rents, hidden costs and opportunism. Estate agents have discovered there is a wonderful and free advertising tool, Facebook Marketplace, which gives them widespread coverage for the price of a few photographs. With a growing population we need to build more houses, more quickly. However, as we explore in the article on The Access Group in this issue, the shortage of skilled labour and materials in a further challenge for the sector. The UK Government is now trying to relax planning regulations to open up more land for building and to encourage - or to coerce builders who have snapped up land to actually build on them - but they in turn point to the lack of resources to do so. The last time we had this problem, after the second World War, we built massive estates of prefabricated houses, which thoroughly deserved the reputation they had for poor quality and design, but did the job and housed large populations driven from warravaged towns and cities. The term prefab was a derogatory one for a long time. That is no longer the case though, and modern off-site fabrication and modular building are now regarded as the key to rapid and cheaper housebuilding, enabling modular building companies to quote ridiculously low figures for the amount of time it takes to erect a prefabricated building on a prepared platform. Multistoreyed, fully-fitted units with all mod cons installed can also now be stacked just as quickly using modular technology. Read the article by Chris Powell of Pasquill in this issue to get the full flavour of the benefits of off-site fabrication, then ask yourself how we can translate this into action throughout the country to create a bigger bank of 'affordable' homes. 4 <strong>Jul</strong>y/<strong>Aug</strong>ust <strong>2021</strong>
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