House builders and manufacturers should be given tax breaks to encourage wider uptake of factory built homes, said a government-backed report launched by minister Mark Prisk this week.
Launching the report, Prisk also announced he was setting up a new working group to stimulate innovation in house building and to explore the report’s recommendations.
Offsite Housing Review was written by Professor John Miles, from the University of Cambridge, and Professor Nick Whitehouse, from Oxford Brookes.
Prisk’s new expert group’s work will target three key areas:
- incentivising the use of off-site construction to deliver more new home;
- securing investment;
- creating the market conditions to increase confidence in the method
Prisk said: “Offsite construction is an industry with untapped potential in this country, and could in time revolutionise the way we deliver our housing, providing a swift, high-quality solution to creating cost effective, zero carbon homes.”
Rational House in west London is a modular system based on off-site manufactured concrete components
The report acknowledges that house builders currently have little incentive to use off-site manufacturing techniques. The sector is currently building 100,000 new homes a year and could manage to construct 140,000 a year using traditional techniques. However, the report says “that the skills of the traditional workforce are in long-term decline”.
The authors continue: “What seems abundantly clear if is there is to be a significant increase in the rate of build of new homes to above this level it is entirely likely that this will need to be enabled at least in part by the substantial increase in the use of off-site and industrialised construction methods.”
The report also says that if output is to significantly increase in housing it needs to be by construction of new social housing and private housing, not just private rent and self build – the government’s current focus.
To increase uptake of off-site manufacture the authors urge government to:
- introduce tax and other incentives designed to encourage the development of new products and the establishment of new manufacturing/assembly facilities;
- provide market confidence by creating a stable and predictable framework for regulations and standards;
- release “oven ready” plots from government and local authority land banks;
- raise awareness and capability in BIM;
- establish an Institute for Future Housing Research;
- develop a new financial and delivery model for housing.
Professor John Miles, said: “Our work in compiling this report has identified huge potential for off-site methods of construction to be introduced to the house building industry. It will take a lot of hard work to accomplish this, but the goal of delivering better homes, faster, promises benefits for all and that will make those efforts worthwhile.”
John Slaughter, director of external affairs for the Home Builders Federation who participated in the preparation of the report, said: “It is extremely helpful in that it sets out the reasons why house builders haven’t routinely adopted off-site manufacture which is down to economies of scale.” Slaughter said he backed proposals for fiscal incentives. “House builders are technology agnostic – they have nothing against offsite manufacture, they tend to opt for methods that work commercially.”
The report was prepared by an Expert Review Panel comprising Professor John Miles (Cambridge University) and Professor Nick Whitehouse (Oxford Brookes University) with the support of Graham Watts (chief executive, Construction Industry Council) and Ian Pannell (director, Buildoffsite) who provided the Secretariat. The full report is available on the Construction Industry Council website.
