Churchill’s quick fix after second world war given a modern makeover
In the UK, the word “prefab” conjures images of the cheap, squat, ready-made homes that were Winston Churchill’s quick fix to the scarcity of housing after the second world war.
Today, as the country faces another severe shortage, the government is turning once again to modular, or offsite, construction in an effort to accelerate housebuilding. “Offsite construction could provide a huge opportunity to increase housing supply,” said Gavin Barwell, housing minister.
But offsite housing today bears little resemblance to Churchill’s prefabs — and much about Britain has changed since he was able to winch into place more than 150,000 one-storey prefabricated dwellings in the 1940s, a scheme that still fell far short of his 500,000-unit target. Land is far scarcer, planning rules tighter and the UK housebuilding industry dominated by large commercial companies with a finely honed system of traditional-style construction for profit.
This model is ill-suited to modular construction, partly because housebuilders adapt to the market as they build, said Nigel Hugill, chief executive of the developer Urban & Civic. “The traditional method of construction is almost completely flexible: to stop, all you’ve got to do is put your trowel down. Prefabrication doesn’t have that flexibility, and that’s a substantial disadvantage.”
In addition, housebuilders have become “extremely efficient” at traditional methods, so bringing in offsite units may not save them much time, while modular units are best suited to “tight urban sites”.
That is in evidence on the China Walk housing estate in Lambeth, south London, where 70 apartments are taking shape with unusual speed — the work of Pocket Living, a small developer of affordable homes for sale.
These apartments show how modular building has changed. Units with finished kitchens and bathrooms were brought 60 miles by lorry from a factory in Bedford, hoisted into place and bolted together in fewer than 30 days to create five-storey constructions.
The rapid-fire development on a leafy junction just south of the Thames will look like a regular brick building from the inside and outside; builders are cladding the homes, which will have their first occupants early next year.
A soaring population heightens the need for homes, but there are structural hurdles to overcome
Mr Smithers says Pocket’s units have “considerably fewer defects” than those made using traditional methods, and the group’s next project will be a 28-storey tower made of modular units.
Vision Modular Systems, which built the Pocket homes, emphasises the technological progress since the postwar prefab experiment and points to the certifications of quality it has won. Vision is building about 2,000 units a year and is looking at increasing shifts on its factory floor next year.
“This is moving much more into the mainstream,” said Kieran White, managing director.
The government’s £3bn Home Building Fund, launched this year, will direct some of its funding to modular housing, while more initiatives in its support are expected in the forthcoming housing white paper.
The private sector also sees potential for profit: in a radical step for an insurance company, Legal & General, a FTSE 100 insurer, is using cash from its balance sheet to establish a modular housing factory near Leeds, which within two years aims to build up to 4,000 homes a year.
Pocket’s move towards modular was motivated in part by ballooning construction costs, said Lucian Smithers, the group’s sales and marketing director. “Cost inflation has been rampant over the last five years, and especially for the last three,” he said.
Offsite construction is not cheaper and requires a large outlay upfront but it makes costs more predictable. It can also provide jobs wherever a factory is established rather than where homes are being built, so some of the economic benefits of London’s housing growth could be dispersed to more deprived regions.
A government-commissioned review of the construction labour market last month pushed “modern methods of construction” as a solution to skills shortages, which some fear will be exacerbated by tighter immigration controls after Brexit.
Persimmon, the UK’s second-largest housebuilder by output, uses modular construction at its Space4 facility to manufacture timber frames but has stopped short of manufacturing entire homes or sections of them offsite.
Most of the early interest in L&G’s factory homes has come from non-profit housing associations, for which it is now constructing prototypes. L&G will use the factory for its own “build-to-rent” developments — large-scale blocks designed for tenants. Offsite construction is also popular among builders of student accommodation and hotels.
Still, modular homes make up only a fraction of the UK’s new housing. Mark Farmer, author of the labour market review, noted that the word “prefabrication” can carry bad associations. Both mortgage lenders and providers of debt to developers are reluctant to lend large sums against modular homes; they are suspicious of their quality and fear it will be harder to take over and adapt modular housing schemes if they are forced to repossess them.
Modular manufacturing can also be difficult to make profitable. The European operations of Laing O’Rourke, the engineering group, reported a £53.1m net loss last year, largely because of challenges in establishing its offsite building operation. Factories have also failed in the past when the property market went into a downturn, quickly reducing demand.
But Paul Stanworth, managing director at Legal & General Capital, said: “We need the modular business if we are to crank up the volume of housebuilding — we would not have the resources otherwise.
“You can’t instantly create double the numbers of plumbers and bricklayers, and Brexit is working against that.”
Original link - ft.com
