A Right to Build

2011 A RIGHT TO BUILD The next mass-housebuilding industry Alastair Parvin / David Saxby Cristina Cerulli / Tatjana Schneider University of Sheffield School of Architecture Architecture 00 Architecture of University Sheffield of School CONTENTS 1. Housing’s long tail Who builds our houses? 7 2. The UK housing crisis The crisis before the crash 11 3. Who should build our houses? Why who builds our houses matters more than how many they build 21 Catalogue of Self-Provided Housing 49 4. The self-provided housing sector as found Analysis of self-provided housing in the UK 37 5. How will self-provided housing become a mass industry? 1. Land 59 2. Finance 71 3. Enabling Self-Provision 79 4. Re-scaling Planning Process 87 5. Co-Design 95 6. Community Land Trusts 103 7. Mutual Home Ownership 109 8. Density 119 6. Three development models for the 21st century Suburban Co-housing 125 The Urban Community Land Trust 131 Grow Your Own Home 137 7. A right to build Self-provided housing as a 21st century housing solution 145 Index of key actions 152 Bibliography & links 155 © Copyright Architecture 00:/ and University of Sheffield School of Architecture 2011 2 3 A RIGHT TO BUILD The next mass-housebuilding industry 3 Completed Homes BIGGER BIG BUILDERS 21,910 homes 19,702 homes 21,910 homes 19,702 homes 16,701 homes 16,701 homes 2000 2000 7,117 homes PAGE ZOOM AREA 4,735 homes 7,117 homes BOVIS 3,123 homes 195,000 new homes in total 4,735 homes 2,946 homes BOVIS 5850 housebuilders 3,123 homes COMPLETED UNITS COMPLETED 500 500 2,946 homes 100 100 10 10 1 1 TOTAL 195,000 30 120 1200 30 120 1200 500 homes 30 homes <10 homes homes ALL HOUSEBUILDERS 5850 15,000+ professional housebuilders self-providers 5 National House Completions 2006 National House Completions 2006 Sources: NHBC, Callcutt Review 2007 Sources: NHBC, Callcutt Review, CLG All housebuilders Completed Homes BIGGER BIG BUILDERS 21,910 homes 19,702 homes 21,910 homes 19,702 homes 16,701 homes 16,701 homes 2000 2000 7,117 homes PAGE ZOOM AREA 4,735 homes 7,117 homes BOVIS 3,123 homes 195,000 new homes in total 4,735 homes 2,946 homes BOVIS 5850 housebuilders 3,123 homes COMPLETED UNITS COMPLETED 500 500 2,946 homes Who builds our houses? 100 100 10 10 The distribution of power in Britain’s 1 1 TOTAL housing supply. (Housebuilders along the 195,000 30 120 1200 30 120 1200 500 homes 30 homes <10 homes homes horizontal axis by the number of houses 1 ALL HOUSEBUILDERS 5850 15,000+ they completed in 2006. ) professional housebuilders self-providers 5 National House Completions 2006 National House Completions 2006 Sources: NHBC, Callcutt Review 2007 Sources: NHBC, Callcutt Review, CLG All housebuilders 6 7 HOUSING’S LONG TAIL Who Builds Our Houses? ‘The next big thing... will be many small things’ housebuilding companies contributed only about 8-9% of total production.2 Towards the peak of the Since the Industrial Revolution it has been accepted boom, in 2006, the top ten housebuilding companies as normal that houses, like many other market accounted for almost half of all newly completed commodities, are mass-produced by professionals dwellings in Great Britain.3 and mass-consumed by citizens. In this respect, housing supply roughly follows It is an assumption many of us have forgotten we what economists refer to as the ‘Pareto Principle’, ever made. In a market economy, we have become whereby a minority of a population (typically 20%) accustomed to our role as consumers, theoretically carry a majority of the weight (typically 80%). So, governing the mass-producers who work on our for example, it is often said that the top 20% richest behalf through the levers of market choice and people in the world control around 80% of the total government regulation. That assumption, though wealth. The UK housing supply is more consolidated in itself simple enough, nonetheless has profound even than this – and that is not an accident. implications for our lives and the society we live in. The housing market is not something we can choose For a long time, in the world’s industrialised to opt out of; housing is a basic human need, and economies, the shift from ‘do-it-yourself’ production one for which there is growing demand. and small local industry to mass-production by large national and multinational businesses has The big getting bigger been considered a measure of progress. We tend Over the last few decades, the gap between those to associate mass-marketisation with improved who produce housing and those who use it has efficiency, higher levels of innovation, more consumer undergone a massive concentration. In other choice, an ability to attract finance and a greater words, over time, more and more of us live in ability for government to regulate output. homes produced by fewer and fewer companies and organisations. In the same way that most of Accordingly, government policy has focused our food supply came to be delivered by a very on meeting the growing demand for housing by small group of big supermarkets, the vast bulk of increasing the output of that ‘peak’ of housebuilding: our national housing supply came to be produced in other words by encouraging that oligopoly of a few by a very small ‘peak’ of very big housebuilding big producers at the top of the graph to become even companies. In the early 1960s the top ten bigger. 1. Distribution of power in Britain’s Housing. (Housebuilders 2. Office of Fair Trading Housebuilding Market Study (OFT, by the number of houses they completed in 2006.) Does not 2008) include N.Ireland. Data: National Housebuilding Council, Calcutt 3.The Calcutt Review Review, Joseph Rowntree Foundation Housing and and Joseph Rowntree Foundation Housing and Neighbourhoods Monitor Neighbourhoods Monitor www.hnm.org.uk 7 Over the years, arguments about policy have not by extending the narrow ‘peak’ of big providers, gravitated around whether housing should come but by growing the ‘long tail’ of small groups and from the state, the market or independent non- individuals who seek to find a plot of land and provide profit organisations. But whichever of these was homes for themselves. Although they might not know the favoured mechanism at any given time, the it, these individuals and small groups collectively assumption has always remained that only a top- form a growing, emergent, bottom-up, mass down, ‘one-size-fits-all’, big-provider model is viable housebuilding industry: self-provided housing. for the sheer scale of the task. The ‘prosumer’ revolution The banking collapse All the indications are that in fact a huge number That certainty has been profoundly shaken by of us want to build our own homes, but we don’t the effects of the 2008 / 2009 banking crisis. The because, quite simply, it is just too difficult.4 The sudden retraction of finance both to house builders organisational challenge, financial risk, and the and to house buyers stalled the UK housing difficulty of obtaining land, finance and planning supply, and with it the forms of public welfare permission seem insurmountable to most of us. provision and progressive investment for the What is odd is that just as we are encountering future (such as affordable housing and community the social and economic liabilities of our heavy infrastructure) that were being delivered as a tax dependence on a ‘big producer’ model in housing on those developments (called Section 106 planning we are also witnessing a ‘prosumer’ revolution in agreements). so many other sectors of the economy: music, film, journalism, home-improvement and even some public The combination of this contracting private sector, services. and the subsequent shrinking of the public sector leaves the UK housing supply stranded. We now Driven largely by the internet, these mini industrial have to ask ourselves; how are we going to build revolutions have all been propelled by a single enough houses to meet our needs? phenomenon: a new capacity to liberate the ‘long tail’ as a productive force. 5 In other words, to make A self-provided housing industry it easier for ordinary people to produce things for This booklet will put forward a case that our almost themselves. total dependence on the big-provider model is no longer rational or realistic, and a rethink is now The huge multitude of amateur ‘prosumers’ needed if we are to meet the UK’s housing needs in (producer-consumers), once equipped with tools and the coming decades. It will try to draw the outline of the ability to aggregate their knowledge and their a very different kind of emerging housing industry, collective purchasing power, form a powerful, high- one which is focused on growing the housing supply volume sector of producers. YouTube, Wordpress, 4. A Norwich and Peterborough Building Society survey indicated that 70% of homeowners have considered building their own home. National Self Build Association Self-build as a Volume Housebuilding Solution http://www.nasba.org.uk 5. Chris Anderson The Long Tail (Cornerstone Digital, 2010) 8 9 Lulu, MySpace, AirBnB, Kickstarter and Wikipedia are all examples of this. What is strange is that this transition from the ‘consumer’ paradigm to the ‘prosumer’ one has yet to occur within the housing sector, where it is so badly needed. In fact, UK housing is unique as a field of production and consumption in that the majority of the population occupy such a hugely disadvantaged position. The shape of a new housebuilding industry The research that led to this booklet was conceived as an opportunity to investigate and anticipate that urgently-needed shift within the UK housing industry.

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