At the end of August 2021, the government announced that £8.6 billion of funding would be allocated across the country to be put toward affordable housing.
The investment, which will be delivered under the Affordable Homes Programme, will deliver just under 120,000 new homes. These will include 57,000 going up for ownership, 29,600 for social rent and 6,250 affordable rural homes. It will also generate up to 370,000 jobs across the country for housebuilders, developers and other businesses that support the sector, which is expected to generate up to £26 billion more in other private and public investment.
The funding will be critical if the government is to hit its target of delivering up to 300,000 new homes per year by the mid-2020s, having experienced well-documented struggles in delivering on its housebuilding aims in the past.
However, in the eyes of one business leader, the government must consider going further by integrating modular homes into its housebuilding strategy if developers are to meet their completion targets even with this raft of new investment.
Rachel Gao Wang is director and owner of Deson Kitchens. Part of the global Deson Group, it is a family-run business which has grown into the largest kitchen unit manufacturer in China, going on to expand its operations into the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Since 2018, the company has been aiming for a share of the UK development market in the hope of providing a single solution to housebuilders. In pursuit of this, it has targeted medium and large developers that work with housing associations and local councils on both new-build and refurbished properties, who are aiming to provide more affordable housing solutions.
Having garnered plenty of experience working with developers and having seen the failure of the market to deliver on the government’s 300,000 homes per year target so far, Rachel firmly believes that social homes are the only way to get close to the number of units promised.
Speaking to The Parliamentary Review, Rachel said: “Managing that 300,000 homes per year building target will mean a bigger investment programme [like the one we’re seeing] but it will also require the sector to find the most cost-effective ways of using these funds.
“The government is well behind with its new home building target, and of the 200,000 homes built annually, only about 15,000 are modular, even though the method is reported to produce houses up to 30 per cent more quickly than traditional building practices, which could help developers meet their completion targets.
“Moreover, it is known that the budget for building a modular home is 25 per cent less than the traditional brick-and-mortar method.”
Rachel added that as a business, Deson Kitchens is well-placed to adapt its production and delivery processes to suit the modular home industry should it begin to thrive, so that it can continue to provide a single solution to developers and easily help maintain lower overheads through the company’s cost-effective kitchen products and easy-fit wall systems.
She explained: “The demand for more affordable housing to the market has resulted in the search for better solutions. Therefore, in addition to our product supply operation, we have adapted our culture to provide a single-service solution to housing associations and developers, helping them to overcome the challenges they face in finding the right design and supply companies.
“As a result of our ability to completely design an interior, alongside our own manufacturing plants, our clients can be confident of an end-to-end package that will fulfil their requirements, thus allowing them to save time and money in seeking individual solutions for their needs.”
By looking beyond traditional methods of housebuilding, Rachel believes that the government can not only resolve the UK’s housing crisis, but also pave the way for businesses like hers to supply suitable products to the industry to create a modern living culture that will benefit consumers.
“What is required now is a stable government with a commitment to tackling the housing shortage and a willingness to look beyond the established building methods”, Rachel said.
“Our future aims include supplying our products to the modular homes industry, which we see as the way forward in resolving the housing shortage in this country, as part of our ambition to create a modern living culture.”
