Stop pouring petrol on flaming house prices

'Stop pouring petrol on flaming house prices' - urges housing expert at conference.

"Immediate action - not words - is needed to deliver development land on which to build desperately needed new homes", claimed Professor Michael Benfield, speaking to a conference of Housing Association, Local Government, Architect, and other industry professionals organised by the Welsh Timber Forum in Brecon, Wednesday.

"Further wrangling over policies, stakeholder interests, and politics are all 'fiddling while Rome burns'", he claimed.

Likening today's mounting housing crisis to Britain's immediate post-war housing 'disaster', he urged his audience to 'learn from history' and be prepared to adopt some of the measures borne of desperation that were taken then.

"In doing so we should immediately relax ALL planning controls and grant permits on 'presumed development' basis, with Local Authorities invoking their compulsory purchase powers to prevent withholding land", he argued.

Demonstrating how engineered timber structures can be adapted to deliver houses at below the GBP 60,000 targeted by Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, he evidenced the 'House Race' homes designed and built by his firm 12 months ago to prove this.

"Of course this still means that Local Authorities will have to get their act in gear to provide the necessary infrastructure," he stated, "but if we are to tackle the worsening situation we can't afford the usual prevarications that cause a project devised today taking 3 to 5 years before it is built." Invoking Winston Churchill's speech to the House of Commons in 1909, Professor Benfield claimed, "There is no shortage of funds to get any of this done".

"The money and the way to extract it already exist within the system, it just needs the will and the foresight to get it out." With UK House Builders recognised as among the most efficient and productive in Europe, "Creating the certainty of a continuous, ongoing supply of development land, able to receive uninterrupted factory built houses, will encourage investment in Off-Site, Modern Methods of Construction and greater use of sustainable timber to reduce Greenhouse gases," he argued.

In his view, this will also assist local economies by providing training for unskilled people, as well as opening the way to re-introduce 'proper apprenticeships', and the possibility of allowing youngsters to transfer from school at age 14, take up these apprenticeships, and recover the trade skills needed for the future that are rapidly being lost at this time.

"But to do this," he pointed out, "means recognising that 'apprentice masters' have to be rewarded for the effort and time taken to transfer their skills, as well as the delays this causes in production.".

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