Current housing Minister Gavin Barwell is now hoping that measures to encourage thousands more people to build their own "dream homes" will enable the government to meets its housing targets and tackle the housing crisis by doubling the number of self-builds.
Around 11,000 homes are self-built each year. But the main stumbling block for increasing this is finding suitable plots of land. Anything any good, is sold to small builders by their estate agent mates with a large proportion never ever advertised. What is available is often very over priced, costing up to 50% of the value of the completed home, or is on land that is costly to develop and/or has access problems.
Yet, despite this, the Government believes an increasing number of people want the freedom and challenge of building their own home. Barmy Barwell, claims that doubling the number of self-build homes to more than 20,000 a year is "integral" to the Government's commitment to boost house building. The current target is to build 400,000 new affordable homes over the course of this parliament – by May 2020.
Barwell said:
"Helping increase the number of self-build homes is integral to our commitment to boost house building. By doubling the number built we not only create much needed new homes but enable people to live in houses designed by themselves, to meet their own needs. That is why we recently launched the £3billion home building fund to provide loans for small builders, custom builders and off-site construction."
Nothing about allocating serviced low cost plots on public land, specifically for self-builders then?
Just a new previously announced £3bn fund, to provide low cost loans!
Meanwhile 30,000 migrants were given social housing in 2015 and 9,000 servicemen and women sleep rough after leaving the military.