Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140-152)
MR JOHN
SLAUGHTER, MR
PAUL PEDLEY
AND MR
ANDREW WHITAKER
28 NOVEMBER 2005
Q140 Anne Main: I am amazed it got past
planning.
Mr Pedley: Unanimously, by the
way, in 13 weeks.
Q141 Mr Betts: That is fine but that
is probably what that site is marketable for and it probably would
not have the potential to build executive type houses there. What
about in another area where you have the potential to build executive
type houses but there are still people who need affordable homes
so therefore you do not build affordable homes. Unless 106 comes
in, you will not do anything to provide affordable homes, will
you?
Mr Pedley: I totally disagree.
We have a site in Chorley that has a planning consent for over
2,000 houses. We are creating a totally mixed development with
some for rent. We are doing this with the RSLs. We have just done
the first phase which is the affordable and we are building houses
everywhere up to about £300,000. To give you some idea, there
are just over 70 units that we have released and we had 2,500
inquiries for those. There is a huge demand for the first time
buyer in the market place.
Q142 Mr Betts: I can quote many examples
where builders have not volunteered or gone into that sort of
arrangement. They have a nice area; they build executive houses
on it and even in areas of the north there are major shortages
in certain pockets of localities of affordable housing for people.
They are never going to get any houses built of that type unless
there is some arrangement with the local authority.
Mr Pedley: If you think about
it from our point of view as a developer, if you are targeting
the largest single element of the market, it must be commercially
sensible to do, which is why we have done it.
Q143 Mr Betts: Let us move on to modern
methods of construction. There is not enormous enthusiasm amongst
your members for modern methods of construction, is there?
Mr Slaughter: There is a good
deal. There is substantial interest. A good proportion of the
major companies are investing in modern methods of construction.
As part of our response to Barker, we have been facilitating a
wide ranging discussion including with the Council of Mortgage
Lenders who were giving evidence earlier and a whole range of
bodies, looking at what are the impediments to further uptake
of investment. We have not produced our report quite yet but the
basic premise of that research is that MMC, which we define very
widely—we are not just talking about off-site manufacture
but essentially about innovation in housing—is something
that can deliver enormous business benefits. It can deliver business
efficiency, improvements in quality, a reduction in waste and
so forth. In principle, these are things that the industry would
certainly look at if the environment was supportive. The whole
premise of that Barker work is why is the environment not as supportive
as it might be.
Q144 Mr Betts: There is a difference
between doing the off-site bathroom suite which you come and fit
in as opposed to the whole house being built off-site.
Mr Pedley: We have not tried to
build a whole house off-site but we have tried to use MMC to improve
the quality and speed of what we do on site by effectively descaling
the process as much as we can. One of the reasons we can work
commercially is that we are building using a lightweight skill
frame system, which means you can build a house in about three
weeks. If you can get the speed to that degree, the amount of
overhead you save is phenomenal. If you can build it 100% with
virtually no water in it, which is what causes most of the problems
with a new home, you can take up virtually all your maintenance
issues and you start being able to give that benefit back to the
customer in terms of the price.
Q145 Mr Betts: With the past forms of
modern methods of construction, whatever you call them, it is
not the water that has been in the house when it gets built; it
is the water that gets in afterwards that generally causes the
problems. We want some reassurance that what we are going to build
now is not going to replicate the problems of the past.
Mr Pedley: There is no reason
why you should have a lot of water in a house built with MMC because
you get the roof on so quickly you make it watertight.
Q146 Mr Betts: What is holding you up
then? We do not see much evidence of a complete shift over. Are
you happy to look at the social, rented sector?
Mr Pedley: The social, rented
sector is probably one of the most advantageous places to use
it because the RSLs generally have a standardised form of housing.
Therefore you can use it. If I can give you an analogy with a
car, if you walked into a Ford dealership and said, "I love
the Ford Focus but can you just tweak it slightly?" a Ford
Focus comes off the production line and that is the whole issue
with MMC. You have to have a manufacturing mentality to make it
work. It is more expensive than using brick and block. Building
in volume significantly, it will stay more expensive. The only
way you can make it work commercially is to have a fairly high
volume going through which means you need the planning system
to limit their comments to elevational treatment, not looking
at the fabric of the house. Once they get to the fabric of the
house, if you are changing the dimensions, you have to go through
the whole process again of re-engineering the house. That just
means it is totally cost disadvantageous to us to do.
Q147 Mr Betts: The Council of Mortgage
Lenders was talking about the need for ODPM and the Housing Corporation
to give their seal of approval before we saw it take off.
Mr Slaughter: They were talking
about LPS2020. That is one of the elements that we have been looking
at in the work I have referred to in response to Barker. There
is a lot more besides. We talk about the planning and regulatory
system and in principle what we will be coming out with once our
report is made public, hopefully fairly soon, is a whole set of
analysis and recommendations about how we can improve the environment,
including some assurance on bringing new products into the market.
We have to bring all these bodies like the CML with us because
if you do not create the right confidence in the market place
it is not going to work. That is what we have been trying to do.
Q148 Dr Pugh: Can I ask you about PPG3?
I know you are not totally happy with it but there is one aspect
that interests us here and that is the instruction to achieve
densities within 25 and 35 homes per hectare. Most people would
agree this leads to a concentration in building of small-ish homes,
flats and things like that, where probably that may not be needed.
There may be a greater need, for example, for family accommodation
in certain areas. What can be done about that?
Mr Slaughter: Our hope is that
when the proposals for PPG3 come out in a week's time the ODPM
will be willing to look at a more flexible approach—I guess
there will have to be some minimum density threshold but beyond
that—that allows more flexibility than perhaps the current
policy does. The direction some other commentators are moving
in would suggest providing housing that is appropriate to the
local context and also to the local market demands. Delivering
family housing at increasingly high densities is certainly a problem
area.
Q149 Dr Pugh: And would presumably lead
to more sustainable communities? For example, seaside resorts,
which I know a little bit about, attract a lot of elderly people
and flats are very much in demand for elderly people. Seaside
resorts do not necessarily need to attract any more elderly people
than they already do, do they?
Mr Slaughter: No, sure, but even
there it is not that straightforward. The research that we have
carried out during the last year, Room to Move, analysed housing
consumption trends amongst the population as a whole based on
census data. That shows that there is not a simple correlation
even between household size and the desire to consume housing.
You cannot necessarily square a one or two person household with
a demand to have a one or two bedroom flat. We have to be quite
careful where we go on policy in this direction if we are going
to provide not just the numbers of homes that are required but
homes that will sustain what people are looking for in their lives.
Q150 Dr Pugh: If there is pressure to
bash them out at a particular density, do you agree with the conclusion
reached by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment,
CABE, who criticise the design quality of a lot of the new homes
appearing in the north? Is there any validity in that criticism?
Mr Pedley: You have to be careful
with the CABE report because it was largely based around schemes
that were designed in the early 2000s, right on the back of PPG3.
I think the industry has learned a lot of lessons in how to comply
with PPG3. When I saw the chief executive of CABE this morning,
his comment was that if you went back and did the same exercise
with what we are designing today you would see an improvement
in design. I think that is absolutely true. Going back to your
earlier point, if you are looking at a traditional scheme of housing
you will get at least 15,000 square feet on an acre. If you are
looking at 12 units to the acre, which would be 30 to the hectare,
you are talking about houses of 1,250 square feet each. That is
a four bedroom home. There is no problem in complying with those
sorts of densities. When you look at city centres, the numbers
go up very significantly. In a lot of the schemes we look at,
we would like more flexibility on the density in terms of increasing
it because we think we can get a better scheme by doing so.
Q151 Dr Pugh: There is a bias in the
building profession to try and get the density up?
Mr Pedley: The problem is prescribing
a density for every site. What you should have is the flexibility
to make sure what you design is appropriate for the location and
that comes back to who is your consumer; who is your customer
and what are they looking for.
Mr Slaughter: Coming back to your
question on CABE, the other key thing to pick out of the CABE
report is the complexity of delivering urban design. It is a question
of the developers, local authorities, highways and various other
agencies coming together. A lot of the issues that CABE raised
in their report were about issues like car parking and road layout
which are not just down to the developer. There is a need for
a collective approach if we are going to further advance this
agenda in the future.
Q152 Dr Pugh: It is not just a question
of deciding who is your customer because sometimes in order to
have a sustainable community you need to be building houses that
people need, whether it is key workers in the south-east or family
accommodation elsewhere.
Mr Pedley: That, to me, is just
making sure that each individual phase is appropriate for who
you are targeting it at. If you are looking at the more affordable
end, your densities will naturally go up.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed,
gentlemen.
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