Fast-build modular homes – an answer to the UK housing crisis?
Resembling a giant toymaker’s workshop, 16 identical wooden boxes that stand 2.6 metres tall are lined up in a row in a factory near Leeds.
Each year the factory manufactures hundreds of apartments and houses, with one to three bedrooms, which leave the premises on lorries fully kitted out. The factory is run by one of Britain’s biggest insurance and pension firms, Legal & General, and is one of the main modular housing makers in the country.
Compared with countries such as Japan and Germany, where modular housing is more established, this is a nascent industry in Britain and is still largely loss-making. But the hope is that the building of good-quality homes faster might be part of along-term solution to Britain’s housing crisis.
Some people may still associate modular homes, made on a factory assembly line like a car, with the prefab homes of the 1950s and 1960s – accommodation that was hastily assembled after the war and built to last just 10 years. But today’s timber frame modular homes are better quality and more energy efficient.
Modular homes are in the top energy performance bracket, so could save an average household up to £800 a year on energy bills, according to the industry group Make UK Modular.
Thomas Chambers, a 38-year-old IT consultant, moved into a £250,000 three-bedroom, end of terrace, modular house at L&G’s Selby site in September. He had known nothing about modular housing but was attracted by the style, location and energy efficiency. His energy bills are about the same as they were for his previous, smaller, 1980s terrace house in Wakefield because his new home retains heat much better and has solar panels.
“I’ve been very happy living here so far. One of the things I like about the property is the
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