Housing: Modern Methods of Construction

Lord Carrington of Fulham Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2024 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Carrington of Fulham]

That this House takes note of the role of Modern Methods of Construction in the housing construction sector.

[Lord Carrington of Fulham (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to introduce this debate and to propose this Motion. As many noble Lords will be aware, my noble friend Lord Moylan won the ballot for this debate, but he has been appointed to the Opposition Front Bench and so is unable to stand where I am standing. Fear not: he is on the list of speakers so he will get his two minutes’ worth to say what really should be said by me standing where I am. He is chairman of the Built Environment Select Committee and chaired our inquiry into modern methods of construction. I had the pleasure of serving on the committee during that inquiry, which is one of the reasons he asked me to speak today.

This debate comes at a time when our country is in desperate need of more housing. The previous Government had a target of 300,000 homes per annum. As I understand it, the new Government have a target of 1.5 million homes over the term of the Parliament, which noble Lords with a ready reckoner will quickly work out is the equivalent of 300,000 per annum, possibly back-loaded. There is considerable doubt, given the demographics of our country, whether either figure—300,000 or 1.5 million—is enough. It is certainly the minimum we need, but even so it has not been achieved in recent years. We got over 200,000 recently, but it looks as though this year the figure will be nearer 150,000. There is a strong case that we need an increase of 400,000 homes a year.

The problems in achieving this target have bedevilled housing Ministers for generations: our planning system, skills shortages in the building trades, and sometimes violent local opposition to new housing. MMC, as I shall call modern methods of construction for speed, could have a role in solving at least some of those problems. With MMC homes can be built fast, or faster than using traditional methods on-site, and it would go a long way towards resolving the dire shortage of skilled construction workers, whether they are bricklayers, plumbers, electricians, roofers or carpenters.

Perhaps I ought to explain what MMC is. Those of us of a certain age will remember prefabs, which after the Second World War were used to urgently house people made homeless by the Blitz. They were factory-built homes that could be transported on the back of a lorry to parks and open spaces, where they were then connected to the services—drains, water, electricity and gas. I remember many of them in Chiswick, where I was brought up. They were much loved by the tenants who lived in them, possibly because they were placed on public open spaces and had small gardens.

MMC is a modern version of that idea. The homes, or the components that are assembled to make up a home, are factory-built and then transported to the building site, which is preprepared with services such as foundations, sewerage, water and electricity. There are seven categories of MMC, and in ascending order they require increasing amounts of assembly on-site. I propose to concentrate only on types 1 and 2. The first is when the unit or home is fully finished in the factory and needs only to be lowered on to the foundations at the site and connected to the services. Type 2 is best described as a flat-pack version of type 1—or an IKEA tribute act—where the components of the structure are stuck together on-site. The other five MMC types have some benefits but require much more work to assemble them.

The advantages of MMC over traditional building methods are essentially that less skilled work is required on the site because the building work is done in a factory-controlled environment. This has major quality-control advantages, and therefore less snagging after completion, which is the curse of the building industry. The people building the home in the factory can be trained and supervised to a much higher standard, and use can be made of modern production techniques such as 3D printing. There are of course logistical benefits: building materials can be delivered in bulk and stored at the factory to be used as required.

However, there are problems. It requires a lot of capital investment to build the factory, train the workforce, establish reliable supply chains and buy the high-tech equipment required. If the factories can attract only small numbers of orders and no long-term commitments to place more, the unit costs of the homes are high—certainly as high as building homes in the conventional way. It is a bit of a vicious circle: high prices lead to few orders, and few orders lead to even higher prices. So it is perhaps not surprising that many of the companies that entered into this market have gone bust or just packed up and gone away.

The only way of solving this problem is to guarantee the suppliers of MMC homes a sufficiently large order book. Then we might end up with a virtuous circle, of full order books leading to highly competitive unit prices, giving speed of construction and higher quality. Why has that not happened? There has been resistance from planners, resistance from insurance companies and warrantee providers, and, in many cases, resistance from the big housebuilders. Last but not least, there has been vocal opposition from local communities concerned at dozens or hundreds of identical box homes being foisted on them.

Planning consent seems to be a major problem in some parts of the country. MMC should not find it more difficult to get planning permission than traditional housing, but there may be resistance by planners to new ideas, concern about ease of maintenance or worries about design quality. Perhaps building blocks of flats in urban areas using MMC should not cause a concern to planning authorities or to local residents, but, after Grenfell, the industry will need to demonstrate that MMC is as safe as, or safer than, conventional building methods.

The image and anticipation of tower blocks made up of factory-built units, identical and slotted together, is off-putting, so quality of design is vital for getting public acceptance. Even tower blocks need to be well designed. A beautiful tower designed by a talented architect can be a delight—you have only to look at some of the commercial and residential blocks designed by Mies van der Rohe—but, equally, housing estates or new towns of identical or near-identical homes are guaranteed to raise objections and opposition, which slows the planning process and, in worst cases, can blight a whole district. Good design makes getting planning consent easier and community acceptance more likely.

Variety of design is also important. The Built Environment Committee was told that MMC could be adapted to any finish. That may well be so, but the same unit with a brick finish, or tiles or wood cladding or whatever, will still be the same unit—rather like, in the immortal words of Sarah Palin, putting lipstick on a pig. What is needed is to incorporate brilliant design, with a wide variety of styles and floor-plans, as well as finishes, that respect the traditional materials of the region, to gain acceptance by planners and local communities.

We know from experience with MMC that the problems are not going to solve themselves, but solving them could bring massive benefits, with well-built, well-designed, varied houses and flats fitting into their communities, providing much-needed homes at a smaller price than traditional building methods and delivered much faster. It is worth noting that both the Netherlands and Germany use MMC extensively and with considerable success, so these problems can be resolved.

However, the industry cannot solve the problems on its own, nor can local authorities, with the budget and planning constraints they have. It will take a concerted effort by the Government, and perhaps Homes England, to ensure that the flow of orders for these homes allows for the capital investment required in the factories. Budget constraints must not be allowed to lose design quality and variety of floor-plan and materials, all of which will push up the cost. That will guarantee failure, through both the bankruptcy of the MMC companies and rejection by the local communities.

I guess the real question of this debate is whether the new Government are committed to acting as a midwife for this industry, helping it into the brave new world of rapid, cost-effective homebuilding, with all the financial support, design encouragement and tearing up of red tape that that entails. I look forward to this debate and, in particular, to the Minister’s reply, which I am sure will lay out the Government’s policy towards MMC.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Carrington of Fulham (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to everybody who has participated in this debate. It has been an extremely useful debate. I particularly commend the response of the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, which answered most of our points and showed clearly that this is not a party-political issue; it is one on which there is consensus on both sides of the House. We all wish this industry to develop well. The points made in the debate highlighted the challenges that everybody involved in providing homes in this country will face to meet the demand that is there already.

I was deeply impressed by the quality of this debate and of the contributions to it. It is very sad that everybody except me and the Front-Bench speakers were limited to two minutes. The quality of the debate that we got in two minutes would, I believe, have gone up exponentially if we had had five or even 10 minutes for contributions.

With that, I thank everybody. It has been a good debate, and one that has taken forward the cause of revolutionising housebuilding in this country.

Motion agreed.