We expect the Government will announce its intention to introduce further legislation on The Right to Build in this parliament, going beyond the demand register which received Royal Assent earlier in the year but has yet to be enacted as law.
There will be much work over the coming months developing process and regulations, but NaCSBA supports the principle of giving everyone who wants to build their own home ‘the Right to Build’. Creating an individual, sustainable and affordable home should be an option for the many and not just the few.
The Government’s response to the Right to Build consultation held last Autumn was released in March.
NaCSBA would like to see the Right to Build extended to all who would like to build their own home including opportunities for affordable custom and self build.
Local authorities will be free to choose how they deliver the Right, depending on the local housing market, economy, and the level of demand. The eleven vanguard Right to Build authorities are each approaching the Right in different ways and NaCSBA is analysing this and the policies being adopted by other planning authorities and will produce a report on this later in the year as part of a project funded by the Nationwide Foundation. The result will be a toolkit for local planning authorities to draw on in delivering the Right. The Nationwide Foundation R&D Team has already revealed some early learnings from this work.
NaCSBA sees local planning authorities taking the role of facilitator and in some instances as enabler. The traditional self build market (currently around 10,000 units per annum) has scope to double to around 20,000 new homes, mostly infill and replacement dwellings. The growth will come in the form of larger scale multi-plot sites, including parts of volume housebuilding sites, with serviced plots offered for sale together with the option to a buy a custom build home. There will be a choice from shell-only with the option to take on the finishing trades using subcontractors or DIY, but it is expected that most buyers will leave it to the custom build developer, effectively offering bespoke homes sold off-plan.
This is the model across much of the developed world where self build and custom build constitutes a far higher proportion of new homes than in the UK where the sector has declined from around 10% to 8% since 2008.
