Peter Johns CEO of NaCSBA has been speaking with Martina Lees of The Times Newspaper, shining a spotlight on the Councils dramatically failing to meet their lawful duty to grant Custom and Self Build Plots.
In addition to the article’s release, Peter has added;
“Whilst the article in The Times is good at highlighting the challenges faced by making custom and self build (CSB) a mainstream choice in the UK housing market, the apparent decline in the number of self builds is not strictly accurate. A big chunk of the decline is accounted for by the wrongful inclusion of 1900 CSB permissions in each of the four years by Cherwell District Council. That amounts to all of the plots at Graven Hill. It is Cleary wrong to count them four times. In addition, not all Graven Hill plots are CSB plots. Those permissions have been removed from recent years of data.
NaCSBA has some current strands of work trying to unpick the true size of the market. MHCLG data in this area is very weak. There are some definitional questions, but crucially the collection of the data is poor. The MHCLG data clearly under reports the true market size for traditional individual self builds.
Additionally, as the The Times article identifies, there is a growing pipeline of custom build sites and plots – multi-plot sites that still put the consumer in control of the design and specification of their own home.”
