Building better to tackle the housing crisis – our letter to Steve Reed, the new Secretary of State for Housing

Dear Secretary of State

Congratulations on your appointment.

I wanted to introduce myself and Ecology Building Society.

We are a mutual lender with a focus on delivering environmental and social benefit through our mortgages across the UK. As such, we’d like to offer whatever help we can to the Government as it seeks solutions to the country’s housing crisis.

Tackling this challenge is an important brief within your new role, with the potential to build better communities in all parts of the country, support economic growth, and help thousands more people to put down roots and secure their futures.

You’ve already spoken about finding ways to “get spades in the ground quicker” and we have some thoughts on ways to build at scale and at pace, while also building better.

When it comes to new build, we believe off-site construction can help to deliver higher-quality, warmer homes, which will save their owners money on their bills as well as creating lower carbon emissions than traditionally constructed properties.

As long-standing specialists in self-build, we were the first lender to offer dedicated mortgages for off-site construction, also called Modern Methods of Construction.

Off-site construction is growing in popularity and now accounts for more than half of all self-builds. It’s already commonly used in public buildings such as schools and hospitals, which can help to dispel the outdated reputation of modular buildings some associate with post-war “pre-fabs”.

Their materials and build quality bear little comparison to the high-quality properties constructed today.

We’d love to see wider use of off-site construction, for example by large-scale developers, who still tend to favour traditional building techniques and materials.

Modular construction is significantly quicker than traditional building techniques, a particular strength when the need for homes is so pressing.

As well as ensuring more consistent build standards, using off-site construction could help developers to cut the carbon footprint of the build process, as well as reducing site waste and saving them money.

Modern modular-built homes enjoy excellent energy efficiency, thanks to the greater accuracy and precision offered by the construction technique. This reduces running costs and utility bills, which remain a worry for so many as the cost-of-living crisis continues.

And where there’s an urgent need for homes, combined with stringent cost pressures, such as in the social housing sector, we believe off-site construction could be hugely beneficial in delivering good quality, energy-efficient and affordable homes at scale across the country.

When facing into as tricky a challenge as the housing crisis, we’d urge the Government to show imagination in ways to speed up the construction of good-quality new homes and look more closely about how off-site construction might help to deliver this.

We’d be delighted to meet you and your team to share our knowledge and expertise in this sector and could introduce you to some of the modular component manufacturers we work with across the UK.

You also would be very welcome to come to our headquarters in West Yorkshire, to learn more about our approach to lending and our motivation to create greener homes and more sustainable communities.

Gareth Griffiths
CEO, Ecology Building Society