Greener, Better, Faster: Modular's Role In Solving The Housing Crisis

Make UK Modular’s, in partnership with KOPE, groundbreaking new report shows that by 2025 the modular housing sector will have the capacity to deliver 20,000 low carbon, energy efficient homes across the England. These homes would cost 55% less to heat than the average British ‘bricks and mortar’ family house and be built at twice the speed.

Widescale change in the way in which we build new homes at scale has not been seen in the UK for generations. Technological advances have transformed areas of life including transport, entertainment, retail and consumables, but until recently housebuilding had been slow to innovate. That is now changing with the advent of a new generation of factory-built modular home.

For the first time, we can see the extent of the modular housing revolution underway in the UK. Highlights include:

• Modular homes cost 55% less to heat than the average UK home and 32% less than traditional new builds, delivering savings of up to £800 a year for a three-bedroomed family home
• Modular homes are built 50% faster to make from start to finish than bricks and mortar homes
• Building with modular can halve emissions when building a home, cutting the amount of CO2 produced as a result of construction by up to 83%
• Modular manufacturers have already built factories in post-industrial provincial towns or cities, creating over 3,000 jobs, and delivering £700m of investment to low-growth, low employment areas
•  Government should fast track the planning route for modular homes and commit to using modular for 20% of its affordable housing programme to double new jobs overnight
•  Modular home construction is both more efficient and kinder to the environment with substantially less waste, 90% down on materials wastage than traditional builds
•  Modular building heavily reduces the amount of transport access needed for building sites, with 80% fewer vehicle movements to sites and therefore far less local disruption and pollution of the environment

There are a number of zero cost interventions Government could make to maximise growth in modular housing. These include:

• Sustainability: Enhance house-building sustainability by introducing more a robust commitment to and targets for net-zero
• Scale: Dedicate 40% of the Affordable Homes Programme to modular, and 50% of this to volumetric modular
• Planning: Create a fast track planning route for net-zero homes
• Land: Government to require a minimum percentage of it’s land bank to be allocated for modular homes
• Levelling Up: Create a modular capacity strategy linking new factory location, high housing demand areas, and levelling up priority regions.