Chief secretary to the Treasury Steven Barclay confirmed the government wants to speed up construction projects and emphasise the use of new building methods.
Speaking about the Treasury’s plans for the upcoming five-year spending review, Barclay highlighted that in Sweden 84 per cent of detached housing uses prefabricated timber elements while in the UK this is just five per cent.
He noted that modern practices were far more creative than the “spartan post-war housing stock” which many people may associate with prefabricated homes.
“The modern reality is very different, as typified by the so-called Japanese ‘dream factories’ where a single factory can deliver around 20,000 units in a year,” he said.
“Customers are able to personalise their future home to match their individual needs and aspirations – making buying a home closer to the experience of buying a car.
“This is what we should be seeing in the UK. Yet too often housing construction would look familiar to Victorian eyes.
“As a result, the spending review will seek to accelerate our adoption of modern methods of construction and explicitly link funding decisions to schemes that prioritise it,” he added.
