Shapps announces self-build homes sites
Seven areas earmarked for £30 million funding package
Housing minister Grant Shapps has given the green light to seven sites across the country to create self-built homes.
A total of £30 million has been made available in funding with the government also handing over land it owns for building work to begin. The scheme is being championed by Grand Designs presenter Kevin McCloud.
The pilot scheme will be built at Pool in Cornwall with up to 60 homes due to be built on surplus public land there.
Other homes have been earmarked for sites at Bristol, Hemel Hempstead, Bolsover, Derbyshire, Stoke-on-Trent, Milton Keynes and at Upper Tuesley Milford in Surrey.
The £30 million fund will offer short term loans to community groups, builders and other small organisations looking to start self-build projects.
The money will be used to pay up to three-quarters of a project’s land and early construction costs and will be available top groups planning to build five or more homes at a cost of £3 million.
Shapps has written to major mortgage lenders to convince them to back the idea. He added: “This shouldn’t be a niche interest for the select few – anyone with a dream to build should be able to do so.”
Related Articles
- Self-build chairman calls for new era of community architects
5 October 2012
- Homes design guide relaunched
20 September 2012
- Scrap affordable housing quotas, says government report
23 August 2012 | Updated: 24 August 2012 11:20 am
- Terence Conran and Grant Shapps to launch housing design competition
22 August 2012
- Mayor of London recruits architects to advise self-builders
18 July 2012
- Construction output falls again
13 July 2012
- Shapps announces £30m self-build starter fund
15 May 2012
- Architects hail Shapps’ self-build ‘boom’
27 April 2012
- Shapps outlines details of local building plans
2 June 2011
Have your say
Sign in to make a comment on this story.
Sign InDesktop Site | Mobile Site
Readers' comments (10)
fund-all in the general scheme of things
"The money will be used to pay up to three-quarters of a project’s land and early construction costs and will be available top groups planning to build five or more homes at a cost of £3 million." - another way for our taxes to go directly to mass house builders’ coffers...
I can see those groups forming now, all the legal framework worked up on the back of the napkin and then successfully, without any legal problems, arguments and falling out building in perfect harmony those 5 units... as he said himself, " a dream to build"
A rhetorical question - Why politicians spending my taxes are so dramatically removed from reality?!!?
Why can't they just provide the land for single purchasers with cheap credit lines available to individual house builders with strict provision banning any type of professional house builders, housing associations etc. laying their hands on that land? Do they always have to create some consortia, collectives, initiatives...?
SHapps is not interesting in housing, other than as a way of putting money into the pockets of developers.
I think this will be a positive move. Although this initiative needs to be tied to another that targets individual builders.
The size of procurement of 5 houses means that likely one Architect/designer per 5 houses, which is something that has been very successful in Malmo, for example.
When compared with one Architect for 50-1000 homes, this initiative will create a variety of designs and add complexity and variation to these neighbourhoods.
Hopefully this is a trial for a future way forward for mass house building.
Peter wrote "Why can't they just provide the land for single purchasers with cheap credit lines available to individual house builders with strict provision banning any type of professional house builders".
Amen. I'd like to understand the logic as to why individual prospective self-builders cannot also tap into this funding stream.
Quote " I'd like to understand the logic as to why individual prospective self-builders cannot also tap into this funding stream"
The logic is that SHapps wants this money to go to his developer friends. Not to the little guy. In fact I'm guessing that this policy was written by the developers and that Shapps is only the "enabler" with the job of selling it to a gullible public.
The evil developer angle in these articles might be true but it might also be the government examining the size of design procurement bundles and how this effects the nature of neighbourhoods.
The self build market is the logical area for the government to trial new approaches.
And yes from the individual self build perspective and the self build movement as a whole this initiative is not that encouraging and does not come from the values of the orthodox church of self build.I imagine this church doesn't look
to the government for their funding anyhow.
Another barmy Government initiative. Why should the developers be given 75% of the land for free, as well as 'early construction costs' whatever that means? No doubt the money will be plucked of Gordy and Ballsie's magic money tree in the Treasury courtyard but ultimately the taxpayers will be paying for it - with interest of course.
off
That photograph of Shapps says it all. "Estate Agent".