MMC Playbook - Housing Festival
- Gaynor
- Apr 11, 2024
- 1 min read
The UK faces a dual crisis in temporary accommodation (TA) and refugee housing, with over 112,660 households living in Temporary Accommodation, costing taxpayers £1.7 billion annually. This reflects a systemic housing shortfall, particularly in safe and se00cure social rent homes. The "structural deficit" in housing supply underscores the urgent need for action, as research suggests an additional 90,000 social rent homes are required yearly for the next decade in England.
The Playbook, developed as a guide for local governments, calls for delivering 100,000 new social rent homes over ten years. It outlines an ecosystem solution centred on three core components:
1. Building Homes in a New Way: Leveraging Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) to create factory-manufactured housing for faster delivery.
2. Unlocking Unlikely Land: Identifying and utilizing small, brownfield sites in public ownership to expand available land for development.
3. Recalibrating the Economics: Rethinking housing value to attract alternative capital sources and make social rent housing viable.
The Playbook emphasises a collaborative, human-centric approach, embedding values into housing design and delivery to benefit residents and communities. It advocates for a national, local government-led strategy to address viability and scale challenges, encouraging innovation and public-private partnerships. Highlighting the decline in social rent housing construction—from over 90,000 homes in 1980 to just 7,500 in 2020—the Playbook calls for systemic change.
This "living document" serves as a roadmap to eliminate the structural deficit while incubating new supply chains and fostering better outcomes for vulnerable populations. Through creativity and collective leadership, local authorities are encouraged to adopt innovative solutions, leveraging case studies and partnerships to achieve these ambitious goals.
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