“I have been looking eagerly, ever since I took office, for some system of prefabrication which would enable us to build houses in the same way as cars and aeroplanes. So far my search has been in vain, but I do not despair.”

No doubt spoken in a break from setting up the National Health Service, these words of Aneurin Bevan, minister of state for health in 1945, anticipate many decades of frustratingly slow progress towards his vision for housing.