HE’s executive land director tells Housing Today modern methods’ cash ‘not simply a tap we can just turn on’
Homes England is fully behind modern methods of construction, but funding for schemes looking to use MMC would not be limitless, the government agency’s executive land director Stephen Kinsella has told Housing Today.
In an exclusive interview Kinsella, who joined the government body in 2017 after 11 years as Barratt Development’s growth and partnerships director, said funding through the Local Authority Accelerated Construction programme was dependent on schemes being built quickly.
Nearly £11m had gone to Welwyn Hatfield council to build 670 homes on three sites and a further 30,000 homes would be supported by the scheme.
“But MMC is not an area where we can simply turn a tap on. We’re on a trajectory with this, where we are now working in partnerships and providing the MMC sector with certainty in demand.
“We can use the full raft of tenure options to get long-term demand for MMC products,” he said.
Kinsella also said he wants to encourage small housebuilders by looking at how it can get firms small plots of land to build on.
“We’re looking at how we can get small sites to smaller builders by, for example, dividing larger sites into smaller parcels.”
Obligations could be placed on larger builders requiring them to sell such parcels to smaller builders.
“It’s a slightly riskier and more complex course of action, but it is absolutely the right thing to do,” he added.
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