CHP announcement in the Budget
Posted on 19 March 2015
Budget statement
Yesterday the Chancellor, George Osbourne, made a statement in his budget speech about a housing development in Northstowe. The site is owned by the public-sector. It is intended that they use a new model of building contract in order to build at twice the rate of a conventional private sector development. CHP has been awarded the contract to study the feasibility and economic aspects of this direct commissioning model of building. The model is being used on a significantly wider scale than previous developments of this type.
Directly commissioned housebuilding
Northstowe is a really interesting new development with potential advantages over standard building patterns. We are very pleased that the government chose us to take forward this assessment of its effectiveness.
Professor Tunstall
In this alternative delivery mechanism, public agencies directly commission homes to be built, assuming responsibility for developing the land themselves rather than facilitating volume or small to medium sized builders to do so. The ambition is to double the rate of housing delivered to market, compared to conventional development models.
The feasibility study
Northstowe is former Military of Defence land north of Cambridge and 10,000 homes are planned there.
- Phase 1 is being undertaken by a conventional development model
- Phase 2 will see the government’s Homes and Communities Agency test direct commissioning of housing.
The study will comprise a review of existing evidence and in-depth interviews with a range of industry actors to explore what the attributes of successful and cost-effective directly commissioned models of housebuilding should look like, how any new models should be evaluated ,implemented at scale and represent value for money.
The research team
The project will be led by Professor Becky Tunstall and involve Dr Alison Wallace of CHP, and two housing consultants, Nigel Ingram and Deborah Heenan, both with extensive expertise in the field.
With thanks to Andrew Hill for the use of his image of a housing development (N.B. not Northstowe) (CC BY-ND 2.0)