Prefabs

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Prefabs, Wake Green Rd. Birmingham
    Remember prefabs? The post-war solution to rehousing those displaced after the bombing? Prefabricated in factories, these kit houses were quick to erect and sprung up in various guises and designs all over the UK in the years immediately after WWII. They were only meant to be used and last for a matter of months, a few years at most, but some lasted many years longer - I still remember them into my early adulthood before I left Birmingham.
    In recent years, Jane & I have been banging on about affordable, energy-neutral housing, or rather the lack of it. We have - Covid apart - a triple long-term crisis on our hands: virtually no housing affordable to first time buyers, no social housing policy to speak of and an absolute dearth of ecologically sustainable building design & manufacture in the mainstream: it's all well and good highlighting the Grand Designs style of eco-build; but by and large, though not not exclusively, they are vanity projects executed on behalf of those wealthy enough to engage in such things.
    The Germans and the Scandinavians have long been producing pre-fabricated, energy-neutral buildings at [relatively] affordable cost. All it requires is the will of politicians and lenders to get behind it. We need housing and we have a climate crisis. It's not rocket science. All it needs is imagination and legislation.
    Encouragingly, there is a piece in today's Times business section (thanks, Jane!) reporting that Legal & General have got the go-ahead to build a modular housing project in Selby, North Yorkshire, manufactured in a factory it set up near Leeds. Hopefully, this is a sign of a turning point in the building industry that will lead to an environmentally-friendly, affordable and sustainable approach to housing.  

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