Solutions

I have built my own home to the highest possible building standard: A grade energy efficiency standard, from a plot of land that I was privileged to buy.

We have several different housing crisises in the UK. First would be a lack of new homes for our growing population. Second would be a lack of Houses for social rental. Third would be a lack of rural homes. Forth would be that the homes that we have are of a poor quality and even new build homes are often of a poor quality.

I have built my own home to the highest possible quality known as A grade energy standard, from a plot of land that I was privileged to buy. I want to extend this privilege to other North Easterners. To do this I will address the rural housing crisis by making available 3 new building plots in every town and village in the northeast. Small numbers of building plots do not interest large builders. To attract small builders and self builders such as my self that would be able to develop small numbers of plots, it is necessary to provide serviced plots at low prices.

The plan would be to compulsory purchase low grade farm land and re-designate the land as residential. The arbitrary uplift in the land value would be spread to the land owner, the local parish council and if extended to local person that the parish council is looking for such a plot to subsidise the services plot to make it more affordable to local people. The mayoralty would also take some of the uplift to pay for the installation of services.

There would also be the development of green field sites around the North East for a mixed developments of housing for rent and housing for sale.

All of these new houses would have to achieve A grade energy standards to be passed by building control.  The house that I build was not a standard UK building method, using multple different techniques to achieve a higher build quality.  This experience has changed the way I look at this issue.  If we are to build large quantities of new homes to a higher energy standard they will need to be built in a different way.  The most cost effective way to do this on a mass scale, which is what I am proposing on a regional basis would for these homes to be built on a modular basis.  Modular housing is a type of pre-fabrication, where the houses are constructed as large components and assembled on site.  Reducing time on site and increasing quality control and precision.  This is the method the new green field estates would be built, an a new manufacturing base for this would need to be constructed.