The BBC is seeking four offsite housing manufacturers to showcase their products on a site in Manchester, for a three-part BBC 2 series looking at how housing production can be stepped up to address the current shortfall.
The producers are currently seeking expressions of interest to take part in the programme, which will challenge architects, designers and contractors to build a home in under two weeks.
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Filming would take place Monday to Friday, for transmission on three consecutive Saturday evenings. It would focus on offsite methods of construction and will follow the whole process from factory floor to the homes being sold on the open market.
The programme, however, is not yet fully commissioned, and is awaiting responses from offsite providers. Interested parties are invited to a meeting at the site in Cheetham Hill, Manchester, next Wednesday, 10 February. A full brief and tender will be issued in February with an application deadline in March.
Michael Ratcliffe, series producer at BBC Television, told Construction Manager: “At the moment we are testing the market to see who comes forward and whether we can do what we want to. Whether it happens depends on the enthusiasm out there and the quality of design responses we get.”
The Million Homes Challenge will have access to up to eight adjacent plots on this site in Cheetham Hill, Manchester
He continued: “The people that come forward now will help determine our final brief and we are talking to organisations like BRE, RIBA and BuildOffsite, to ensure that we are on the right track. The response has been very strong already and I imagine that a lot more will come in.”
The BBC’s invitation to tender document says: “Traditionally it takes around 26 weeks on site to build a home using conventional methods. Last year we built just over half the homes the government says we need. So we have to look at new, more efficient and innovative ways of building.”
It describes the homes as “highly desirable but affordable”, and is looking for four “dynamic companies and/or designers to build a home in under two weeks”. Filming will follow “the whole process from factory floor to the homes being sold on the open market”.
The BBC team is working with Rowlinson Construction, which has been appointed by Manchester City Council to develop family housing on a number of sites in Manchester. The BBC has agreed, in principle, that the Million Homes Challenge will have access to up to eight adjacent plots on a site in Cheetham Hill, Manchester.
Each home will be a minimum of 80 sq m, and will meet Manchester Council’s design standards, based on the London Housing Design Guide, and be mortgageable.
If the programme is commissioned, the four teams will receive a £5,000 design and development fee to develop or adapt their existing designs to suit the site, meet the brief and cover the planning application costs.
The projects can either be funded by Rowlinson Construction covering build costs up to the equivalent costs of building a traditional home and then marketing the homes itself, or the offsite provider can take on the marketing risk to recoup their costs, and negotiate with Rowlinson Construction to cover preliminary and site preparation costs.
The Million Homes Challenge comes as the industry awaits the outcome of two different reviews into housing supply in England and Wales.
Yesterday, the Labour Party launched a review under Taylor Wimpey chief executive Peter Redfern, following the news last week that housing minister Brandon Lewis and skills minister Nick Boles had commissioned a report on the labour market and housing supply.
