It’s easy to blame the economic downturn for all our woes, but if we look back to pre-credit crunch times, we should remember the housing industry was facing an insurmounting crisis anyway. Relying solely on private sector delivery was clearly a bad idea, yet the vast majority of everyone’s criticism focused on the drab failing product, rather than attempting to re-think the process that created it.

By its nature, speculative development distances the end user from the design process. In any other mass production industry, excluding real end user feedback prior to production would be considered commercial madness. But with housing, where demand outstrips supply and where securing planning permission and market value present major risks to the developer, end user feedback becomes less relevant than a conservative appraisal of ‘the market’ in abstract. Future residents of new developments therefore only engage after designs are basically fixed and planning is won. There is simply never an opportunity for the prospective householder to have a direct input on the overall design of their future home or their neighbourhood during design development stages.

In the UK however there is significant latent demand to build or develop your own home. According to research by mortgage lenders, 70% of homeowners think about building their homes at some stage. Self build annual completions only account for approximately 10% of new homes in the UK whilst self commissioned housing is a fairly common model in Europe (55% in Germany, 45% in France). The majority of prospective British self builders however never achieve their aspiration, perhaps put off by the complexity and length of the process, but more likely never presented with the opportunity of suitably located land upon which to develop their new home. So in the context of the UK housing crisis, why don’t local authorities tap into this latent demand, and properly enable people within their own communities to develop their own homes?

At Slider Studio we have long thought that this would be a good idea, and imagined a hybrid system combining the benefits of self build with the efficiencies of volume house building. Our team of architects and software developers set about developing a method for organising self build at volume scale. We call this method ‘enabled self procurement’ or ESP for short.

The basis of our proposal is that large public sector land banks would be split up by an ‘enabling developer’ into individual serviced housing plots, and sold off with planning permission attached to each plot. An enabling developer would co-ordinate the whole development, and would construct the roads, services and public realm, but also build out some houses as case study examples showing people exactly how to do it. The planning permission secured on each plot would be subject to a strict urban design code which controlled the overall massing, the type and tenure of housing and car parking arrangments. The permission would also reference an approved pattern book of home types suitable for that plot. The pattern book house types would be jointly developed by the enabling developer in partnership with the local authority and ‘early adopter’ residents whose role I will explain shortly. In addition the enabling developer would prepare and commoditise all other necessary design, contracts and professional know-how needed to get housing built, and could sign up the local supply chain of small builders to offer construction services to the emerging community, thus promoting local skills and economic regeneration in the area.

To help us further understand the ESP model, we developed and tested a 3D simulation, based on our ‘YouCanPlan’ gaming engine, funded by UrbanBuzz and working with a range of industry professionals and academics to fully map out the process. The purpose of the simulation was to illustrate what the design outcomes in an ESP development might actually look like. We ran a competition to find pattern book house designs which would allow the enabled self builder to customise and build their own homes and we selected 10 designs to form a ‘proof of concept pattern book’ for our simulations. The simulations were then run online and open to the public to participate in. Participants could search the community for a plot they liked, selecting options from the online pattern book to assemble a customised house types on their individual plot. They could then publish their designs for viewing and comment by their prospective neighbours and the public at large.

The YouCanPlan simulation helped twofold; it helped people understand the home they were assembling on their plot and it helped peope visualise the type of neighbourhood emerging around them. Importantly it also suggested viable simulation tools for local planning officers, offering a degree of certainty about an ESP development, illustrating how it might turn out after everyone had developed their plot using the permitted house types and urban design codes. Whilst the simulation deployed the ten competition winning house designs of very different styles, the pattern book approach could also be very prescriptive, ensuring a tighter aesthetic cohesion to whole the development, perhaps reflecting the local context, local planning policy, and views of local neighbours.

A pattern book coupled with a design code is not so different an approach from some European models, and before planning law existed, much of Georgian London was built out by many smaller developers in this way. The important point is that for each ESP development, the agreed pattern book and design code is the key to capturing affordable design knowledge and removing the hassle from the process for the non-professional. Over time, popular house types would emerge as being cost effective and favoured by end users, evolving regionally to suit different needs and markets. But unlike pattern books evolved by space pinching volume house builders, an ESP pattern book, sponsored by the public sector for use on public sector land, could actually be open sourced, shared nationally, honed through continuous feedback from people who have both built and lived in the homes. Bad, impractical, spatially inadequate, underperforming or unnecessary design would thus be removed over time. Architects and system suppliers could be paid to contribute to this ever evolving people’s pattern book, updating and maintaining designs, as well as delivering construction management services on the ground on behalf of the enabling developer.

So how do we envisage the growth of a community over time?

Any ESP development can be broken down into three stages. In the first stage ‘early adopter’ households are able to take an option to purchase a plot of a specified size and orientation, according to their budget. The early adopters are in effect tied in partnership with enabling developer and local authority, working together to agree appropriate design codes and pattern books. The second stage starts after planning is granted and the early adopters can then complete the sale of their specified plots at a reduced market price to reward their risk of participating in the first stage. During this second stage new parties also join, paying a bit more for their serviced plot to reflect its raised value with planning secured, but still saving money on the market price by joining at the build stage and enjoying the increased choice offered via the agreed pattern book. Together this growing community has increased capacity to co-ordinate contracts with local builders, approved and trained by the enabling developer, to assist them in the assembly and fit out of their new homes. A few homes are actually completed by the enabling developer, and sold as shells to people to customise internally, and a few are completed fully in the usual manner and sold at market prices, recognising that not everyone has the time or energy to get involved in development. The final stage, when the construction is fully complete, is when the resultant community begins to mature, cashing in on the social capital built up through the ESP process. When people finally need to move away, they would be able to sell back to the enabling developer. In fact we believe there are a number of emerging financial and legal models, including the community land trust model, for which ESP offers attractive benefits.

But in whatever legal framework ESP is deployed, the enabling developer always reduces his market risk because he has partnered with a significant sample of the local market, and has already sold options on serviced plots – we imagine up to 20%. He also reduces planning risk because the local community and planning officers are openly consulted from the outset, and the application is backed by the early adopters who want to develop and live in the community, and these local people would be seated right behind the enabling developer in any contentious planning committee meeting!

So if the UK needs more new homes of better quality, set in neighbourhoods where we all want to live, surely the most direct way is to get the communities to develop them for themselves? Local authorities should be encouraged to team up with enabling developers to create favourable conditions to support mirco and small scale development opportunities for people who want to live in the resultant homes. In other words local authorities should begin to create development opportunity for all and only then will we get the type of housing we all deserve.