With housing targets rising and opposition to large new estates rarely far away, a new organisation launched in Dorset this week is asking a rather different question: if the homes have to be built, can we change who builds them – and what gets built?
The Regional Building Foundation launched its first regional hub at St Giles House near Wimborne, bringing together developers, landowners, suppliers and construction professionals from Scotland to Cornwall.
Edwin de Silva (left) receives a flaming torch from Ben Bolgar at the launch of the first Regional Building Foundation hub. The torch was hand crafted by local blacksmith Ian Thackray, to symbolise the first hub, and it will be passed to other areas as they are launched. Image: Rachael Rowe
Its aim is to support smaller regional builders and landowners to create what it calls ‘place-built’ communities rather than conventional large-scale housing estates – developments where homes, workplaces, services, green space and infrastructure are designed together from the outset.
The Foundation has been established as a network bringing together small and medium-sized developers, landowners and suppliers. And there is a significant problem it is trying to address: in the 1980s there were around 13,000 SME housebuilders in England. Today there are about 1,700. The UK has experienced a massive 80% collapse in the number of smaller housebuilding businesses in the last 40 years.
Board directors Edwin de Silva, Business Development Director at Stark Build UK, and Ben Bolgar, Executive Director of Projects at The King’s Foundation, have been developing the concept behind the Regional Building Foundation for decades. Dorset and Hampshire form the first of 14 planned regional hubs.
Their vision is for ‘a new generation of regionally distinctive places that foster healthy, vibrant and resilient communities’.
Beyond the housing estate
Everyone knows the bland identikit modern housing estates that sit in isolation, away from shops, workplaces and other everyday facilities. The distinction Edwin and Ben make is between ‘building houses’ and ‘creating places’ where people can also work, walk, shop and access basic services.
Poundbury is repeatedly cited as an example: around 250 businesses are integrated into the development, employing more than 2,000 people.
The argument is also about health. Dorset Lord-Lieutenant Michael Dooley, a surgeon, told the launch:
‘Both my roles have taught me that what we do today will shape the health of people for generations to come. Many illnesses begin before they get to my consulting room. The best medicine is in a safe home, clean air, green space and a connected community.’
The Foundation argues that developments designed around walkability and mixed uses give residents much better access to everyday facilities than conventional housing estates.
But the organisation is not simply trying to persuade developers to design nicer estates. One of its central ambitions is to change the route by which land reaches builders in the first place.
Nicola Sutton, Regional Building Foundation board director and partner at Clarke Willmott, says the traditional model can effectively shut smaller developers out.
‘The traditional model has typically been a landowner selling up, going to an agent and then tendering to a big developer. That shuts the door on a lot of SMEs.
‘We’re trying to level that playing field a little. There will always be a place for both, but what we would like to do is enable SMEs to create a legacy of things they are passionate about in their own area.’
The Foundation intends to act as a network connecting landowners with smaller builders while providing education, expertise and access to suppliers.
‘Some people lack knowledge of particular aspects of the industry, so there’s an education piece too,’ Nicola says. ‘We have digital modules so people can learn, and then there’s the connection between landowners and SMEs.
‘If you are a local SME builder or a landowner and you want to see the place you grew up in thrive, we want you to get involved.’
Giving smaller builders a chance
Dorset-based developer Phillip Fry of CG Fry & Son sees the network as a way for smaller companies to share knowledge and gain access to landowners who care about what is ultimately built.
‘It’s a good way to get SME builders of all sizes together to exchange views and help each other overcome problems. It also offers introductions to landowners who care about the type of development they have on their land. That’s really important.’
With Dorset – like every other local authority area – under pressure to deliver considerably more housing, Phillip believes greater involvement from smaller regional developers could produce a different result.
‘Any opportunity to bring housing forward with SME housebuilders rather than PLC developers is a big advantage.
‘Hopefully this will bring more SME builders into the Dorset market to deliver more quality schemes rather than the standard PLC product.’
But access to land is only one of the difficulties. The cost and time involved in navigating the planning system, he says, can be particularly difficult for smaller businesses.
‘The planning process is very time-consuming and expensive. Trying to get things through councils and statutory bodies takes time, and for start-up SMEs it can restrict their ability to go on and deliver quality schemes. It adds unnecessary cost.’
Thirty homes – ten times over
The Foundation is built around four pillars: networking, education, innovation and integration. It plans to work with organisations including The King’s Foundation and the University of the Built Environment, while exploring both modern technology and traditional building methods, with models for hamlets, villages, and towns.
Accreditation in a kitemark style for members is also being developed, described by Ben Bolgar as a way of ‘incentivising quality’.
But one of the more practical ideas is collective buying power.
‘All the SME builders want access to land,’ Ben says. ‘And at the moment they’re at the bottom of the list when it comes to supplies.
‘If we can agglomerate as a region, instead of one site with 30 homes, you can have ten sites with 30 homes – and suddenly you have much more regional buying power.’
The Government’s new target for 10 per cent of housing to be delivered on small sites potentially creates opportunities for the sort of builders the Foundation is targeting.
Edwin is less convinced that government policy alone will change how homes are delivered.
‘There have been a lot of nice words from the Government, but I don’t think they understand beyond silo housebuilding.’
Ben says the Foundation’s immediate priority is to develop pilot projects, but the organisation intends eventually to make much of its knowledge freely accessible.
‘By the end of February, all of our knowledge will be downloadable, so if somebody has a small site they can immediately start looking at a place-based system.’
Edwin believes the Foundation can also reduce one of the reasons landowners gravitate towards national developers: risk.
‘As a landowner wanting to build ten houses, you can be exposed with a small SME. Having the infrastructure of the Foundation helps reduce and mitigate that risk.
‘We can help people with our expertise and help people find the right funding model.’
Challenging the development model
For Edwin, that means challenging a construction industry which he believes has become too fragmented.
‘Typical construction works in silos. What we’re saying is: if you had a blank sheet of paper, how would you develop a scheme?
‘Different departments quite rightly look at what is relevant to their own function, but that doesn’t always create a holistic result for the wider community.
‘How do you put a cost on having walkable communities, people being healthier and perhaps needing the NHS less? If you give it to a national housebuilder, they’re not responsible for the NHS. Place building is trying to look at the whole picture.’
Ben Bolgar acknowledges the hostility that frequently surrounds new development.
‘There’s a lot of negativity about development, but people don’t always see how housing can be regenerative. We’re trying to add that energy, some positive disruption.’
The unanswered question, of course, is whether better-designed development also solves the harder issues surrounding housing: affordability, infrastructure, local services and the sheer number of homes government expects Dorset to accommodate.
But the Foundation’s argument is that the choice need not simply be between accepting large conventional estates or opposing development altogether.
What could it mean for Dorset?
The Earl of Shaftesbury, who hosted the launch at St Giles House, sees the approach as one rooted in long-term responsibility.
‘I think it’s about people coming together – people that have a real stake and passion in their region. It’s about that sense of care and pride in what you do, that desire to leave something better than you found it, to create something that lasts.
‘I think about that a lot with St Giles and the work we do here. There’s a real sense of responsibility. Also having my own children, who will hopefully continue to live in Dorset and be stewards here: I want to leave them something valuable.’
That thinking has already influenced work in Wimborne St Giles, where the Earl has worked with residents on the village neighbourhood plan.
‘It has been built from the ground up. What sort of village do we want in 50 years? What do we like about living here and want to preserve? What do we want to change or bring in?
‘There are elements of that plan that can now be brought forward, although it’s relatively small-scale because we’re in a rural context.’
He is also chair of the Talbot Heath Village Trust, which owns land around the universities in BCP and outside Wimborne. There, the Trust is exploring the possibility of an innovation quarter: ‘We’re looking at an opportunity to provide a centre for students, the local community and businesses to come together which could include housing and accommodation as well.
‘It’s about creating a real sense of place where people feel proud to be, with amenities, green space and opportunities to live, work and engage with others.’
His experience restoring St Giles House has also shaped his thinking about the local building economy.
‘I knew next to nothing when I started the project, so it was a steep learning curve. What I found inspiring were the different skills and crafts that went into the house originally, and then into restoring it.
‘You see the passion and care those craftsmen bring, particularly local people who have a stake in the area. Keeping those skills going supports the local ecosystem and local economy as well.’
For him, the challenge is preventing difficult economic conditions and planning bureaucracy from stripping quality out of development.
‘It’s a really tough climate in the building industry. With the levels of bureaucracy in the planning system, people try to strip out what are deemed additional costs.
‘A lot of this is about showing people how they can achieve development differently – and not simply prioritising profit over longevity and place-making.’
With Dorset facing rising housing targets and a forthcoming Local Plan, the Regional Building Foundation is offering a different proposition: not that development can be avoided, but that the people who own the land, build the homes and live alongside them might have more influence over what emerges.
Whether that approach can deliver genuinely affordable homes and the infrastructure Dorset communities need – and whether it can work at anything like the scale now required – remains to be seen.
But amid an increasingly polarised argument about development, asking whether we can build better may be at least as important as arguing about how much we build.
By Rachael Rowe
