UK to get its first ‘flat-pack’ homes from Ikea-owned company

Deal with local council could provide a
radical blueprint to solve Britain’s housing crisis

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BoKlok, a company jointly owned by the Swedish retail giant Ikea
and construction firm Skanska, specialises in factory-built housing
that can be constructed at a low cost. It sets property prices
based on how much owners can afford after the cost of living is
taken into account, meaning “a single parent can afford to buy and
live in a newly built two-bedroom BoKlok apartment”, according to
their website.

The firm has so far built 11,000 homes across Sweden, Finland,
Denmark and Norway, but an attmept to break into the UK ten years
ago was poorly timed.

The Guardian reports that “previous plans for a
development in Tyneside were scaled back when the financial crisis
hit, but its latest effort is a collaboration with Worthing
council, which believes it can achieve more affordable homes
through the deal than if it sells the land to a conventional
developer”.

Under the plans, Worthing will license the developer to use the
land to build 162 homes rather than selling it off, charging it an
annual ground rent. In return, the council will get 30% of the
properties, which the BBC says “would be used for social housing in areas
where the council says there is a shortage of homes and high house
price inflation”.

Data from the Office for National Statistics shows that average
house prices in Worthing, West Sussex, were 11.7 times average
salaries last year, compared with 7.8 times across England and
Wales.

The houses will be manufactured offsite and include flooring and
tiling, as well as an Ikea kitchen. They will then be assembled on
location but “because most of the construction is done in the
factory, a small apartment can be built in a single day”, says
The Independent.

The news site says “it is also more environmentally friendly
thanks to its timber frames and recycling programme, meaning the
carbon footprint is less than half that of normal building
projects”.

To work out how much to charge, the average salary for a
full-time worker in the Worthing area is used to calculate what
residents can pay after tax and the monthly cost of living. From
this, an affordable 25-year mortgage is then calculated.

“If the project is successful a further 500 homes could be built
in the near-future,” says HuffPost UK.

The Guardian says the project “is one of a range of ways
councils are working with developers to create more affordable
homes for local people”. Croydon Council has set up a company
called Brick by Brick which is building homes for social rent
subsidised by homes sold on the open market.

News of the deal comes as an influential Commons committee
warned the government would struggle to meet its target to deliver 300,000
new homes a year by the 2020s.

The Public Accounts Committee said hitting the target would
require a significant increase in the rate of house building, with
the number of new homes averaging just 177,000 a year between
2005/06 and 2017/18.