Moving to modular in Wales is a no-brainer – so how do we make it happen?

Wales’ new first minister seems to understand the role offsite manufacturing could play in boosting the quality and quantity of new housing. His commitment to the industry could prove crucial, writes Matt Dicks. 

Vaughan Gething, the new first minister of Wales, visited Cartrefi Conwy’s Creating Enterprises Modular Solutions Factory in Rhyl as part of his campaign to become the new Labour leader of Wales.  

It was there that he made a speech about how his government would commit to speeding up the building of social homes to help tackle the housing crisis and boost quality green jobs across Wales, identifying modular and offsite manufacturing as a key component of meeting this ambition. 

CIH Cymru welcomes this pledge and is in total agreement with the new first minister on one of the key mechanisms that we need to roll out across Wales to drive it. 

A couple of months ago, I went to see United Welsh’s Celtic Offsite factory in Caerphilly. There, they can deliver up to 500 modular-build affordable homes every year (with a construction time of around six weeks fewer than a traditional build). The factory continues to create local jobs and partnerships, boost local supply chains, and plough money back into the retrofit of existing homes. 

I think I can safely say that this is a no-brainer, that we must make the scaling up of this approach, at pace, a priority.  

This method of construction delivers fuel-efficient affordable homes more quickly, helps fund improvements of existing fuel-poor homes, delivers on net zero ambitions, provides training for net zero skills; and if given the right impetus from government, it could provide a foundational economy blueprint that could serve communities up and down Wales for decades to come by providing jobs directly and more widely in the supply chain. 

So, what needs to be done to make this happen? 

Quite simply, we need to make Unnos what it needs to be to bring together all the component parts required to scale this up. The innovators, the land, the planning capacity, the contractors, the social landlords, the supply chains, and more, together under one banner, in one facilitation space to deliver. 

For those not emersed in the Welsh housing sector or the vagaries of Welsh politics, Unnos was first mooted by Plaid Cymru in its manifesto ahead of the 2021 Senedd (Welsh Parliament) elections. The manifesto said Unnos – Land and Housing would be “a publicly owned entity...owned and answerable to Welsh government”, that local councils would use to build social housing at pace and at scale. 

Plaid didn’t win the election, but it became a central part of the Cooperation Agreement signed between Plaid and the Welsh government later in 2021. At that time, there was a lot of scepticism around the idea within the sector in Wales.

During his campaign, Vaughan Gething identified modular and offsite as potentially key to delivering more social homes and tackling the housing crisis. Cr: ComposedPix/Shutterstock

What is it? Many asked. 

Based on the way it was being explained at the time, thoughts turned to nightmare visions of a central Stalinist construction entity for Wales. No thank you, was the common riposte, and rightly so. Housing associations are already doing this – and well; they just need the levers and investment scaled up and the barriers removed. 

But the Unnos project, if indeed the cooperation agreement continues under the new first minister, could now be the mechanism through which we deliver his vision, a vision I believe we as a sector share. Unnos needs to become that agency for change, to pull all those component parts together to scale up what we already know how to do well. 

We really do need imagination if we are to solve the deep and structural housing crisis that we currently face

The question for the government is, how much central control over that process do they need or want to retain? Is the reality that we need an arms-length agency to deliver? 

This is not a new radical idea that’s been plucked from thin air. Many in Wales will remember the recommendation from the independent Lynne Pamment review into the supply of affordable housing in Wales. 

The recommendation (13) stated: “An arms-length body should be established by the Welsh government to act as a hub for public sector land management and professional services. 

“This body should work alongside individual departments/bodies to provide capacity and resources to accelerate development of public land assets and to support greater consistency and efficiency in managing those assets.”

And together with recommendation six from the same report: “The Welsh government should develop a strategy to map out how Wales could further use offsite manufacturing and MMC to deliver near zero carbon homes, along with an appropriate timetable for achieving this.”

Don’t we then have the blueprint for what Unnos needs to be? Of course, there’s a wider pool of levers that need to be pulled under the Unnos umbrella than just land. I have mentioned the planning elements that would need inclusion. Also, contractors, supply chain pools, etc... 

There are greater minds than mine in this space that already have a plan mapped out, on paper, about how this needs to work. A key element seems to be how we make it agile. 

In that vein, many suggest it needs to be arm’s length, which of course is difficult politically, given that the whole devolution project in Wales was sold on the mantra of the “bonfire of the Quangos”. Indeed, the Welsh government may need to be more imaginative about how we bring those constituent parts together. 

But we really do need that imagination if we are to solve the deep and structural housing crisis that we currently face. The sector is already imagining it, and in pockets is already delivering. 

The question now, is how radical does the new first minister want to be?