From the Front Line

Grant Shapps, the boyish Shadow Housing Minister, is today announcing plans for the way self-build will form a fundamental part of the UK's housing strategy under the Tory regime he hopes will form the Govt. next year.

The strategy, in a nutshell, is this. Councils (particularly in rural areas) will ask potential self-builders to register their interest with them and once enough names have been collected, they will devote local land for the setting up of what I guess will look like an estate of self-built homes. A covenant will be slapped on these homes saying that when they are sold in the future they can only be sold at one third of their full market rate.

The good news first - how invigorating that self-build is finally being taken seriously as an answer to the housing crisis. Anything that makes it easier for self-builders to get started must be applauded and encouraged. There is a huge army of would-be self-builders just itching to get going on their project of a lifetime, and if this helps, then great.

I do, however, have two main concerns. Firstly, while we are not quite talking about a re-emergence of the Community Self-build movements of the 1970s-1990s, this announcement does seem to assume self-builders all want to live in a happy little community with other self-builders, cheek by jowl. I don't think that Shapps is talking about doling out individual little plots - this would be fields divided up along the lines of an estate, and to me, that's only a small part of what self-build is about.

The huge majority of self-builders dream of individual plots, not living on estates. Plus, can you imagine the planning issues? Self-build is by its nature individual and nothing looks worse than an estate full of self-built homes completely different in design to each other.

Secondly, the covenant that means these homes can never reach their full market value will be a significant disincentive.

This policy - launched today in that most run-down of rural communities, Rock in Cornwall (where, incidentally, there are a couple of cracking examples of proper self-build) - needs to recognise that the latent demand for people to self-build will not be satisfied by turning it into a form of affordable housing scheme.