Builder's prefabs will be ultimate Chinese takeaway

Published on Saturday 5 December 2009 18:52

IMPORTED self-assembly furniture has become the norm in millions of households throughout the UK.

But flatpack houses will be heading for Scotland from China if a millionaire property developer has his way.

Keith Punler is in advanced talks with Fife Council to create a community of flatpack homes on a site he owns in Rosyth.

His firm, North Queensferry-based Kapital Corporation, plans to make the parts, such as walls, bathrooms, kitchens and stairs, for up to 400 affordable homes in China and ship them to the UK for reassembly.

"There is a recognition in the property industry that it has to reinvent itself" he said. "Market demand based on the banking climate is not going to disappear overnight. We need to think outside of the box."

The plans include shops and a range of affordable homes, as well as improvements to the local school, Camdean Primary, where Punler was a pupil. A masterplan for the site will be complete in the new year.

The community will be the first UK housing development for Punler since he sold his award-winning house-building firm, Manor Kingdom, in 2004. The project represents a switch in focus from the high-end homes that made his estimated 40 million fortune. He has already built similar homes in Brazil using steel-frame construction. In the past, such homes in the UK have tended to be built using timber frames.

"We have had a tremendous amount of interest from UK authorities for satisfying low-cost solutions to providing high-quality accommodation," Punler said.

Two of the homes will arrive from China in February to be built in an undisclosed location somewhere in the Central Belt.

It remains to be seen if lenders will fund mortgages and insurers offer insurance on the prefabs, and Punler must prove the homes are sufficient to secure building warranties.

"The game plan is to make them indistinguishable from custom-built homes," said Punler. "I wouldn't use the term flatpack. It could be derogatory. We are looking at offsite manufacturing solutions."

Punler says there is still scope for building some of the houses in Rosyth conventionally, but sees prefabrication abroad as the best way to build affordable homes to a high standard.

"The benefits of factory production are well documented – higher quality control, more standardisation, closer cost control. The only downside is the scale and the shipping. But we are looking at how we can turn that into an advantage."

Punler would not be drawn on what prices he expected houses to start at, but he plans a range of options, from affordable houses to rent or buy to higher-end homes. He also plans to offer funding deals for first-time buyers – an unusual step for a house developer.

He said: "Housing has to be made more affordable. We could become a funder for people wanting to buy because we know how difficult it is for people to get on the first-time buyer ladder. We will look at that, as well as making rentals as modest as we can."

Factory-built homes are becoming increasingly common in the UK. Punler said he used factories to build bathrooms and kitchen units for his previous housebuilder – and many of those cost 450,000 and more.

"We weren't frightened to try new concepts," said Punler. "We used factory building because we couldn't get the quality control on the site we are able to get in the factory.

"We know about factory- produced goods for the residential market because that was our raison d'etre at our previous business."

Punler's outline plans for the site are included in the draft of Fife Council's local plan for Dunfermline and West Fife. A spokeswoman for the council said it was too early to comment on a potential housing scheme for the site until the local plan has gone to public consultation, something that is scheduled to begin in February.

Prefabricated housing has a tainted reputation in the UK, mainly because of homes built after the Blitz that were meant to be temporary but were often lived in for decades. The first "prefabs", as they were known, were built in three days and cost 550 each.

However, prefabs are enjoying a revival. In Europe they are seen as a cost-effective, ecologically sound way to build homes. This year Ikea-owned BoKlok UK sold or let around 90 prefab houses and flats in Gateshead, while Barratt Homes last year unveiled plans for a "green village" of prefabs in Bristol.