17 nothing. If a housebuilder does a very good job of building a traditional home or a bad job, it makes no difference to the price. If the home is hard to heat or very effi cient, it may be interesting to the purchaser, but it makes no difference to the price. If the three bedrooms of one property are bigger than the three bedrooms of the other, it makes no difference to the price. In a market like this it is very diffi cult for a housebuilder to concentrate on a quality product, since it makes no difference to his profi ts. We are trying to change this by introducing a way that purchasers and renters can see the difference in the quality of their new home. By creating a Home Performance Labelling tool, The Housing Forum is enabling people to rank the potential purchases in order of size, if that’s what they care about, or energy effi ciency, price per square metre, daylight, or maintenance costs. This way of making a purchasing choice is familiar to anyone who has bought a car, insurance, phone, electricity or a fridge in recent years. We think it’s time that such a tool was available to the housing market. By helping people to make their choices based on quantitative information as well as qualitative information we expect to drive up the quality of new homes in the same way that comparison shopping has driven the market in electronic goods. The product of tomorrow would be better than the product of today and offered at the same price. This is how markets should work. There should be room for low quality products and high quality products, at different price points, but the housing market currently values both products in the same way, leaving no room for quality. Because price is also set by location the current pricing system keeps the housing quality low in poor areas and reduces the likelihood of regeneration. Finally, in order to deliver anything like the number of homes we need, the housing industry in the UK must double in size. Output is currently about half of what we need to sustain the market. This growth won’t be achieved by adding more workers from abroad, working in muddy fi elds at low productivity levels. It will be achieved if we create a functioning offsite manufacturing sector, distributed across the UK, using a well-organised workforce, operating in a market where higher quality products get the sales prices that they deserve. Rory Bergin is a Partner at HTA Design LLP, which is a member of The Housing Forum The Hanham Hall development in Gloucestershire designed by HTA
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