Good news has come from the British housing market, as Housing Minister Grant Shapps has funded £30 million in favour of seven sites across the country to create self-built homes.
The £30 million fund will offer short term loans to community groups, builders and other small organisations looking to start self-build projects. Moreover the government has also handed over land it owns to encourage the start of the project.
The site in consideration is at Poole in Cornwall with up to 60 homes due to be built on surplus public land there. Other possible alternatives could be sites such as Bristol, Hemel Hempstead, Bolsover, Derbyshire, Stoke-on-Trent, Milton Keynes and at Upper Tuesley Milford in Surrey.
The aim of this policy is certainly to give support to the construction and building market, as confirmed by the words of the Minister: “Anyone with a dream to build should be able to do so.”
It’s great to see this funding being made available, which will bring more contracts and employment to the housing sector (particularly when the housing market has been called ‘lacklustre’). It’s important that the architects, engineers and surveyors, employed by the community groups, use digital mapping data during the development and planning process and to obtain a clearer appreciation of the complete picture; for example, concerns about building on green land, threats to historic sites and threats of flooding can all be better understood and rules interpreted more clearly using the right digital system. This will ensure that all utilities, historical details, risks are identified in order to build a detailed digital map.
Systems like Promap can do just that, as digital mapping systems like this will be invaluable during the planning process of such a land development project, as they enable detailed analysis to be conducted into a plot before any building work begins.
