UK's approach to affordable housing

Is it not also interesting to see that one of the UK building consortium is the Irish timber-frame specialists Kingspan Century.

see .

Company Chief Executive Gerry McCaughey has been and is very vocal on the short-comings of the Irish Governments approach to providing Affordable Housing.

Having watched George Lee last night, is the time not approaching rapidly when somebody has to take a lead on this issue.
 
The UK approach to affordable housing is very different to Ireland's because so-called "key workers" are at a considerable disadvantage to the private sector because of low wages in local authority, nursing and many other key roles in contrast to Ireland where public sector workers earn 40% above the private sector. This does place them in a special position especially in high demand areas such as London.

Secondly there is an established tradition of high rises which is not socially au fait in Ireland which does make it a lot easier to build high density, cheap housing. Somehow I think in ireland if anybody tried to build homes like these they would be inundated with objections from all over the place. Much of the problem in ireland in future may well be existing property owners fighting to keep the value of their "investments" versus the public interest in building affordable housing for those genuinely in need.
 
lff12 said:
The UK approach to affordable housing is very different to Ireland's because so-called "key workers" are at a considerable disadvantage to the private sector because of low wages in local authority, nursing and many other key roles in contrast to Ireland where public sector workers earn 40% above the private sector.
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You did read behind the headlines, didn't you? They explained that 50% of public sector staff have professional qualifications compared to 12% of private sector, so it's not all that surprising that average salaries are higher. This doesn't mean that your average teacher/guard/nurse doesn't find it extremely difficult to get a house in any of our cities.
 
RainyDay said:
You did read behind the headlines, didn't you? They explained that 50% of public sector staff have professional qualifications compared to 12% of private sector, so it's not all that surprising that average salaries are higher. This doesn't mean that your average teacher/guard/nurse doesn't find it extremely difficult to get a house in any of our cities.
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I did read behind it, and while it does point out that many staff have professional qualifications, in most cases they are still earning more than the equivalent private sector roles. This is particularly the case in lower grade administrative roles where degree holders would be less prevalent - apparently this is where salaries are most diverse from the equivalent private sector workers. This doesn't even start to take into account differentials in productivity.

As for the average guard/teacher, they are hugely at an advantage over an average earning (say 30-33k a year) private sector worker who has less security of tenure as well as lower wages and less likelihood of future rises. (That's not to say that this picture may alter dramatically in say ten years time when the exchequer is well bled dry). Repeated posters on this forum have been flabbergasted at the apparently much more lenient terms for larger mortgages for public sector workers, which would well suggest that for them, getting a mortgage and so buying a house, is much easier than for a private sector worker.
 
Barrett and Redrow have both launched their £60k house range - remember it is just the cost of construction that will be £60 actual sales price could be twice that.
 
That oft quoted statistic about 50% of public sector workers is misleading, when teaching and medical staff are excluded the figure is much less than 50% for the other sectors. That should be irrelevant but unfortunately every public sector union uses the overall 50% figure to justify their claims.

On the main topic, it would seem the high cost of labour versus building materials should eventually mean that more houses will be mostly assembled in factories. The Sunday Times did an article a few months ago on some cheapish pod style buildings but they still look a little too Austin Powers for most people.

More expensive are [broken link removed], they go up in days I think or maybe weeks - but quickly anyway.
 
ashambles said:
That oft quoted statistic about 50% of public sector workers is misleading, when teaching and medical staff are excluded the figure is much less than 50% for the other sectors. That should be irrelevant but unfortunately every public sector union uses the overall 50% figure to justify their claims.

On the main topic, it would seem the high cost of labour versus building materials should eventually mean that more houses will be mostly assembled in factories. The Sunday Times did an article a few months ago on some cheapish pod style buildings but they still look a little too Austin Powers for most people.

More expensive are [broken link removed], they go up in days I think or maybe weeks - but quickly anyway.
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the problem with the huf haus and other modular builds is that most UK banks wont mortgage them
 
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