When I was in Berlin, I had the impression that the concept of group-build was déclassé. In the United Kingdom, the aristocrats have the big houses, the middle classes have their hideaways in Islington—or its equivalent in my city, and no doubt in other cities—and everyone else seems to have acquired the “better builder” kit from one of the volume builders. And then there is social housing.
In the United Kingdom, there is a very rigid view, almost a “caste system” view, of what housing should be. That was totally absent in Berlin. There was fluidity. It was not a case of “We have a quota,” or “We are helping some people out,” or “We are getting a bit of a deal, some money, and because we are being allowed to build something else, we will build a bit of social housing.” That is rather what the old council estates used to be like, certainly when I was growing up in my constituency. There was no thought that such housing was strictly limited to a specific group. Now, however, we have almost come to accept that that is the way that it has to be in the United Kingdom. I think that self-build, or collective-build, or community-build, is one of the ways in which we can return to a more open market in housing, in which everyone can have a stake.
As I have said, Berlin was quite an eye-opener for me. I discovered that 15% of all new homes there were provided by means of the group-build method. That is a big chunk of the market, and—the hon. Gentleman will correct me if I am wrong about this—I believe that the percentage is increasing, and has been increasing steadily since just after the war.
A key factor has been local government’s ability to play its part. We were told repeatedly that the precedent could not have been set if the spark had not been lit by the Berlin council and its sub-divisions, which saw group-build as a way of enabling people to run their own affairs and to make housing that they felt was appropriate, rather than housing that some other person felt was appropriate for them. They were allowed to express themselves, by which I mean not wild and wacky architectural design, but enabling people to make whatever interiors they like once the shell had been constructed. As the hon. Gentleman will recall, we went in and out of houses which were identical at first sight, but whose internal design had resulted from a tremendous amount of imagination. The customising of group-build was one of the features that I took away from that visit.