I found that intervention very helpful, and I hope that the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) did as well.
What I envisage for my area is not the standard group building that we saw in Berlin, much of which was architect-driven or initiated by professional people. I
have been encouraged by my conversations with my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) and with the Minister, whom I met coincidentally earlier in the week in order to discuss another matter. They seemed to be open to the idea that there is not a one-size-fits-all answer in this instance, and that self-build can contribute to the opening up of the housing market. In Nottingham North, however, we would not start off with the professional skills that would be necessary to create something along the lines of what we saw in Berlin, but we could bring those skills to the table. We could ask the private sector to bring them to the table. We could ask individual architects and other professionals to help, we could ask local government to facilitate the project, and we could ask our wonderful Nottingham City Homes whether it might consider sponsoring it.
Nottingham is probably the last place where most people would ever think of trying to start something like this, but let us, as it were, start with the last place. As I hope to show later in my speech, if we can do it in Nottingham North, there is absolutely no reason why it cannot be facilitated by all parties—and this is a cross-party debate. There is no reason why Governments of all colours, and parties of all colours, cannot do something similar to what was done by the Germans after the last war. We could see 15%, 20%, 25% of homes in the United Kingdom being self-built, custom-built, or community-built. Some people might say that the demand does not exist, but I think that the hon. Member for South Norfolk has well and truly shot that one out of the water.
Let me now add my two penn’orth and return to the survey conducted by the National Custom & Self Build Association, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned earlier, and which I think was carried out jointly with Ipsos MORI. According to the survey, an estimated 7 million people want to adopt the self-build, communal-build route. Well, we could all say that we might like to have a go at it, but there is a further statistic: it seems that 1 million of those 7 million want to start this year. I cannot believe that they will all do so, but if there is a real desire among them, if they have a time limit in mind, if they are saying “I really want to do this”, I would love to be standing here this time next year with the foundations dug in, and Kevin saying, “Will the money run out?” I am sorry; I should be more serious about this. If 1 million people are saying that they want to get started, that is a fantastic asset for the Government and all parties. I think that if we could achieve it if at the cost of just one or two little improvements, flexibilities and discretions, building on the Bill, that would be a great step forward.
I want to finish with a little vignette about the rebalancing project in Nottingham North. We are pulling together a charity which is setting up to do a large number of things coterminous with my constituency, not least around the pre-NEETs group—14-to-17s—and also a number of key public health issues, but one of our workstreams is most definitely around housing, self-build and tenure. We were able to bring Ted Stevens to my constituency just a couple of Fridays ago and he got a fantastic group of people in the same room to brainstorm around the topic of self-build. They included the chief executive of Nottingham City Homes, Nick Murphy, private sector people such as Jon Sawyer from Igloo,
which I understand has won the build-it award for custom-build this week—we were not aware it was even in for that competition, but congratulations to it—and people from the One Public Estate organisation, which I think resides in the Cabinet Office, or perhaps the Department for Communities and Local Government; forgive me if I am wrong, Minister.
What they are trying to do is bring land assets which are not being used fully into proper use. That includes central Government assets—I had better not name any as I am keen to have the possibility of exploiting them—and the aim is to match those with council land and property assets in the ownership of local government. That is a precious and small group of assets. We are not in the position of the hon. Member for South Norfolk of having a fairly large number of sites to look at. They are very precious and we must safeguard them to ensure they are used and maximised as much as possible.
We started to get those holders of land assets to consider self-build as an option, and that is an enormous step forward. Hon. Members in slightly better circumstances may not even understand what I am saying there, but when land is so precious and virtually all of it is built on, those small sites can be very important. Land is the key social control in an area like mine and catalysing that frees up the potential for self-build and community-build.
One of the key things Ted Stevens, Jon Sawyer and others put to us the other week was that separating the land acquisition from the build process reduces the risks for house buyers buying upfront. So in a sense what we look at then in terms of self-build is that we have housing manufacturers rather than people who need to do the whole lot of the pathway from an empty piece of land to occupied land full of happy families. Separating the land acquisition is one of the key factors and will be even more important in the British context than it is in the Dutch or the German context.
There are a lot of examples of this happening already. I do not know if it is in your constituency, Madam Deputy Speaker, but there is a development called the Yard in Bristol, and that was pointed up as a lower income area that could benefit. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman knows of it? We would be looking to do something like that—building something in Nottingham similar to what they are doing in the Yard in Bristol.
Added to the people I have mentioned, we had people from urban design, not least from Nottingham Trent university, but also people who had attended the annual urban design conference in Nottingham some five or six weeks ago. I think marrying self-build, community-build and group-build with the idea of reengineering—redesigning—the urban landscape in a place like Nottingham North presents tremendous possibilities.
In order to be inventive, innovative and creative, I wish the hon. Gentleman’s Bill swift passage. What he has managed to do in getting the Bill to this stage of its progress through the Commons is superb. If he wishes, I will allow my name to go forward for the Bill Committee. There is so much to disagree about in housing, and I hope that the dogfight continues, but I also hope that on this issue my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) on the Opposition Front Bench and the Minister, who I have had so many positive dealings with, on the Government
side, and all of us can say that if we can give self-build, communal-build and group-build a fair wind, we will be doing something that will bring immense joy and happiness to many families, not least those in my constituency of Nottingham North.
11.5 am