How Can We Address the Shortage of Key Worker Housing?

The Policy Exchange think tank recently published a paper calling for key worker housing to be revitalised. While there might be some discussion about the detail and the implementation, the underlying case is hard to argue with.

Communities need NHS workers, teachers, police, firefighters and people in many other occupations to function properly. Having those workers based in the communities they work in helps them to serve those communities more effectively.

Yet in many towns and cities these are exactly the occupations that struggle to find somewhere affordable to live. People face a long commute on top of shifts and unsocial hours, which can affect their health and family life as well as taking a large bite out of their earnings. Whatever number of new nurses the government plans to recruit, housing will be one of the obstacles they have to address.

Policy Exchange offers some interesting solutions such a using surplus NHS land for key worker housing development rather than simply selling it off. They also suggest reserving a proportion of new affordable housing schemes for key workers.

What Type of Homes?

In addition to making more land available and providing incentives to prioritise key worker housing, there will have to be a discussion about the practicalities. There is a large and urgent need for homes that are affordable to build as well as to buy or rent. Homes that can be built to a known cost and timescale without compromising quality will make key worker housing schemes more viable and less risky.

The Systemised Housing solution developed by Osborne and offsite specialist Innovaré addresses this challenge. It uses standardised designs and processes. Homes are manufactured from large format Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs) assembled around a prefabricated bathroom pod.

Designs can be configured to make the best use of development land and the solution offers a cost-effective way to deliver high quality homes that are inexpensive to heat. We believe that the system is the practical part of the puzzle that needs to be solved to provide more key worker housing.

You can discover more about Systemised Housing and access our resource centre here.