BY Chris Harris
Britain’s housing crisis is now a generational issue. House prices are out of reach, renting is financially exhausting, and new supply consistently falls tens of thousands short of demand. The flailing Labour Government plan of 1.5 million new homes are for the fairies. Yet the UK refuses to embrace one of the world’s most successful, scalable, and affordable forms of housing: home parks. While Britain debates green belts, planning reform and target based promises, whole countries quietly house millions in clean, efficient, modern, factory built communities. The obvious question is why the UK continues to turn its nose up at something that the rest of the developed world uses as standard.
Home parks are developments of factory built homes, often called manufactured homes, modular homes or park homes, placed in attractive, well managed communities where residents own the home itself but lease the ground it sits on. Modern manufactured homes are not caravans or the stereotypical mobile homes of old. They are energy efficient, well insulated, permanent dwellings with proper bedrooms, fitted kitchens, modern bathrooms and a lifespan comparable to traditional brick-built homes. In many countries they are treated simply as another form of standard housing, not a budget or retirement only option.
In the United States, home parks house over 22 million people, more than the entire population of Romania, and they are used across every demographic, from retirees to young families and key workers. Canada treats them as a mainstream, regulated part of the housing system, providing affordability in both rural and suburban areas. Australia and New Zealand have embraced them through so called “lifestyle villages,” which are hugely popular with downsizers and families, and many new suburbs are now built entirely from modular homes. Germany, the Netherlands and Scandinavia use modular housing extensively in eco-developments, student accommodation, retirement villages and edge of town expansion areas, with Germany treating prefabrication as a major industrial sector. Japan arguably leads the world, viewing prefabrication as a premium construction method used by companies such as Muji, Toyota and Sekisui, prized for its speed, sustainability and precision. Across all these countries, home parks are normal, respected, affordable and scalable, everything the UK claims to want but refuses to adopt.
So why does the UK resist them? The reasons are depressingly familiar, snobbery, planning barriers and outdated legislation. Britain remains culturally trapped in the idea that anything not made of bricks must be inferior. Post-war prefab prejudice still lingers, and tabloids have spent decades sneering at “caravans,” even though modern park homes bear no resemblance to them. Ironically, many people who ridicule home parks happily holiday in luxury lodges built to lesser standards. Local authority planning attitudes are another major problem, with committees often rejecting proposals long before considering the details because they fear “undesirable residents,” visual disruption, complaints from anti-development groups or a loss of council tax revenue. The legal framework is equally unhelpful; the outdated Mobile Homes Act still treats park homes as if they belong on holiday sites, poisoning public perception and saddling developers with inconsistent regulation.
This resistance persists even as political parties promise huge housebuilding targets that cannot realistically be met. Labour’s pledge to build 1.5 million homes in five years is mathematically impossible without radical planning reform, factory built housing, new zoning approaches, releasing urban edge land and confronting NIMBY opposition. Traditional brick construction simply cannot scale quickly enough. Even if every available worker were hired, the labour, material and planning bottlenecks would still make the target unattainable. Factory built homes could deliver fast, high quality, lower carbon and significantly more affordable supply, but the UK continues to avoid the very method that would allow those numbers to add up.
The planning system itself is riddled with obstacles. Local resistance remains fierce, with many communities insisting they “don’t want this sort of housing here.” Green Belt rigidity blocks even low impact modular developments. Approval cycles stretch from two to five years. Confusion between planning law and park site licensing causes delays. Outdated beliefs lump modular homes in with windowless caravans. Politicians fear backlash from vocal residents. Even lenders discriminate, with many mortgages harder to obtain because guidelines have not caught up with modern construction. These challenges are not structural; they are cultural and political, and therefore solvable, if the will existed.
The cost case is the most straightforward of all. Modern manufactured homes in the UK typically cost £90,000–£160,000 for high-quality two or three-bedroom units, £180,000–£260,000 for larger modular houses and an additional £20,000–£50,000 per plot for site preparation and infrastructure. In total, a fully installed home usually costs between £110,000 and £220,000 depending on location and specification. Meanwhile, the average UK new-build home costs over £340,000, with London and the South East regularly hitting £450,000–£600,000. Home parks could immediately slash costs by 40–70% while providing warm, dignified, attractive housing.
If Britain genuinely wanted to solve its housing crisis, home parks would already be central to national planning policy. They are fast to build, affordable to produce, low carbon, land efficient and easily integrated into both rural and suburban settings. They help young families, key workers, retirees and downsizers exactly the groups most squeezed by today’s market. Instead, the UK clings to an outdated belief that only brick-built homes “count,” even as the world moves on without us. Until we overcome snobbery, modernise regulation and reform planning, Britain will continue building too slowly, too expensively and far too little leaving millions locked out of secure housing while an obvious solution sits right in front of us.
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