For some centuries now the building industry in Britain has relied upon a large number of different trades, such as bricklayers, carpenters, plasterers, electricians, gas fitters etc etc etc. All work on the building has had to be done in set stages; plasterers cannot finish a wall until electricians have laid cables over it, brick built internal petitions cannot be finished off by a bricklayer until a joiner has fitted door casings. Any disruption to the normal flow of work can cause tremendous delays and cost increases; and since we are dealing with skilled labour the absence of any particular tradesmen cannot be easily rectified in the short term. As if this was not sufficient to contend with, we also have the vagaries of the British climate; a long period of frost can make it impossible for concrete to be laid or bricklayers to work, and rain can cause considerable delays at other stages. There must be a better way of constructing houses!

An attempt was made after the Second World War to design and build prefabricated houses which were only intended to be a stopgap to house hundreds of thousands of people whose homes had been destroyed by bombing. Unfortunately the baby boom after the war put paid to any ideas that this would be a temporary move only; many prefabricated houses were still being occupied until well into the 1960s and early 1970s! Whilst they were undoubtedly a huge improvement upon the poor quality housing that many people had to put up with before the war they almost invariably suffered from damp and a lot of them were constructed using materials like asbestos which were discovered to be highly hazardous. Damp was a particular problem, since these buildings had solid concrete walls which were prone to rising damp, penetrating damp and internal condensation.

Unfortunately the experiences of the ' prefabs ' as they were known seems to have coloured the attitudes of a lot of planners and architects! In theory it should be a simple matter to be able to construct houses in a kit form, transport them to site and then erect the property quickly and whilst the British climate makes it necessary for joints to be manufactured very carefully this idea simply hasn't caught on. Whilst there are certainly many practical difficulties much of the problem lies in the minds of the people who are responsible for providing homes, and to those who live in them. A house in Britain is normally expected to last for a very long period of time indeed and most people who buy a home do so with a mortgage which can last 25, 30 or even more years so there is a built-in reluctance to buy any form of structure which has not proved itself over a long period of time, so the British prefer their houses to be built of brick or stone, with a clay tiled, slated or, at a pinch, concrete tiled roof. These prejudices were reinforced during the 1960s when timber framed structures covered in clapperboard, with flat felted roofs, created untold maintenance problems for their unhappy owners.

Certainly this is a British problem. In other countries of the world, including the United States, Australia and New Zealand, timber framed properties are very popular and many have lasted for many many years and indeed in areas such as New Zealand where volcanic activity can cause earth tremors from time to time these are far more stable structures than brick built ones in the long term. Particular maintenance problems do exist in these countries but they are generally accepted.

The challenge then is not just to produce a factory made home which can be quickly put together on a site by relatively unskilled labour regardless of weather conditions; it is also to convince those who plan, design and build homes that this is a worthwhile project for them to put time and effort and money into, and this is dependent upon the attitude of, possibly, the most important group of people which is the potential purchasers who will have to be shown evidence that their prefabricated houses will be comfortable, warm and dry, and demand minimum maintenance over a long period of time.