Proposal
The full proposal, chapter by chapter. Select a heading to read its source section.
Download the full proposal · PDF ↓Chapter 1 Executive Summary
The central proposal: public land, manufactured construction and investment bonds combine to deliver affordable homes.
Land accounts for 30–80% of UK house prices.
The Trust specifies a performance standard and a price, and tenders the construction to whoever can meet them: WikiHouse microfactories, volume…
Construction is funded not through public borrowing or private mortgages but through a new tradeable bond paying a fixed real coupon of 3%, adjusted…
Chapter 2 Who This Is For — The Target Cohort
The households the scheme serves, the income-based affordability rule and the distinction between the pilot and lower-cost cases.
At £75,000 gross, a household can in theory purchase a median-priced home in England — but only at the national median price, only with a 10% deposit…
Chapter 3 The Home — and Who Builds It
The home specification, WikiHouse reference design, competitive tender, construction payments and quality protections.
The Trust is proposing a performance specification and a price, not a construction system.
The specification in 3.1 can be met by several systems.
The process from factory to occupancy has four stages, whichever system the successful bidder uses.
The Trust does not build.
The successful contractor is paid in cash, at each certified stage of the works, from the proceeds of the Housing Investment Bonds issued for that…
The contractor is paid in cash for its work.
A retention of 5% of each certified sum is held in cash in the ordinary way: half released at practical completion and half at the end of the…
Appendix VI’s indicative all-in figure for a Switch House is £125,000 to £145,000, and it is tempting to read that as a build cost with comfortable…
These are not temporary structures, prefabs or containers.
The Switch House is the reference design because the most acute housing need is among families.
Chapter 4 Housing Investment Bonds — Who Invests and Why
The intended investors, inflation-linked returns, repayment, trading and the proposed tax treatment.
The UK is short between 4.3 and 6.5 million homes.
The bonds are designed for four classes of investor.
Pension funds, insurance companies, and local authority pension schemes are required by their liability structures to hold long-duration,…
Individual savers accessing the bond through investment platforms and apps receive a predictable, inflation-protected return with a transparent social…
The bonds are issued in £100 units, because an ISA can hold a whole bond but not a fraction of one: the ISA Regulations were amended in 2024 to admit…
A growing segment of the investment market — both retail and institutional — operates under mandates requiring measurable social returns alongside…
What Investors Get
The coupon is fixed in real terms and adjusted annually for CPI: a 3% real return is, at 2% inflation, a nominal return of about 5% a year, and the…
Interest earned within an ISA is entirely free from income tax and capital gains tax under the ISA Regulations 1998.
Bonds are tradeable on a secondary market — the bond does not require a 35-year holding period.
Occupancy risk is minimal in a market structurally short of millions of units.
Beyond ISA eligibility, a case exists for statutory tax exemption on bond interest, following the precedent of NS&I Premium Bonds and NS&I Fixed…
The government's contribution to the bond framework is land, legal framework, and tax treatment.
The operational architecture for bond issuance, fund management, rental collection, and bondholder distribution requires detailed design work beyond…
Chapter 5 How the System Works
The full route from public land and bond finance to construction, occupation, repayment and reinvestment.
Chapter 6 The Scale of the Problem — Problem Statements
The housing shortage, limits on construction and lending, affordability pressures and the public cost of inaction.
Chapter 7 Land — What Exists and the Legal Barriers to Peppercorn Rents
Public land availability, peppercorn leases, existing disposal requirements and the changes needed to enable the programme.
Central government holds approximately 299,000 hectares.
Public land is sold at market value.
The government grants a long lease at peppercorn rates, retaining the freehold of the land in perpetuity.
Four areas of law govern the disposal of public land at below market value.
Local authorities must obtain "the best consideration that can reasonably be obtained" when disposing of non-housing land.
Land held by local authorities for housing purposes is subject to a separate, stricter regime.
Central government land is subject to Treasury rules requiring disposal at market value.
Leasing public land at peppercorn rates to a delivery body that lets homes at below-market rents is likely to constitute a subsidy under the Act.
All four barriers can be resolved without primary legislation:
Chapter 8 Planning
The planning route for the pilot, the limits of existing consent mechanisms and options for faster national delivery.
It is tempting to call planning permission the single largest source of delay, cost and uncertainty in UK housebuilding, and to ask for a fast-track…
Planning permission is still a real cost and a real delay, and the proposal should not pretend otherwise.
For energy, transport, water, and waste, the problem of local veto was solved by the Planning Act 2008 (PA 2008).
Housing cannot use this route.
There are three routes to a faster consent for qualifying developments.
Repeal section 35(5) of the PA 2008.
Rather than fitting housing into the existing NSIP regime, create a parallel fast-track consent process for qualifying affordable housing schemes —…
Enact a standalone statute — an Affordable Housing (National Infrastructure) Act — that designates bond-funded affordable housing on public land as…
None of these routes abolishes local planning.
Chapter 9 Equality Act 2010
The allocation policy, its effects on different groups and the proposal’s equality justification and assessment duties.
The eligibility criteria for this scheme — household income between £31,500 and £75,000 gross, with at least one member in employment — define the…
Three groups are placed at a particular disadvantage by income and employment criteria.
The employment rate for disabled people in the UK is approximately 53%, compared to approximately 82% for non-disabled people (DWP, Family Resources…
Women are over-represented in part-time employment (ONS, Labour Force Survey) and in lower-paid occupations.
While "benefit claimant" is not itself a protected characteristic under section 4, benefit dependency correlates with disability, caring…
Unemployment among Black, African, and Caribbean people in the UK is approximately 7%, compared to 3% for White British people (ONS, Labour Market by…
Section 19(2)(d) provides a complete defence to indirect discrimination where the PCP is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.
The aim is to address a specific, documented failure in the housing market: the absence of any adequate provision for working households earning…
The scheme operates within a finite housing supply — 500 homes in the proof of concept, scaling thereafter.
The proportionality of the exclusion depends in part on whether alternative provision exists for those excluded.
The means are proportionate because the exclusion is no wider than necessary to achieve the aim.
Section 149 of the Equality Act 2010 requires public authorities, in the exercise of their functions, to have due regard to the need to eliminate…
Chapter 10 Building Regulations and the Building Safety Act 2022
The home’s regulatory requirements, safety, thermal performance, warranty, maintenance and hazard response.
This chapter demonstrates compliance for the reference design, the WikiHouse Skylark Switch House, because it is the benchmark every tender is judged…
The Building Safety Act 2022 (c. 30) established the Building Safety Regulator within the Health and Safety Executive (section 2).
Compliance with Schedule 1: Part by Part
Requirement A1 of Schedule 1 provides that the building shall be designed and constructed so that the combined dead, imposed and wind loads are…
Requirements B1 through B5 of Schedule 1 address means of warning and escape (B1), internal fire spread — linings (B2), internal fire spread —…
Requirement L1 of Schedule 1 provides that reasonable provision shall be made for the conservation of fuel and power in buildings by limiting heat…
Requirement O1, introduced to Schedule 1 in June 2022, provides that reasonable provision shall be made in dwellings to limit unwanted solar gains and…
Requirement F1 of Schedule 1 provides that there shall be adequate means of ventilation provided for people in the building.
The WikiHouse Skylark system is a structural chassis — a superstructure to which external cladding, internal finishes, windows, doors, services,…
The Loughborough University life cycle assessment found that a WikiHouse dwelling produces less than half the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions…
A 10-year structural warranty is not a legal requirement for new dwellings.
The Building Regulations set performance standards.
Awaab Ishak died in December 2020, aged two, from prolonged exposure to mould in a social rented flat in Rochdale.
AreaPrimary Legislation / RegulationBuilding RegulationsBuilding Act 1984, ss.1, 6, 7, 91ZA; Building Regulations 2010 (SI 2010/2214), regs 4, 7, Part…
Chapter 11 Community Infrastructure Levy, Section 106, Biodiversity Net Gain, and VAT
CIL, Section 106, biodiversity, nutrient neutrality, drainage and VAT: how development requirements affect cost.
The Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) is a charge that local planning authorities in England may levy on new development to fund infrastructure.
Section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (TCPA 1990) provides that a person interested in land may enter into a planning obligation by…
Section 98 of the Environment Act 2021 (c. 30) inserted a new Schedule 7A into the TCPA 1990, which requires that planning permissions granted in…
In catchments draining to designated habitats (principally Special Areas of Conservation and Special Protection Areas under the Conservation of…
Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 (c. 29), if commenced, would require new developments to include sustainable drainage systems…
The construction of new dwellings is zero-rated for VAT under Group 5 of Schedule 8 to the Value Added Tax Act 1994 (VATA 1994).
The environmental and planning obligation costs for this scheme are real but substantially lower than for conventional market housing, for three reasons.
Chapter 12 Governance — The National Affordable Housing Trust
The charitable Trust, its governance, tax position and the legal protections intended to retain the homes.
The scheme needs an institution that will outlast any government, any board, and any individual involved in creating it.
A community benefit society (CBS) is a body registered with the Financial Conduct Authority under the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act…
To qualify as a charity, the Trust must be established exclusively for charitable purposes (Charities Act 2011, s.1(1)(a)) and those purposes must be…
The Trust’s rules — the governing document for a CBS — will provide for a board of at least seven trustees, including a minimum of two with relevant…
The tax position of a charitable CBS is one of the strongest arguments for the structure.
Chapter 4.5 says that the asset never leaves public ownership.
A long residential lease ordinarily carries statutory rights to acquire the freehold or an extended lease: for houses under the Leasehold Reform Act…
The second threat is political, and it is the one the asset lock cannot meet.
The third threat is statutory and prospective.
AreaPrimary Legislation / RegulationSociety registrationCo-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act 2014, s.2(2)(a)(ii), s.83Exempt charity…
Chapter 13 Housing Investment Bonds — Structure and Issuance
Bond terms, progressive repayment, investment channels, inflation linking and the order in which rent is applied.
Each development is funded by the issuance of Housing Investment Bonds.
This is a design choice with consequences.
The Trust issues one class of bond per development.
The bonds are linked to the Consumer Prices Index as published by the Office for National Statistics.
The bonds are secured by a first fixed charge on the rental income of the specific development they fund.
Chapter 14 Regulatory Framework for Bond Issuance
The issuance framework, prospectus strategy, retail access, ISA treatment and secondary-market arrangements.
From 19 January 2026, the issuance and listing of bonds in the UK is governed by the Public Offers and Admissions to Trading Regulations 2024 (SI…
The Trust will publish a base prospectus approved by the FCA, from which individual bond series are issued under final terms.
A point that may cause confusion: the Trust does not need FCA authorisation to issue its own bonds.
Two features of the 2026 regime bear on how the bonds are sold to individuals, and the first of them is a route that is closed.
If the bonds cannot be held in an ISA, the retail strategy fails.
The ISA Regulations 1998 (SI 1998/1870), as amended, define qualifying investments for a stocks and shares ISA.
As an alternative or complement, the bonds may also qualify for inclusion in an Innovative Finance ISA under ISA Regulations, regulation 8A.
The natural design is for bonds to be held from £1 through fractional interests in a nominee’s holding, within an ISA.
The bonds have a 35-year term.
The FCA’s product governance rules (PROD sourcebook) require that the target market assessment for any financial instrument considers the client’s…
The London Stock Exchange’s Order Book for Retail Bonds, launched in 2010, was decommissioned on 19 January 2026 alongside the new prospectus regime.
A secondary market needs sellers.
Amortising bonds trade differently from bullet bonds.
Chapter 15 The Prospectus
The information disclosed about the Trust and bonds, sustainability reporting and responsibility for the prospectus.
People responsible.
Use of proceeds.
If the bonds are marketed as 'social bonds', PRM 4.6 requires the prospectus to state this, describe the social objectives, explain the criteria for…
Under POATR reg.37, persons responsible for a prospectus are liable to compensate investors for loss caused by untrue or misleading statements or…
Chapter 16 The Government’s Role at Proof of Concept
The 500-home pilot, government’s initial bond purchase, public-finance treatment and subsequent investment exit.
The proof of concept is 500 homes across ten sites, not the 100 across three that a cautious first step would suggest.
At proof of concept the primary bond purchaser is the government.
The purchase can be routed through several existing institutional channels.
The distinction from a grant matters for fiscal classification, and it is easy to state too simply.
Once the model is proven and the Trust has established a rental income track record — two to three years of full occupancy, audited accounts,…
The following table collects every Act, statutory instrument and regulatory sourcebook referenced in Part II of this document.
Chapter 17 Allocation and Tenure
Eligibility, local connection, key-worker priority, allocation, the residential lease and residents’ protections.
The allocation process must be open, transparent and fair.
Eligibility Criteria
Gross household income must fall within the range set by the rent arithmetic for the development in question.
The household must be a working household.
The household must have a connection to the area in which the development stands, shown in one of two ways:
The applicant must have the right to reside in the United Kingdom.
An applicant with an unspent conviction for a serious criminal offence may be excluded from allocation.
Key worker status is not an eligibility requirement.
Registration and the Nominations Framework
The Trust will register with the Regulator of Social Housing as a registered provider of social housing under the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008,…
Registration brings the Trust within the Housing Act 1996, s.170, which requires a registered provider, where a local housing authority so requests, to…
A conflict will nonetheless be asserted.
The process is designed to be simple, auditable and resistant to discretion.
Tenure
The Trust grants each household a lease of thirty-five years at a rent, with no premium.
The rent is a single inclusive figure, fixed at grant by the arithmetic in Chapter 2 and adjusted once a year in line with CPI, as the bonds are…
At the expiry of the thirty-five-year term, the household has the right to a new lease for a further term of thirty-five years on the Trust’s then…
The grounds for possession in Schedule 2 to the Housing Act 1988 do not apply to the lease, because it is not an assured tenancy.
The household may end the lease at any time on three months’ notice.
On the death of the leaseholder, the lease vests in the personal representatives.
The Trust is responsible, by statute and by covenant, for the structure and exterior of the home and for the installations for the supply of water, gas…
The lease prohibits subletting and prohibits assignment other than under 17.6.6.
A long residential lease ordinarily carries statutory rights to acquire the freehold or an extended lease.
The Trust’s allocation policy does not select or exclude on the basis of any protected characteristic.
AreaPrimary Legislation / RegulationExclusion from assured tenancyHousing Act 1988, Sch.1, para 3D (as inserted by Renters’ Rights Act 2025, s.31, from…
Chapter 18 Subsidy Control
The treatment of public support, the government bond purchase, contractor payments and the programme’s cost advantages.
The government subscribes at par for approximately £105 million of Housing Investment Bonds at the Proof of Concept stage, as anchor purchaser (Chapter…
The Subsidy Control Act 2022 replaced the EU State Aid regime with a domestic framework following the UK's departure from the European Union.
Application to the Bond Purchase
The government's purchase of approximately £105 million in bonds is financial assistance from public resources.
This is where the argument begins.
The bond purchase benefits the Trust and no other enterprise.
This requires more care.
Schedule 1 to the Subsidy Control Act 2022 sets out seven principles against which subsidies must be assessed.
"Subsidies should pursue a specific public policy objective in order to remedy an identified market failure or to address an equity rationale such as…
"Subsidies should be proportionate to their specific policy objective and limited to what is necessary to achieve it."
"Subsidies should be designed to bring about a change of economic behaviour of the beneficiary that (a) is conducive to achieving the objective, and…
"Subsidies should not normally compensate for the costs the beneficiary would have funded in the absence of any subsidy."
"Subsidies should be an appropriate policy instrument to achieve a public policy objective and that objective cannot be achieved through other less…
"Subsidies should be designed to achieve their specific policy objective while minimising any negative effects on competition or investment within the…
"Subsidies should not have negative effects on trade or investment between the United Kingdom and other countries that are disproportionate to the…
Every significant housing intervention by the UK government in the past forty years has been a subsidy.
The Subsidy Control Act imposes procedural obligations that must be met before the bond purchase is made.
The granting authority — whichever public body authorises the bond purchase (the Treasury, MHCLG, or the National Wealth Fund) — must assess the…
Subsidies above the minimal financial assistance threshold (£315,000 over three fiscal years per enterprise, per s.36) must be entered in the subsidy…
The subsidy database is publicly searchable.
An interested party may apply to the Competition Appeal Tribunal for a review of a subsidy decision (s.70).
Under the previous EU State Aid framework, the Market Economy Investor Principle ('MEIP') provided that a public investment made on terms that a…
The construction contract raises a second subsidy control question, distinct from the bond purchase: whether the Trust’s payments to its contractor,…
The Home Builders Federation estimated in May 2026 that taxes, regulation and inflation had added about £76,000 to the cost of building a new home…
AreaPrimary Legislation / RegulationSubsidy definition and principlesSubsidy Control Act 2022, ss.2–4; Schedule 1Assessment dutySubsidy Control Act…
Chapter 19 Infrastructure — Roads, Utilities and Site Preparation
Infrastructure funding, utility connections, roads and drainage adoption, site preparation and indicative costs.
The financial architecture of this scheme rests on a clean division.
The Social and Affordable Homes Programme 2026–2036 is the primary capital funding programme for affordable housing in England: £39 billion over ten…
The statutory framework for utility connections is well-established.
The Water Industry Act 1991, ss.41–44 imposes a duty on water undertakers to provide a water main to serve new development where required.
The Electricity Act 1989, s.16 places a duty on electricity distributors to make a connection to premises when required.
The Gas Act 1986, s.10 places a duty on gas transporters to connect premises to the gas network when required.
The Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Act 2021 and the Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Act 2022 strengthen…
Roads and Drainage Adoption
New estate roads serving the Trust’s developments are built to adoptable standards and offered for adoption by the local highway authority under the…
The foul and surface water drainage system serving the development is built to adoptable standards and adopted by the sewerage undertaker (the local…
Site preparation costs vary enormously by site and cannot be modelled generically.
The following table provides indicative infrastructure costs per 100-home development for three site types.
The pilot costing model in Appendix I.6 takes the midpoints of the table above, weights them by a site mix of 30% greenfield, 50% clean brownfield and…
Under the serviced-land route, the public landowner’s infrastructure spend is financial assistance from public resources and is assessed as part of the…
As a registered provider delivering social housing, the Trust’s developments are exempt from the Community Infrastructure Levy under Regulation 49 of…
AreaPrimary Legislation / RegulationHomes England powers and programmesHousing and Regeneration Act 2008, Part 1 (s.19 financial assistance); Social…
Chapter 20 The Ledger of Asks
The policy decisions, consents, regulatory changes and legislation requested, ranked by implementation difficulty.
Appendix I Sensitivity Analysis and Risk Register
The costing model, the original and adopted pilots, sensitivity to changed assumptions and the risks to delivery.
Every model has assumptions.
The financial model rests on the following base case assumptions:
Sensitivity Analysis
Build cost is the single most important variable in the model.
The base case coupon is 3% real.
The base case assumes 98% occupancy and 98% rent collection, giving 96% effective income.
The year-36 reissuance model assumes that construction costs track CPI broadly over the long term.
The base case allocates 1% of build cost per annum to a maintenance sinking fund, on the construction contract plus fees.
The individual sensitivities above are instructive but unrealistic in isolation.
The following register catalogues the principal risks to the scheme, assessed by likelihood (L) and impact (I) on a three-point scale (Low / Medium /…
FR1: Construction cost exceeds budget
RL1: Subsidy control challenge
OR1: Trust management capacity and competence
PR1: Change of government or policy direction
ET1: WikiHouse technology risk / long-term performance
The model is sensitive to build cost.
It is not enough to cost the home; the programme has to be costed too.
Three costs that a bill-of-materials view of the home omits are in the base case.
£ per home, October 2026 prices, ex VAT100 homes / 3 sites500 homes / 10 sitesConstruction contract (tendered, incl. prelims, OH&P)173,600173,600Fees,…
Three conclusions, in order of weight.
Landlord repair liability under section 11 beyond the 1% sinking fund; an Awaab’s Law decanting reserve; the administration of statutory rent demands;…
Appendix II Local Economic Circulation
Local procurement, manufacturing, economic multipliers and measurement of spending retained in communities.
The Preston Model is the most successful example of community wealth building in the United Kingdom.
Preston City Council redirected existing procurement.
The Manufacturing Guide is the key document.
The Trust's procurement policy is simple in principle and demanding in practice: for every item of expenditure, the Trust looks local first.
Where the reference design is built, its structural components are manufactured by a local fabricator within the development area or as close to it as…
WikiHouse components are designed for rapid on-site assembly by small teams.
Once the structural shell is assembled, the finishing trades are entirely conventional: plumbing, electrical, plastering, painting, tiling, kitchen and…
Structural timber is the primary material.
Architects, structural engineers, quantity surveyors, project managers, solicitors, accountants, planning consultants.
Day-to-day management of the Trust's homes — rent collection, repairs reporting, tenancy management, community engagement — can be delivered by local…
The maintenance sinking fund generates a continuous stream of expenditure over the 35-year bond term and beyond.
The New Economics Foundation's Local Multiplier 3 (LM3) methodology measures how many times a pound circulates in the local economy before it leaves.
The 'always look local' policy will sometimes find that local capacity does not exist.
Where no local WikiHouse fabricator exists, the opportunity is visible.
The Trust recruits assembly workers and tradespeople locally.
The Trust's procurement preference for local suppliers creates market conditions in which social enterprises and cooperatives can form and thrive.
The Trust's procurement policy formalises the 'always look local' principle within the constraints of value for money and legal compliance.
For every procurement decision, the Trust applies the following hierarchy, with 'local' defined as within the local authority area of the development…
Where a competitive procurement exercise is conducted above the Trust's financial thresholds, the evaluation criteria include a local economic impact…
The Trust is a registered provider and is likely to be a contracting authority within the meaning of the Procurement Act 2023 (Chapter 3.4); whether it…
The Trust publishes annual data on its procurement and local economic impact.
At Proof of Concept — 500 homes across ten sites — the Trust works with a local fabricator or contractor, an assembly team, local tradespeople and…
Appendix III Welfare Savings
The public cost of housing insecurity, pilot and scale scenarios and the assumptions behind projected savings.
This appendix estimates the welfare expenditure avoided by housing the Trust's target cohort in Trust homes rather than leaving them in the private…
The government currently spends approximately £87.8 billion per year on Universal Credit alone (OBR forecast 2024–25), rising to a forecast £99.0…
How the UC Housing Element Works
Universal Credit was introduced by the Welfare Reform Act 2012.
UC is a means-tested benefit.
The Trust's target cohort has gross household income of £31,500 to £75,000.
The welfare saving from a Trust home is the difference between what the Exchequer pays to support a household in the private rented sector and what it…
At the pilot rent the income floor is about £48,000.
Housing insecurity generates costs across multiple government departments.
Housing insecurity is associated with poorer physical and mental health outcomes.
Housing instability disrupts children's education.
The correlation between housing insecurity and offending is well documented if complex.
Beyond TA costs, local authorities bear costs from housing insecurity through children's services (where housing conditions are a factor in child…
At scale the levers in Appendix I.6 — par issuance, a tender price that beats the benchmark, and the programme layer spread over thousands of homes —…
The figures above are deliberately conservative.
The government's bond purchase is not expenditure.
InstrumentRelevanceWelfare Reform Act 2012Part 1: introduces Universal Credit. s.11: housing costs element. s.22: work-related requirements.Universal…
Appendix IV Political Consent and the Principle of Reciprocity
The proposal’s account of public support, contribution, fairness and protection of the housing assets.
Every government since 1979 has acknowledged the housing crisis.
The Trust does not target the population currently served by social housing.
The Beveridge settlement was built on a contributory principle: you pay in when you are working, you draw out when you are in need.
The history of post-war housing policy is a history of programmes that worked at small scale and failed at large scale because they could not sustain…
Every element of the Trust's structure reflects a deliberate decision to build political consent into the architecture of the scheme, not to rely on it…
The Fabian tradition has long argued that the welfare state is strongest when it is perceived as a social contract: citizens contribute, and the state…
Hills, J. (2007).
Appendix V WikiHouse Skylark — Manufacturing Guide and Microfactory Requirements
Workshop space, equipment, skills, cutting files, quality control and the distributed manufacturing approach.
The reference design’s price benchmark (Chapter 3.2) and the local economic circulation argument in Appendix II both rest on a factual claim: that…
Most investment in construction innovation to date has followed a centralised model: large offsite manufacturing facilities with setup costs of £15–50…
The following sets out the space, equipment, and facility requirements for a WikiHouse Skylark microfactory, as specified in the Manufacturing Guide.
A microfactory can be set up in any dry, secure environment: a large shed, a barn, a warehouse, or existing factory or workshop space.
EquipmentSpecificationNotesCNC router (production)Gantry-based; minimum 1220×2440mm (4×8ft) bed; vacuum bed; 9.5–12.5mm router bits; automatic tool…
The Manufacturing Guide is written to be followed by a competent workshop operator without specialist training in construction or architecture.
Understanding the Skylark cutting file system is important for assessing the barrier to entry.
Skylark cutting files are provided in standard DXF format, individually for each block type, already nested onto 2440×1220mm sheets at 1:1 scale.
The Manufacturing Guide does not specify a single 'correct' combination of bit size, cutting speed, and number of passes, acknowledging that different…
Materials
All WikiHouse Skylark components are manufactured from 2440mm × 1220mm × 18mm structurally certified panel product.
Rolled or soft-fill batt insulation — products such as Supasoft or Rockwool — is used to fill cassette and beam cavities during off-machine assembly.
The Manufacturing Guide specifies a nine-step production workflow.
Tolerance management is the single most technically demanding aspect of WikiHouse fabrication.
Skylark production generates two categories of timber waste: sawdust and structural offcuts.
The WikiHouse Manufacturing Guide and Skylark cutting files are published under a Creative Commons ShareAlike licence.
The Manufacturing Guide confirms, from primary technical documentation, the claims made in Chapter 3 and Appendix II of this proposal regarding local…
Appendix VI WikiHouse Switch House — Bill of Materials and Build Cost Analysis
The reference home’s components, materials, labour and the distinction between a building estimate and a funded programme.
The Trust's financial model rests on a tendered construction contract of about £174,000 per home for the reference design and a funded cost of about…
The Switch House is a three-bedroom, two-storey home of 104m² Gross Internal Area, designed using the WikiHouse Skylark 250 building system.
The Switch House chassis comprises 198 Skylark 250 blocks in six categories, requiring 520 sheets of 18mm structural OSB3 or plywood and approximately…
The BoM organises costs into six trade sections.
SectionKey itemsMaterials cost (ex VAT)Install labour daysFoundations43 helical screw piles @ £120; C24 base frame timber; 12m² timber decking; deck…
ItemCost (ex VAT)NotesMaterials and manufacturing (self-build estimate)£97,957Includes CNC machining and off-site block assembly at microfactory.
The Trust's financial model now uses a tendered construction contract of about £174,000 per home and a funded cost of about £211,000 (Appendix I.6).
The single largest labour cost in the BoM is CNC machining of 520 sheets at £40 per sheet.
The Skylark system is designed for off-site pre-assembly of blocks at the microfactory.
The BoM records 50 person/days for on-site chassis assembly without specifying a rate, reflecting that assembly does not require specialist…
The Switch House BoM is a procurement document as well as a cost estimate.
The BoM includes embodied carbon figures for the structural elements where data is available.
The Switch House BoM confirms four propositions that are central to the Trust's model:
Appendix VII Lender Capacity Constraints
Mortgage funding, bank capital requirements and the limits of expanding housing access through lending.
This appendix justifies a statement that appears throughout the main proposal: “The financial system lacks sufficient capacity to expand mortgage…
A common misconception is that banks lend out money deposited by savers.
The Three Regulatory Constraints
For every loan a bank creates, the bank must hold a minimum quantity of its own capital — equity, retained earnings, and certain qualifying instruments…
Not all lending consumes capital equally.
Risk-weighting can be gamed.
As at Q3 2025, the outstanding value of all residential mortgage loans in the UK stood at £1,733.7 billion (Bank of England/FCA MLAR statistics, Q3 2025).
England needs approximately 300,000 new homes per year to meet demand and begin addressing the accumulated backlog (MHCLG’s stated target: 1.5 million…
When capital is scarce, banks do not ration lending randomly.
An obvious response is: loosen the rules.
The Trust’s funding model does not touch the banking system’s balance sheet.
If the mortgage market cannot scale to meet housing need, and the prudential constraints on lending cannot be relaxed without creating systemic risk,…
Bank of England (2014). ‘Money Creation in the Modern Economy.’ Quarterly Bulletin 2014 Q1, pp.14–27.
Appendix VIII Construction Sector and Skills Constraints
Workforce and training constraints, production methods, quality and the case for manufactured construction.
This appendix justifies the statement appearing throughout the main proposal: “traditional construction methods are too slow and expensive to deliver…
Construction is one of the only sectors in the UK economy where labour productivity has effectively stagnated over a generation.
The Skills Shortage
The Construction Industry Training Board (CITB), the statutory body responsible for workforce planning in the sector, publishes annual labour market…
In March 2025, the government announced plans to recruit and train up to 60,000 more specialist construction workers by 2029.
The shortage is structural, not cyclical.
The UK construction sector was historically reliant on skilled EU labour, particularly from Poland, Romania, and the Baltic states.
The sector has a persistent and well-documented recruitment problem.
The conventional policy response to a skills shortage is to train more workers.
A skills shortage does not merely slow construction.
The UK construction sector has the highest business failure rate of any industry in the economy.
The quality of traditionally built new homes is a matter of public record and public dissatisfaction.
Traditional construction is critically dependent on weather conditions.
The systemic failure of the traditional construction model was officially recognised in the government-commissioned 2016 Farmer Review of the UK…
Even if the political will existed to solve the skills shortage through conventional training, the timescale is prohibitive.
Each problem described above is individually significant.
Housing policy debate in England focuses overwhelmingly on land, planning, and finance.
BCIS (2025).
Appendix IX Questions Requiring Legal Opinion Before Implementation
The legal conclusions requiring commissioned advice before the programme proceeds.
This document has been prepared without commissioned legal advice.
Three further questions are not legal and no counsel can answer them.