Winding down of the Association

At AGM in November 2007, the decision was made to wind up the association in its present form on December 1, 2008. The present committee members are not willing to carry on after that date. So no new members are being taken on.

The OFT enquiry into the housebuilding market

In January 2008, the Office of Fair Trading approached the ASB for help in getting into contact with some selfbuilders. Seven of our members volunteered to help and had long telephone interviews with the OFT.

We hope that the OFT gets the message that selfbuilding would be more effective competition for the speculative housebuilders if only more plots became available to selfbuilders. At present, most development land is sold in big tranches to commercial developers and none of it becomes available to individual selfbuilders.

If more plots were to be made available to selfbuilders, the selfbuild sector would be a very effective competitor to the commercial housebuilders. In general, a selfbuilt house:

• Costs less than a comparable spec built one.
• Is better designed and better built.
• Is more likely to incorporate innovative techniques.
• Is likely to be greener.

The OFT report is due to be published in October/November. We await it with interest.

Callcutt Review of Housebuilding Delivery

The ASB was invited to make a submission for this Government Review of house building delivery.

To download our submission (as a 4-page Word doc), click here

To view the website for the review, click www.callcuttreview.co.uk/default.jsp. The review makes some recommendations favourable to selfbuilding.

The Chariman of the ASB, Bob Matthews, was invited to the presentation of the review and wrote an article about the review from a selfbuild perspective for SelfBuild and Design magazine. To download the article (as a Word doc), click here

John Callcutt and Bob Matthews