An innovative housebuilding project created in Knowle West that sees micro-homes built in the big back gardens of council estates is set to revolutionise the housing industry and help solve the housing crisis.
The idea, from community organisation WeCanMake, has been backed by the Housing and Communities Secretary of State Michael Gove, and could see 33,000 new homes built across England, with some analysts suggesting that as many as 1.6 million new homes could be built if the idea is expanded.
This week, WeCanMake launched their project nationwide after successfully trialling it in Knowle West, where the community-led housing trust is based.
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Bristol Live first reported on the project in January last year, as the first residents moved into their new homes. The idea could now be scaled out to other council estates across the country which, like Knowle West, were built in the 1930s and 1950s, where large spaces of open land were left between homes, and the homes themselves all have large gardens.
The scheme, which WeCanMake say has never been done before, sees people with large gardens opt in to the scheme - no one is made to have a micro-home built in their garden if they don’t want to.
When a large garden is brought forward it is often to create a new home for an expanding family, where grown up children want a place of their own but to stay close to home, or a more mature parent wants to downsize to a smaller home and pass on their home to grown-up children or relatives.
The first two low-carbon affordable homes have already been built in Knowle West, and 150 additional sites have been identified and volunteered across the 5,000-home estate.
WeCanMake say that if that is scaled out to other council estates of a similar design right across the country, then there could be as many as 33,000 new homes built in this way across Britain. The housing industry bible Property Week said this week that, if all small sites of open land that are owned by local authorities and other landowners are added in, as many as 1.6 million new homes could be built, by in-filling rather than building on previously undeveloped green field sites.
The project has now got the backing of the Nationwide Foundation’s Nurturing Ideas to Change the Housing System. Its programme manager is Jonathan Lewis. “To combat the housing crisis, we need innovation and flexibility,” he said.
“We're proud to fund and support WeCanMake. Often, projects that test completely new solutions are seen as a risk the first time they're tried. We're confident that the homes in Knowle West, and the people living in them, are tangible proof that this model works.
“The next step is to shout about what has been achieved and take the learning to other areas so that more affordable, decent homes can be created for and by local communities,” he added. Bristol City Council are backing the scheme too. One of the rules of the project is that both the existing house and the new micro-home built in its garden have to stay within public ownership, so remain as local authority homes.
Housing chief Tom Renhard said: “As a council, Bristol recognises that we need to go beyond ‘business as usual' in order to tackle the housing crisis. WeCanMake offers an innovative and additional way to unlock land and deliver high quality, affordable homes where people need them most,” he said.
“We think it is an approach that can scale-up, both in Bristol and in helping set a new model for estate regeneration across the UK,” he added.
Bristol Live first reported on the project in January 2022 when we featured the first to move into their new micro-home, Toni Gray. She and her young daughter had been living in overcrowded conditions in her parents’ council house in Knowle West, but the family volunteered to be the first guinea pig for the project. Toni now has a two-bedroomed home of her own in part of the garden of her family home.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be family members either. People can volunteer their large back gardens to help house other people from their own communities. Council tenant Bill was struggling to manage his large garden at his home in Knowle West, so opted in to the project to transfer part of it to the WeCanMake project. He was matched with former bricklayer John Bennett, who was homeless after splitting from his wife. A new one-bedroomed home was built for John, and the pair are now neighbours.
“We’re literally building our community from the bottom up,” said John. “It’s giving people different choices, better choices, about how things can be. We are the pioneers.
“No one’s ever tried to do this before. Hopefully what we’ve done is make it easier for everyone else who comes after. We’ve made it happen in Knowle West. But this could be the future for a lot more people like me,” he added.
The other aspect to the project is the creation of local jobs. The homes are built using modern methods of construction - they are built in packs at a local production yard and then assembled at the location itself.
We Can Make director Melissa Mean said: “The UK seems permanently stuck in a housing crisis. Instead of relying on big commercial developers to fix a problem they helped create, WeCanMake shows another way is possible – about what can happen when the power and resources to make good homes are put in community hands.
“Our two homes in Knowle West are just the start. Our toolkit for unlocking micro-sites through community-led opt-in densification is designed so other neighbourhoods can use it. Imagine 33,000 new affordable homes across the country – all inserted exactly where people need them most – helping elders to downsize, and ease pressure on overcrowded families. It opens up a new way to scale with real impact, one where communities are in control,” she added.
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