Coming this summer: the 60,000 two-bedroom house

Regeneration agency English Partnerships is about to unveil the £60,000 houses announced by deputy prime minister John Prescott at last September’s Labour party conference.

The £60m Allerton Bywater millennium community is understood to be the first site for the homes, which could be ready for their new owners as early as this summer.

English Partnerships confirmed that “some” of the off-site manufactured homes will cost £60,000 to build. This covers the costs of construction, but excludes land value.

Prescott used the September conference to call for housebuilders to rise to the challenge of building a two-bedroom house for £60,000.

The homes, designed by PRP Architects and for sale to first-time buyers, will meet full Secured By Design and Lifetime Homes standards and will gain “excellent” ratings under the Eco Homes sustainability system.

One of the homes, not meant to represent the £60,000 housing, will be on show at the sustainable communities summit later this month before being moved to site.

Trevor Beattie, corporate strategy director for English Partnerships, said: “I think the £60,000 is a challenge to the market. It can be done. The bigger challenge is to produce high-quality sustainable family homes at a price that the majority of families can afford. That’s what we are doing.”

But he stressed that the real test was whether builders could increase the number of units produced off site. He said: “We are challenging the builders to build more of them and we are challenging the mortgage lenders to recognise the quality of the product.

“The important thing about our house is the quality of the product. It is going to be more flexible, cheaper to live in, cheaper to construct and cheaper to buy.”

Terry Fuller, chair of the affordable housing group at the House Builders Federation, said building £60,000 homes would not be a problem – but issues of quality and planning gain also come into play.

He said: “For four walls and a roof outside London and the Home Counties, I don’t think there is a particular problem in achieving that [price]. The main problem is all the extras we are now required to put into a development.”