On a sweltering August afternoon in London, a modest green-clad building stood out on the gravel outside City Hall. Its sign, inviting Londoners to "step inside a home for the meantime," hinted at a bold experiment unfolding in the heart of the city’s housing crisis. This wasn’t a pop-up holiday rental or a marketing gimmick—it was the latest in a series of innovative efforts aimed at tackling the capital’s soaring homelessness rates and chronic housing shortages.
According to City Hall, the first of these modular homes—designed for quick assembly, energy efficiency, and mobility—will be installed in Havering, East London, later this year. The scheme, a joint venture between Havering Council and Wates Residential, will see 18 modular homes placed on land earmarked for future development. Families can live in these units for up to six years before the homes are moved to another site, ensuring that the investment isn’t lost when land use changes. The homes themselves, City Hall says, have a lifespan of 60 years and are built to high standards, with fully fitted kitchens, high ceilings, and insulation that exceeds regulations.
As Tom Copley, London’s deputy mayor for housing, explained while standing in the doorway of the display unit, "We all recognise we’ve got a housing crisis in London, and for people who are homeless and living in temporary accommodation, they are at the absolute sharpest end of this." He emphasized the need for both long-term social housing and interim solutions, noting, "That’s why solutions like this are so vital."
The urgency is hard to overstate. Between April 2024 and March 2025, a record 13,231 people were recorded sleeping rough in London—a 10% increase from the previous year, which itself saw a 19% jump, according to official figures. Across the city, 183,000 Londoners are currently living in temporary accommodation, with Havering alone sheltering 1,236 households in such conditions during the second quarter of 2025. Of these, 838 are families with children.
Inside the modular homes, the difference from the cramped hostels and hotel rooms that many families currently endure is striking. As Paul Jones, service director at Rollalong—the company manufacturing the modules—put it, "People come in and say, ‘It’s a home, isn’t it?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah. Of course it is.’" The design process even involved families who have lived in hostels, ensuring their needs shaped everything from built-in storage to the inclusion of full-sized baths—a detail that, according to Jones, was especially important to parents.
These homes aren’t just stopgaps. They’re part of a broader push to rethink how Britain builds—and who gets to benefit. That’s where a parallel revolution is unfolding, as reported by Reuters, in the rolling countryside of Oxfordshire. At a vast factory in Witney, gigantic robot arms—controlled by artificial intelligence—glide across the floor, assembling timber frames for houses at a rate of about 100 homes per week. This blend of robotics and sustainable materials is being touted as a game-changer for an industry grappling with labor shortages, rising costs, and environmental targets.
Alex Goodfellow, CEO of Donaldson Timber Systems (DTS), explained the appeal: "We’re seeing more major housebuilders and small and medium-sized builders embracing timber as a way to ... overcome the skills and carbon challenge." Timber, he noted, is not only greener—absorbing and storing more carbon than it emits—but is also about 2.8% cheaper than masonry, according to a study by Rider Levett Bucknall. The AI-driven production lines at DTS reduce the need for skilled labor, cut construction time by ten weeks compared to traditional materials, and deliver pre-assembled sections that builders can snap together swiftly on site.
Yet, as with modular housing, the path to widespread adoption isn’t without obstacles. Timber-framed homes make up a relatively small share of England’s housing stock, partly due to historic concerns about durability, rot, and fire safety. Amit Patel at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors pointed out that securing warranties for timber buildings remains tricky, though modern regulations and fire safety guides have addressed many old worries. Barratt Homes’ efforts to revive timber in the 1980s were stymied by such fears, but today, builders like Vistry, Taylor Wimpey, and Bellway are investing heavily in timber-frame factories and plan to expand its use dramatically by 2030.
Another challenge is the origin of materials. About 80% of the timber used in the UK is imported, mostly from Europe, raising questions about supply chain security and environmental impact. By contrast, 20% of bricks are imported. Simon Park, Bellway’s head of sustainability, acknowledged the dilemma but emphasized timber’s overall carbon advantage: "Breeze blocks—made from concrete—are the biggest carbon emitters among common building materials."
On the labor front, the UK construction workforce is aging fast, with 20% over the age of 50 and a quarter of those set to retire within a decade. Robotics and automation, experts say, are not just about replacing workers but attracting a new generation of tech-savvy talent. Frank O’Reilly, DTS’s manufacturing director, said, "It (the technology) encourages young people to consider this as a career." The government, recognizing the urgency, pledged £40 million in June 2025 for robotics adoption hubs across sectors. Still, the UK lags behind Europe—there are just 0.5 robots per 10,000 construction workers in Britain, compared to 1.5 in Europe and 0.6 in the US, according to ING.
All these innovations are in service of a daunting goal: building 300,000 new homes annually in England. Last year, nearly 200,000 were completed, with about 40,500 timber-frame homes among them. But the gap remains vast. Government figures show that England needs 90,000 new social homes every year for the next decade, yet in 2022-23, only 9,500 were built.
Liz Rutherfoord, chief executive of Single Homeless Project, called the modular scheme “creative, practical thinking in action” and urged an expansion, saying, “Modular housing like this offers secure, affordable housing quickly and is a world away from the cramped, unsafe spaces too many people are forced to live in.” She added, “The scale of the crisis means we have to act fast, think boldly, and commit to solutions for everyone.”
City Hall’s Tom Copley agrees that modular and timber homes are not a panacea. "It’s not the only solution, but frankly, given the scale of the crisis that we’ve got—given that we’ve got one child in every average London classroom now living in temporary accommodation—we have to be exploring every possible solution to this crisis."
As the city’s skyline evolves and the whir of robots grows louder in England’s factories, a new blueprint for housing is taking shape—one that blends speed, sustainability, and a renewed sense of dignity for those most in need.
