Update on the Campaign

Since NaSBA was formed we have been making overtures to a number of bodies and political leaders. In the first wave of our campaign we sent copies of our report to every MP and MEP in the country. This produced some very positive responses. Since then we have been working to get to know the key people within the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Homes and Community Agency. Reports of some of these meetings are detailed below:

Meeting with Grant Shapps, the current Housing Minister.  We met Grant in July 2010 and he made some very supportive noises. He is a strong advocate of self build and self finish schemes and is keen to help us promote their growth. His proposals for setting up new Local Housing Trusts could play a key role in this. Last year he made a very encouraging speech on self build and later this year we hope to arrange a visit for him to see one or two interesting self build schemes.

Meeting with Margaret Beckett (who was then the head of the Department for Communities and Local Government).  We saw her, just before the then Labour Government had a Cabinet reshuffle, and we got an encouraging response from both Margaret, and her officials. Unfortunately she then moved completely out of Government and John Healey then took over her role.

Meeting with the Homes and Community Agency.  We have had a face to face meeting and have been in touch with them again to try to make some headway on our proposals for some of the Government’s larger sites to be split up into smaller plots suitable for self builders. All the regional offices of the HCA have been contacted about trialling this, and the response was patchy - some thought it would be too fiddly to deal with lots of individual self builders; others thought it might be worth a try. We’re currently hoping to get them to progress this in one region (most likely in the South West) and if this proves successful, we hope to get other regions on board too.

Eco-Towns. We have been in contact with the developers behind each of the first wave of eco-towns to encourage them to make sites available for self builders.