We should all build our own homes, says Pickles: Communities Secretary wants people to be offered subsidies for creating their dream property

Britain should be turned into a 'nation of self-builders' by offering people subsidies for creating their own homes, the Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles has said.
Helping tens of thousands of people build their dream properties would stop them from putting up 'homogeneous, pasteurised housing', he claimed.
The senior Tory said the UK should emulate Austria, Belgium and Sweden in rewarding those who dared to build their own homes.
He revealed that self-builders would have access to a ?47 billion loan scheme.
Mr Pickles suggested too many people watch Grand Designs and believe building a home was the 'preserve of the elite'.
He said he wanted to double the number of self-build projects in the coming years, up from 7,000 today.
Ministers want 20 per cent of homes to be self-build projects, up from ten per cent last year.
Councils would be encouraged to release land they were holding to residents hoping to self-build.
Those already living in the countryside would be less likely to oppose innovative, small-scale developments than large-scale estates, he said.
Local authorities would also be urged to reduce red tape so that self-builders did not have to 'bang their heads against walls' to get planning permission.
Anyone building their own home would not have to pay a community infrastructure levy, or planning tariffs, slashing the cost of self-building by thousands of pounds.

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'We're taking practical steps which will unlock the potential and will turn our country, which is famously a nation of shopkeepers, to a nation of self-builders too,' Mr Pickles said.
'In some countries - Austria, Belgium, Sweden - as much as half of the new housing is custom built. But they have a system which supports and encourages and rewards self building. We must do likewise.'

He added that the government was working to get self-builders access to finance. 
'Because we believe that custom building should not be the preserve of the elite and the wealthy, we're offering ?47billion worth of loans to aspiring self builders,' he said.
'This Government believes in supporting ambition. The more people who build their own homes the better.' 
Mr Pickles added that the 'level of resistance to self-build small development is much less than some of the larger developments'.
Families across Britain should in future be able to design and create a property regardless of how much money they have to spend, he said.
Mr Pickles also ruled out 'imposing' new garden cities on parts of the country to solve the housing crisis.
Planning Minister Nick Boles has previously called for increasing the amount of developed land in England by a third. He said that this would address the housing shortage. The gap would be filled by building 'beautiful' housing that was sensitive to the local area.

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