A council has given the go ahead for the building of 162 innovative flat-pack houses in a deal with a company co-owned by Ikea.
Worthing council is working with BoKlok to address the housing crisis in the area where the average house price is 11.7 times average salary, compared to 7.8 times across England and Wales.
The company has already built 11,000 homes across Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway and is now looking to expand into the UK.
The houses are prefabricated offsite and and come with flooring, tiling and an Ikea kitchen and will be built on land licensed from the council which will charge an annual ground rent.
To work out how much to charge, the average salary for a full-time worker in the Worthing area is used to calculate what residents can pay after tax and the monthly cost of living. From this an affordable 25-year mortgage is then calculated.
BoKlok, which is owned by Ikea and Skanska, claims “a single parent can afford to buy and live in a newly built two-bedroom BoKlok apartment”.
Councillor Kevin Jenkins told the Worthing Herald earlier this month: “We are often accused as a council of not caring and taking into account the needs of families across the town.
“This is an example of taking the lead in utilising land that is in our control to actually meet the growing need of our families that want to get into the housing market.
“I think it’s really, really important and demonstrates we are prepared to break the model, step outside and be adventurous in what we do and take Worthing forward.”
If the project is successful a further 500 homes could be built in the near-future.
The news comes as an influential Commons committee warned the Government would struggle to meet its target to deliver 300,000 new homes a year by the 2020s, the Press association reports.
The Public Accounts Committee said hitting the target would require a significant increase in the rate of house building, with the number of new homes averaging just 177,000-a-year between 2005-06 and 2017-18.