First IKEA made it easier for us all to kit out our homes with stylish and affordable flat pack furniture, but they’ve now gone one step further. In less that three years, Ikea flatpack housing could be coming to the UK.
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Earlier this month Worthing council in West Sussex announced its decision to work together with BoKlok a company jointly-owned by IKEA and Skanska to create 162 affordable homes.
BoKlok has previously built 11,000 homes across Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway. It has been trying to break into the British market for a decade, but this could be its first venture in the UK, scheduled for the year 2021.
IKEA flatpack housing
BoKlok specialises in low cost, factory-built housing. The homes, including flooring and tiling, are all built offsite and assembled on location. Talk about the ultimate flat-pack product! They are also believed to include an Ikea kitchen.
Due to the offsite construction, the small flats can be built within a single day, so roughly the same time as an IKEA bed – or is that just us?
Worthing voted to collaborate with BoKlok to help solve the issue of affordable housing in the area. Currently, homes in the coastal town are estimated to be 12 times more than the average salary.
The company promises to sell the flat pack homes with a 25- year mortgage at a price that mean they are affordable for a single parent on the area's average salary of £25,458. While the local council plans to let 30 per cent of the homes to low-income tenants.
‘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,’ Councillor Kevin Jenkins told the Worthing Herald.
The homes will vary from one bedroom to three bedroom apartments. If the housing project proves successful, the council and BoKlok currently have an agreement to build 500 more affordable properties.
A spokesperson for BoKlok says: ‘We currently operates in Sweden, Norway and Finland and are now exploring the UK market for potential sites for BoKlok developments, initially in the south and west of the country. However, we have nothing to confirm at this point in time.’
Related: Grow your own with innovative new IKEA indoor garden accessories
If plans go ahead, we should get a glimpse of some of the first homes being assembled in January 2021.
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