Housing crisis must be solved, says Liberal Democrat city councillor for Summertown Andrew Gant

People need houses. Oxford needs houses. There are more people who want to live in Oxford than there are places for them to live.

Whichever way you cut it, we have a problem.

One part of the solution has to be looking at innovative types of housing.

Over recent months I have looked at a number of projects which do exactly that.

They have delivered real benefits where they have been tried, and those benefits could, I believe, be readily transferable to the uniquely difficult situation here in Oxford.

The catch-all name which has come to be associated with this kind of project is “pods”.

The term needs a little unpicking. First of all, we are not talking here about garden units, which are sometimes described by the same name.

“Pod” housing consists of small units in purpose-built, unique developments.

Good design, sympathetic to its site, is key. These are not “off-the-shelf” buildings or pre-fabs stacked on top of one another.

Communal external space is generous. There is parking for bikes, but not cars.

Intelligent design maximises the sense of space inside: large windows, bright colours, light wooden floors, under-floor heating instead of radiators using up space, showers instead of baths.

These units are small. They are suitable for single-person households or couples, not families.

Sale price is fixed at a percentage of local market averages, perhaps a 20 per cent discount, creating potential sale prices as low as £160,000 in Oxford.

By covenant, they can only be sold to households earning a certain multiple of average income, and only to first-time buyers.

These properties are specifically aimed at the kind of people who at the moment find themselves squeezed out of the Oxford housing market: a teacher, academic or worker in the health service, perhaps, wanting to move on from a shared house and get a foot on the housing ladder.

Council tenants who find themselves in a position to buy have another option to do so without the council losing a precious unit from its own stock.

When purchasers move on from this kind of housing, to start a family or get a bit more space, they sell to a purchaser in the same category, realising whatever return their equity has built up, just like any other homeowner.

Instead of paying rent and thereby building up assets for other people, they now do so for themselves.

Why would a developer bother with this approach?

Aren’t they all just in it for the mega-mansions and the investment properties aimed at buy-to-let landlords and foreign investors?

There are other kinds of developers. Some are social enterprises, like Oxford Ventures, recently featured in the Oxford Mail.

Others do it because they see a real market opportunity which is not being met by more traditional models. Pocket Homes has delivered a number of schemes in London, supported by the Mayor. They are all full.

They feel like nice places to be. I met tenants who cycle to work where before they had to commute long distances.

The synergies with Oxford are obvious.

But this is not just an economic issue, or even just a planning or a housing issue. It’s a justice issue.

It’s not just that there are problems at either end of the market, it’s the fact that there is an increasingly wide gap between the two.

This idea won’t solve all our housing problems by itself. We certainly need to keep up the pressure on other fronts: more family housing, more social housing, proper transport alternatives including reliable, affordable public transport, a clear-headed look at where new communities should go and what they should look like.

Plenty of committed people have given plenty of thought to these things already, and that must continue.

This idea complements others. It gives us an opportunity to add something creative to the mix.

It has a proven track record. In my not-quite-one-year as a member of Oxford city council it has sometimes seemed that every meeting eventually comes round to talking about housing.

Perhaps we need to be bold, and identify sites, or parts of larger sites currently already being considered for development, that can be ring-fenced for this.