WHILE everyone supports more affordable housing, both Mr Atkinson's letter (August 8) and an earlier Evening Press editorial calling for more prefab housing should be treated with caution.

I know of two spates of prefab/system housing since the post-war boom. The Sixties' Wilsonian white heat of technology, which had some 250 UK systems at the peak; and a quick-build steel-framed tented city in Muna, Saudi Arabia for two million pilgrims in the late Nineties.

Both failed for the same reasons.

First, a fair proportion of the construction cost of the project is in the ground, such as foundations, services, access roads. These cannot be built under factory conditions.

Secondly, any disruption of the erection sequence causes time and costs to spiral out of control.

Thirdly, clients tinker with designs, making them non-standard. In the Sixties the various local authorities had their own ideas of heights of light switches, window positions, etc.

In Saudi, the problem was an increase in design complexity to maximise accommodation on an awkward site shape.

Either way, the idea, although good in concept, has not been a notable success.

Interestingly, in the Sixties, York's main factory housing systems were made of concrete and were pre-cast on the Huntington site now occupied by Yorkon.

Annie Wright,

Aston Science Park,

Love Lane, Birmingham.

Updated: 10:18 Monday, August 13, 2001