THREE local people have decided to combine their knowledge of the housing industry to help people build their own homes.

Ex-Kingsbridge Town Councillor and renewable energy expert Matt Farrand, construction manager Jonathan Stilwell, and architect Mike Derry, have joined together to create South Hams Eco Developments in order to try and help local people, as well as themselves, build their own houses.

South Hams Eco Developments, or SHED for short, is in the very early stages of formulating a scheme to deliver houses in a way that will make them ‘genuinely affordable’ to the local community.

The company has signed an option to buy some land in Kingsbridge. Matt said: ‘We want to try and gauge whether people think this self-build is a good idea, and whether they want to be involved.

‘As local people, we all have children at Kingsbridge Community College and local primary schools; we understand and love the area, we want something to fit with the area and our beautiful location.

‘We aren’t a big housing developer only chasing profits, we want to use this opportunity in the current climate, to do something that involves everybody, at the right size and the right place.’

SHED have had positive meetings with both South Hams District Council and Kingsbridge Town Council and are moving onto the next phase of the project – gathering research.

The details are still being finalised, but ideas include providing an access road and utilities to plots and selling them, possibly building ‘shells’ to sell to people to finish themselves, a combination of the two, and possibly providing some rental opportunities next to the self-build plots.

Jonny Stilwell said: ‘There will be an overall design to the development, for the purposes of getting planning permission, but with the choice of how much of a self-build people do themselves to add value to the properties, and also how they lay out and specify the houses.’

With Matt’s background in renewable energy, the houses would be as environmentally friendly as possible, and would therefore be cheap to heat and run.

Currently, SHED are looking for information from local people about what they would like from a scheme like this, what size and kind of house they would be looking for, how much people realistically have in terms of finance, all of which will shape how they move forward with the project.

‘We need around 15 people who meet the Help to Buy South West criteria to be signed up in order for this site to work, if we have lots of people interested, we hope to be able to run similar projects again and again and provide housing across the South Hams that are truly affordable for local people’, said Matt.

If you would be interested in SHED’s scheme, message them through their Facebook page: South Hams Eco Developments, and you will be sent a questionnaire to complete in order to gather information about what people want.