A capital idea

“It’s not exactly Berlin, where group self-build delivers a significant proportion of new homes, but it’s a huge leap forward from what was happening in our capital until recently”

For many decades, would-be self-builders living in London have had to move out to the country if they wanted to create a home from scratch. Land in London is just so expensive that only the super-rich could ever contemplate creating their own home there, unless a rare plot presented itself in the form of a garden, for instance (indeed, we’ve covered such build stories in these pages).

Now, thanks to the sterling work of a few visionaries, we are beginning to see the emergence of group self-build projects in London, where like-minded people pool their