In June this year, a company decided to create the ultimate head-to-head at a site in Gateshead, with modular homes and traditionally built houses being constructed at the same time so that potential buyers can compare the quality of both methods.

Gateshead Innovation Village is currently a live research project led by housing provider Home Group, which will see a variety of house designs take shape all on the same site, aiming to “robustly compare and contrast modern methods of construction” and hopefully improve the public image of modular homes.

The first homes are currently being manufactured in the Yorkshire factory of ilke Homes, ready for delivery to the Gateshead site by the end of August. Joy Whinnerah, head of delivery at Home Group says: “We’re all incredibly excited about this project as it will see a wide range of homes and construction methods being tried and tested together on the one site. Not only that, but we are really keen to understand what our customers like and don’t like about living in these types of homes. So we will be monitoring a range of aspects to check how these homes perform for the customers who live in them.”

Bjorn Conway, CEO at ilke Homes, adds: “Visitors to Gateshead Innovation Village will be blown away by the high quality of our homes, which we will install in just one day.”

The company says that the homes can be installed at a rate of up to six homes per site per day, which means that a 50-home development can be completed around six months faster than traditional housing, and it hopes to be delivering 2,000 new homes annually by 2020.