Through one local-authority route, MAKAR worked through roughly 400 pages of contractual documents. 

On its project for the Lismore Community Trust, which was also publicly funded, the contract was seven pages.

Neil Edgar said: “In housing and public delivery, we seem to have spent years trying to remove risk completely, to the point where we have designed out the ability to deliver.

“Of course we need protection when a contractor or supplier fails. 

“But are we spending so much trying to eliminate every conceivable risk that we have created the biggest risk of all: the loss of capable suppliers?”

Edgar added: “Only the largest companies remain able to participate, leaving smaller rural schemes without a practical route to delivery.

“Simply put: the route to the work should not be harder than the work itself.

“For a small business, every page has to be read, questioned, negotiated and often paid for in advice, long before there is an order the workshop can act on.”

Edgar continued: “MAKAR is not arguing that seven pages is always the answer.

“It is asking whether the burden is proportionate, particularly for the small rural schemes where a pair of homes can decide whether a family stays on an island.

“I’m not asking for risk-free business. I’m asking for enough clarity to employ and train people over a period of years.”

MAKAR is inviting anyone able to help align funding, planning, procurement and manufacture on one real housing project to reach out and is opening its workshop and Paradigm prototype home to visitors who want to see the evidence.