W ould you buy a home that came off a production line? The long-awaited era of affordable, good-quality homes built in a British factory may have finally arrived.

Last week TopHat, a construction company backed by the American investment bank Goldman Sachs, announced plans to open a house-building facility next year that will be capable of producing one home an hour.

The 650,000 sq ft factory in Corby, Northamptonshire, will be the size of about eight football pitches, the largest facility of its kind in Europe. TopHat already has a factory in Foston, Derbyshire, that produces 800 homes a year but the new one will aim for 4,000.

Also referred to as modern methods of construction (MMC), flatpack house-building has been widely adopted in other countries

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