Ikea-style homes could be built across Sussex to help first-time buyers get on the property ladder.

Creating several "Ikea Villages" is seen by some as the next step in helping to solve the growing housing crisis.

Builders are already on site in Dominion Road, Worthing, constructing 13 timber-framed homes, with work expected to be completed by the end of the year.

If it is a success, similar developments could pop up across Sussex to help meet the Government's targets of building three million new homes nationwide by 2020.

The Swedish-style kit homes, already being built elsewhere in the UK, are designed to cater for the increasing numbers of first-time buyers for whom most homes are now well beyond budget.

Apartments begin at about £90,000, and three-bedroom family properties are for sale at less than £150,000 - about half that of the average family house in Sussex.

The scheme is emerging as a solution to the crisis in affordable and sustainable housing, with developers predicting a tenfold increase in the number of flat-pack homes within five years.

John Holmstrom, assistant chief executive of the Brighton Housing Trust, said: "I am pleased to see this sort of scheme being introduced. Anyway we can reduce building costs should be welcomed.

"Flat pack housing is made under factory conditions, so the quality is generally very high and the construction time is shortened. However you need the right site and project for flat pack housing, so it will never replace the need for traditional build."

Similar pilot schemes have already been launched across the country by a company called BoKlok.

Alan Prole, the managing director of Live Smart, the British branch of BoKlok, said: "The stark reality is that there are millions of families out there who will never get on the property ladder unless companies like us create housing options for them.

"We cannot create higher volumes of housing using traditional methods. This concept enables us to create a new generation of sustainable housing."

Flat-pack homes have proved popular in Scandinavia in recent years and around 800 are now sold each year in Sweden.

Experts say the housing crisis is Sussex is spiralling out of control, with almost 30,000 families on the council housing waiting lists - double the number a decade ago.

In Brighton and Hove the figure has rocketed by 400 per cent since 1997, up from 1,611 households to 8,056.

East Sussex has seen a 73 per cent rise, up from 6,321 to 10,969, while in West Sussex the rise is 72 per cent, up from 9,102 to 15,703.

David Lepper, MP for Brighton Pavilion, is secretary of a cross-party parliament group on co-operative housing.

He said: "Ideas like this are well worth looking at. Pre-fabricated housing does work well in Norway and Sweden. Many of us have memories of post-war pre-fabs, which were there to fill a need but never designed to be permanent.

"Technology has moved on since then, and from what I have seen these schemes can provide much more satisfactory affordable housing."

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