RESIDENTS living in a Basildon estate where homes were built with a potentially crumbling concrete could be moved out as part of plans to new build flat-pack homes.

Basildon Council is entering into a "pre-contract agreement" with flat-pack home developer, TopHat, for the firm to design 30 new homes for residents living in the Knights Estate in Lee Chapel North.  It comes after it was revealed that all 18 homes on the estate were built using Siporex - a variant of Raac concrete.

According to documents published on Basildon Council's website, residents will be moved out as part of plans to urgently redevelop the estate due to the severe risk of "catastrophic failure" of the buildings due to the concrete.  The documents state that the plan would consist of 30-new flat-pack homes being built for the residents on the estate.  Lee Chapel North Labour councillor, Susanna Caira-Neeson, said: “I do think this is a good solution, the buildings look very dated and there any estates redevelopment could be a positive.

“We can’t get away from the fact that we have very old housing stock and there is no alternative here.

“It is still about what residents want though, we are talking about peoples homes.”

A report is being prepared for councillors to debate at a cabinet meeting in March.  The council document states: “A pre contract services agreement will be entered into with TopHat, a modular housing provider, to provide surveys, concept, design, and planning works in advance of a redevelopment of Knights Estate in Basildon.

“This estate was built using Raac, a material that is prone to sudden catastrophic failure so we will decant tenants and look at redeveloping the estate as quickly as possible.

“This is the first step in doing this but not it does not tie us in to using TopHat as our developer."

According to the report, TopHat will be able to "move quickly" to design and build modular homes which would allow the council to "focus on decanting residents" from the Knights Estate.  As part of the plans, 50 per cent of residents would move out in the first phase of the development as work begins, before the second half move out in phase two.