Buy the good folk of UK manufacturing some land and mayoral chains and we'll solve the housing crisis for free. It sounds too good to be true, but the idea of empowering industrialists to forge successful towns is the bona fide sale of the century according to site managers at WM's Outlook roundtable last month.
Like most great ideas in our sector, it's been pinched with pride. In the 1870s, the Cadbury family moved their expanding chocolate factory from central Birmingham to the city's outskirts and began creating a desirable dwelling place for loyal workers.
Fields gave way to homes, schools, libraries, a boating lake, running track and public baths. Bourneville village was born and the Cadbury's employee became the fittest, best read, sweetest smelling and, as a result, quite probably the top performing factory worker in Britain.
The model inspired foreign tributes. India's Tata founded Jamshedpur, a model city equipped with a zoo, civic amenities and leafy spaces to appeal to workers at Tata's steel works. More than 100 years on and Jamshedpur ranks as one of the worlds' top 100 fastest growing cities and has seeded 1,200 sister industries.
Food for thought as the Chancellor pushes ahead with £200 million plans to develop a new garden city at Ebbsfleet, Kent. Far better, surely, for Mr Osborne to join up the dots and ditch the garden city for a manufacturing-led metropolis.
Simply offer an OEM greenbelt land for a new factory, transport infrastructure and a role determining local services such as the school syllabus. In return, the Exchequer could count on new jobs, energy supplied back to the National Grid by the green-thinking factory, and a swell in tax returns as tier one and two suppliers flocked to the postcode.
The 5S-inspired authorities would deliver immaculate streets, trains running just in time and visual management so good you'd never get lost in the town's one way system. Manufacturing-Ville – it's a helluva town. The election candidates should detour their campaign buses and take a look for themselves.
