When Kevin McCloud, presenter of hit property TV show Grand Designs, went to the typically English town of Tunbridge Wells last September, it looked like a potentially revolutionary moment in Britain’s housing industry. One that might reverberate in Australia.

McCloud was there to watch Rob and Kate Harris demolish a semi-rural 1940s bungalow and replace it with a prefabricated, modular two-storey home. Once the old place was demolished, the company Boutique Modern trucked in the new one, built entirely in its nearby factory.