So there really is nothing new under the sun. Prefabs are apparently making a triumphant comeback to help solve the housing crisis.

When prefabs so dramatically helped provide housing after the war, they also introduced a whole new raft of people to running water and fitted kitchens. Although deemed temporary, prefabs were the future.

Perhaps, as he prepares for the Autumn statement, Chancellor Philip Hammond might look carefully at some of the other post-war innovations in housing, both the good and the bad.

When, at the beginning of the nineties, the private rented sector was at its nadir, it accounted for no more than 6% of all housing.

The sector had been all but driven out of existence by the infamous Rent Acts. And that was the time that little boxes called starter homes were springing up all around and Luton was known as the starter home capital of the nation.

The housing crash of 1991-1992 left many of these first-time home owners in negative equity – a new state of being for the nation – and housing was back to square one with local authorities out of stock thanks to the Conservative Right to Buy policies of the eighties.

The housing associations could only struggle to help.

The solution came with buy-to-let – the brainchild of then ARLA chairman Neville Lee (although the Major government tried to claim the credit).

It is well known that buy-to-let revitalised the private rented sector and helped to provide real choice between home ownership and good-quality rental housing.

The buy-to-let concept came into being after years of trying to persuade the corporates, pension funds in particular, to build to rent.

The thought of doing this fell on deaf ears. Boardrooms feared the opprobrium likely to come from mistakes in housing management, not their area of expertise.

Buy-to-let took up that slack and also underpinned the pension market following the collapse of Equitable Life, the tax raids by Gordon Brown and his successors on private pension funds and the continuing failure of company pension funds.

Not only did buy-to-let become the only large-scale provider of housing, it was to prove the best financial cushion for savers and pensioners against the crash and the turmoil in the pensions industry that continues to this day.

Meanwhile, housing associations were strengthening and able to take some of the strain from the local authorities still struggling to replace accommodation lost through Right to Buy.

Now, almost inevitably, this Conservative innovation of the eighties has been forced on the housing associations with the consequent loss of housing stock to them as well.

This is happening even as the local authorities work with forward looking lettings firms to build up their depleted stock levels with the help of private sector landlords.

Now for something new. Private sector landlords are paying additional Stamp Duty on their purchases and are to pay higher income tax for providing housing, the role that the Government seems determined to inhibit the social providers from playing.

It is the eighties with a twist.

But, then, the current demonisation of landlords is the seventies and sixties revisited, while prefabs are the fifties and forties all over again.

The future starts here. Prefabs with their running water and fitted kitchens are the future once again.

It’s not the circle of life. It’s the circle of housing.

And everyone is the loser.

* Malcolm Harrison is a journalist and industry consultant, and a former spokesperson for ARLA