Professor Dave King – a man who could claim to have done more to increase industry output in the 1980s and 1990s than anyone else – has died aged 61. <br> <br> King was a demographer who designed the Chelmer population and housing model which enabled HBF to challenge the housing numbers proposed in county structure plans and often secure large increases thus helping the industry with the difficult task of proving that the numbers in the plans were too low. <br> <br> On HBF’s request, King developed a transparent methodology that clearly set out assumptions about population and household growth and migration so that alternative, and fully testable, proposals could be presented. <br> <br> The NHBC-funded Chelmer Model was launched in 1986 and over the next decade it resulted in thousands of houses being added across the country to county structure plan targets. <br> <br> The model eventually became accepted as a genuinely neutral tool and, increasingly, it was used by local authorities to develop their own household figures. <br> <br> More than one regional assembly appointed King to help prepare their figures and to explain them to councillors and regional partners. He had a mild, nonconfrontational style, but …