Blogs

The Government’s pledge to ‘level up’ the country in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, coupled with the drive towards net zero, has led to a swathe of public funding programmes and investment schemes to help local councils improve their building stock.

Eighteen months of disruption to schooling has shone a spotlight on the inequalities of education opportunities and the importance of creating the right environment for learning.

With the many challenges and pressures facing the housing market today – and in particular those faced by the social housing sector – it’s time for providers to start exploring new solutions.

Take up of Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) is slower for the social sector than amongst private companies, but mounting and almost overwhelming issues demand that all possible avenues are investigated.

Look, I get it. There are lots of reasons not to start engaging with modern methods of construction.

Too risky. Too expensive. Too many unknowns. Too much else to do. Especially if you’re a smaller housing provider. And all the while, boards are starting to apply the MMC pressure.

But what if I told you there was an easy way to overcome all these concerns, with a positive impact on the local job market and economy? Would you consider it?

Four million of the North’s homes need to be upgraded to reach an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) level C. That’s a huge target in itself, but when you factor in the Government's Clean Growth Strategy deadline of 2035 for this to happen, that means 270,000 homes need to be retrofitted every year until then.

Last week our colleagues at the Northern Housing Consortium launched a new annual report, the Northern Housing Monitor.

Focusing on the particular challenges of housing in the north, chapters include energy efficiency, affordability, ‘levelling up’ and the role of the private rented sector.

If you’ve yet not started to figure Pre-Manufactured Value (PMV) into your planned new-build projects, then chances are you will have heard of it.

We’ve written about it a couple of times (check out the links at the bottom of this article to read more) because it’s going to be so essential to the future of public sector home building.

Despite now being well into my career, I still feel that Construction gets overlooked as an industry for the immense value it brings into all our lives. Indeed, without the built environment, what would we have?

Retrofitting your stock for energy efficiency probably feels like an overwhelming battle; a job that will never end.

Where to start? How to prioritise? What measures to install?

There’s no getting away from it – the social housing sector is facing a mounting crisis from the continuing resident reports of sub-standard housing conditions.

It’s a disaster for residents. But it’s also a reputational crisis of our own making, and a financial one that’s emerging from the confluence of a few issues. It’s a fast-moving situation and one we collectively need to get ahead of.

The Government has said that this time next year it will bring into force changes to Part L of the Building Regulations, which cover the conservation of fuel and power in new-build homes.

It represents the first update to Part L in nearly a decade, is the next step on the road to net zero in 2050, and has huge implications for the construction of all new homes., including those built by housing associations and local councils.