SME companies are set to be involved in a multi-million-pound regeneration of London’s largest housing estate. Newham council wants the regeneration of the 1960s Carpenters Estate near Stratford station to support local businesses as well as provide high quality reasonably priced homes. Mayor Cllr Rokhsana Fiaz said: “We have got a housing crisis, and we’ve got to house people in genuinely affordable homes.” The estate is across 28 acres and includes three high-rise blocks of 434 homes and 276 homes [...]

Smaller builders will be crucial to hitting the Government’s ambitious target of 300,000 new homes a year, claims the construction industry. The comments follow Homes England’s announcement this week of a £150m joint venture with Barratt and Lloyds bank to develop large-scale brownfield sites and create ‘garden villages’. The National Federation of Builders, NFB, said it understood that such partnerships were logical for accessing finance and large-scale residential schemes but sounded a note of caution. NFB policy and market insight [...]

SMEs are hoping to get a slice of the housebuilding action when it comes to expanding existing places and regeneration under new town proposals announced by the government this week. The government is to reform planning to enable 370,000 homes to be built a year and sees the creation of communities of at least 10,000 homes as instrumental to achieving this. Deputy prime minister Angela Rayner said: “Our new towns will deliver housing fit for the future, shaping new communities with [...]

Skills such as heat pump installation, teamwork and leadership should be among the training and upskilling included in the apprenticeship levy, urges the construction industry. The Chartered Institute of Building, CIOB, has called for the levy to offer businesses greater flexibility to include qualifications such as higher diplomas or degrees. CIOB public policy and affairs head David Barnes said: “We would encourage apprenticeship levy funding to be opened to other forms of training and upskilling in construction to give businesses [...]

New initiative criticised as ‘indiscriminate’ A voluntary commitment to instal newly built homes with bird-nesting bricks or boxes as well as creating hedgehog highways will go live through the planning system from September. More than 20 developers, building over 90,000 homes a year, are offering 300,000 nesting places to support dwindling swift numbers as part of a Homes for Nature initiative. Action for Swifts chief executive Becky Ingham said: “For centuries swifts have shared our buildings and homes by nesting [...]