Major infrastructure contracts of over £200m announced by Homes England

The government's housing and regeneration agency, Homes England, has published a pipeline of 14 different infrastructure contracts worth £210.2m. The largest job is a £52m project to build phases 3a and 3b of Northstowe, a new town in South Cambridgeshire. The two phases include 5,000 new homes, three primary schools, and large areas of open space around them. The National Federation of Builders, NFB, police, and market insight head Rico Wojtulewicz said: “It’s promising that we now know that they are [...]

By |2024-09-25T07:54:37+00:00September 25, 2024|Blog, Finance News, News|0 Comments

SMEs to play a part in the £1bn regeneration of London’s largest housing estate

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 [...]

By |2024-09-16T11:09:14+00:00September 16, 2024|Advice, Blog|0 Comments

Government can’t deliver 1.5m new homes without SMEs’ help

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 [...]

By |2024-09-16T10:46:56+00:00September 13, 2024|Advice, Blog|0 Comments

Licensing builders would be an important step in fire safety post-Grenfell

Raising competence levels among domestic builders should be among future changes to the industry to ensure all buildings are safe, urges the Federation of Master Builders, FMB. The trade body said although the work done by local builders was far removed from that investigated by the Grenfell Tower inquiry, standards should still be raised. FMB chief executive Brian Berry said: “The new government needs to turn away from a culture of cutting regulation, which in part has led to poor [...]

By |2024-09-16T11:00:23+00:00September 4, 2024|Advice, Blog, News|0 Comments

Smaller housebuilders key to delivering new homes in existing towns

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 [...]

By |2024-08-06T09:12:03+00:00August 6, 2024|Advice, Blog|0 Comments

Apprenticeship levy should offer greater flexibility

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 [...]

By |2024-08-06T09:10:32+00:00August 6, 2024|Advice, Blog|0 Comments

Repairs and maintenance SMEs need to skill up on decarbonisation, shows survey

Repairs and maintenance SMEs need to skill up on decarbonisation, shows survey  Smaller building firms are less confident than larger ones in delivering the decarbonisation of the UK’s 30m existing homes and need support, argues the Federation of Master Builders, FMB. More than 90 per cent of firms employing 8-13 people were ‘very’ or ‘fairly’ confident compared to over 60 per cent of sole traders according to a survey of 200 SME builders. Less than a third of the respondents [...]

By |2024-08-06T09:06:06+00:00August 6, 2024|Advice, Blog, Business|0 Comments

Housebuilders flock to help swifts and hedgehogs thrive

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 [...]

By |2024-07-10T12:26:52+00:00July 4, 2024|Advice, Blog, Uncategorized|0 Comments

Ruling on oil drilling case poses huge obstacle for housebuilders

Whole life carbon emissions will need to be assessed A supreme court ruling last week overturning approval for drilling oil in Surrey will force housebuilders to rethink planning applications. Local resident Sarah Finch and the Weald Action Group successfully appealed against Surrey County council’s decision to grant approval to Horse Hill Developments to extract oil near Horley. They argued the local authority’s environmental impact assessment should have included the effects of burning the fuel after extraction. In a split 3-2 [...]

By |2024-07-10T12:27:33+00:00July 4, 2024|Blog, Uncategorized|0 Comments

Rents soar in London as lack of housing supply bites

House prices rise in the North Average private rents rose by more than 10 per cent over the last year in the capital compared with a UK average rise of 8.7 per cent, according to HM Land Registry data. The London borough of Kensington & Chelsea was the most expensive place to rent at £3,397 per month compared with Dumfries and Galloway in Scotland at £480. The National Federation of Builders policy and market insight head Rico Wojtulewicz said: “We [...]

By |2024-07-10T12:27:45+00:00July 4, 2024|Blog, Uncategorized|0 Comments

Future MPs Urged to Think Big

Persuading future MPs to develop a national strategy to improve the energy and water efficiency of the UK’s 25m existing homes will be crucial for consumer protection, the building industry has said. The watchdog body Ofgem estimates hundreds of thousands of homes that have had cavity wall insulation fitted under government backed green energy schemes have failed. The Chartered Institute of Building, CIOB, has launched a pre-election manifesto to educate prospective MPs in the run-up to the general election on [...]

Govt Must Commit to Retrofit

More than 250,000 new entrants across multiple disciplines are needed to make the UK’s existing 27m homes reach net zero by 2050, according to a new report.  Roadmap of Skills for Net-Zero: Competencies for Domestic Retrofit is calling for a consistent definition of competencies among manufacturers, installers, and professional assessors. Emissions from homes account for nearly half of the UK’s built environment carbon footprint.  Construction Leadership Council’s people and skills industry sponsor and Travis Perkins chief executive Nick Roberts said: [...]