The NHBC’s call this week for a drastic shift towards building
more offsite homes in order to reach government housing targets has been
welcomed by insulation specialist Actis.
The rallying cry follows the release of this quarter’s new build
statistics by the NHBC – which says that the harsh winter weather has made a
bad situation even worse.
The number of new builds registered by the NHBC in the first three
months of the year fell by 14% compared with the same period last year - and
annual figures have fallen by 2%.
Overall in 2017-18 the NHBC, which registers 80% of new build
private and affordable homes in the UK, registered 155,000 homes, with other
warranty providers bringing that total to around 190,000 – a woeful 110,000
short of the government’s 300,000 annual target for England alone.
And while the ‘Beast from the East’ was responsible for losing
around a month of construction time, NHBC chief executive Steve Wood says even
without the wintry spell, figures would be way below what is required.
He said an additional 25,000 bricklayers would be needed to
reach the government target if using traditional construction methods, but that
rapidly embracing new methods of construction would help make up for the lack
of skilled tradespeople.
Offsite construction has long been championed by pan European
insulation specialist Actis as a way to address the housing shortage.
Actis national specification manager Dan Anson-Hart said:
“With such an extreme shortfall in the number of skilled tradespeople such as
bricklayers it is clear modern methods of construction need to be actively
pursued. Building a timber frame house is
around 30% faster than brick and block. Walls,
floors and roofs, complete with electrical wiring, plumbing and insulation are
all put together in factories, with the on site build element typically taking
just seven to 12 days, depending on the size of house.”
The Actis
Hybrid system – which consists of insulation, vapour control layer and breather
membrane - is proving increasingly popular with offsre manufacturers. As
well as being quick, clean and easy to use it can be installed effectively with
ease by someone who has had minimal training which can even be delivered via an
on line tutorial. With builders claiming time savings of between 25 and 50%
this can have a big impact on the speed at which homes can be constructed – at
a time when there are so few people available to build them.
“While
offsite has until recently been the preserve of smaller, more specialist
operators, it is gradually becoming more mainstream and being adopted by some
of the big name brands. This latest report from the NHBC will perhaps see more
of the major operators deciding that diversifying in this direction is the only
way to go,” added Dan.
