You are viewing 1 of your 1 free articles
McVey calls for UK to become ‘world leader’ in modular construction
Housing minister Esther McVey has said she wants the UK to become the “world leader” in modular building within the next decade.
Addressing the the MIPIM UK conference in London yesterday, she argued that modern methods of construction (MMC) can speed up housing delivery while improving safety and quality.
She said: “Technology now means building offsite gives you the precision-manufactured homes, tested for quality and safety.”
Adding that this could now be as effective as a house built through traditional methods.
She said: “In 2015 the industry estimated that 10% of homes were built using [modern] methods – equivalent to 15,000 homes.
“So to reach that number of 300,000 homes per year, we need to build at least 80,000 homes a year by the mid 2020s on top of what we’re delivering today.
“So there is much more we can do, much more in this space, and much more to add to the traditional housebuilding market.
“It is for this reason I want to set this ambitious goal here today with you: that the UK becomes the world leader in modular building within the next 10 years with safety, quality and choice and precision at its heart.”
The government will create a “construction and engineering centre of excellence in the North for modern methods of construction” aimed at getting school leavers into construction, Ms McVey added.
READ MORE
In September, the government rejected calls from the Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee to require developers which benefit from public funds to use MMC.
Responding to an audience question following her speech about whether the government will clarify which cladding types must be removed from buildings, the housing minister said: “You raise a fair point on that because we have obviously done the ACM [aluminium composite material] cladding, we have expected the removal of that from buildings.
“And then going forward, as we analyse what comes forward if things are deemed unsafe we will be doing the same thing with that as well, and we move at a pace so that whatever we say or do comes with full scientific advice behind that so we are moving as fast as we can on future forms and different sorts of compounds.”
The government has told building owners in an advice note to remove any combustible cladding unless it has passed a large-scale test or had a “robust” desktop study finding it to be safe.
Following pressure from campaigners, the government has offered social and private building owners a combined £600m to remediate dangerous ACM cladding – the type used on Grenfell Tower.
However, no funding is available for other cladding types.
