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Liverpool metro mayor plans offsite factory
The new metro mayor of the Liverpool City Region is considering building an offsite factory with local people employed as construction workers.
In an interview with Inside Housing, Steve Rotheram, who was elected in May, said the city region could aim to meet housing demand by training up local people in offsite construction.
The mayor’s team is considering possible sites in the city region but Mr Rotheram would not be drawn on specifics.
He said: “We are going to get this opportunity to build all these houses, some of them are big sites and how would we achieve that if most of the labour has been sucked into London? All we’d do is import more labour instead of doing what we should be doing which is developing our own skills base.”
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He added: “We don’t know what’s going to come out of Brexit – nobody does. We do know that as well as some of the economic shock waves that we’ll have, there will also be opportunities.
“We’ve got a river, we’re a port city, we can export very easily, we’ve got a huge skills base and everything that we’re looking at about development also is about the skills and employment because we want to develop our indigenous population with the skills that we need for the future. One of those opportunities might be for somewhere in the city region to look at manufacturing these new pre-fabricated units.”
Mr Rotheram’s manifesto promised to prioritise "modern methods of construction" as one way to increase housing delivery in the city region.
