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Lovell considers building offsite factory
A major affordable house builder is considering building an offsite factory in the East of England.
Lovell, the housing partnerships arm of construction giant Morgan Sindall, is setting up a group of local authorities mostly in the East of England, which are interested in purchasing modular housing.
With no factory in the area and a number of councils interested in offsite construction, Lovell could build a factory if there is enough demand. It is already working with King’s Lynn & West Norfolk Council.
Jonathan Goring, managing director of Lovell, told Inside Housing: “We’ve had a lot of interest. We’re in active discussions with other councils.
“Effectively, you don’t want to be transporting modular homes all the way across the country, so if you’re looking at a 70-mile delivery radius, for example, building a factory – and therefore helping them with their employment issue at the same time as giving them some modular product – would be a good thing.
“A factory can be as simple as a large industrial unit with a flat slab and enough power. It can be as simple as that. If we can guarantee a throughput of, say, 200-300 units a year, depending on what system we go for, then that makes it viable.”
Councils and housing associations wishing to pay for offsite construction have so far struggled to access the market and afford the high prices of many modular housing factories. In turn, factories have been forced to keep prices high due to a lack of regular income from customers.
Mr Goring added: “Modular construction will play a major part in addressing the need to build more homes – and build them more quickly. It allows us to not only halve delivery times but also achieve significant improvements on quality, predictability and sustainability.
“Lovell has considerable expertise in offsite construction, both in terms of delivering fully offsite manufactured homes as well as working with our supply chain to successfully incorporate prefabricated elements within more traditionally built schemes.”
In an interview with Inside Housing last week, the new metro mayor of Liverpool, Steve Rotheram, said he was considering building an offsite factory and employing local people as construction workers, so as to avoid labour being “sucked into London”.
