6 INDUSTRY NEWS Stewart Dalgarno
potential to see 35,000 homes being deliv- ered by AIMCH partners across the UK each year. Stewart Dalgarno, AIMCH project
Offsite consortium aims to modernise construction
A £6.5m collaborative R&D project on offsite solutions to the housing crisis has been awarded funding under the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, administered by Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation. Labelled Advanced Industrialised Methods for the Construction of Homes (AIMCH), the project is a joint venture between Stewart Milne Group, Barratt Developments, London & Quadrant Housing Trust, Tarmac Trading, the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC), the Construction Scotland Innovation Centre (CSIC) and Forster Roofing Services in the role of the ‘SME partner,’ and the project will be managed by Limberger Associates. The three-year AIMCH project aims to tackle the challenges of the UK’s housing shortage, and become “a major player in the housing sector” by identifying and develop- ing the industrialised offsite solutions it believes are necessary to meet current and future housebuilding demands. These solutions will be trialled on live housing projects, with the intention that successful new methods will be commercialised and brought to market in volume. It is hoped that AIMCH will result in new digital design tools, manufacturing advancements, “improved near-to-market offsite systems,” and lean site processes. The goal of the project is to deliver homes at the same or less cost than “traditional craft” methods, 30 per cent more quickly, and with a 50 per cent reduction in defects. The group believes this project has the
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director and director of product develop- ment at Stewart Milne Group, said: “We need tens of thousands of new homes across the UK every year, but it’s also vital that these new homes are of a higher quality, leading to increased customer satisfaction and improved building performance. Digital working and indus- trialised offsite construction methods can be part of the solution, but they have not yet broken through as viable mainstream alternatives to traditional methods of building homes. “AIMCH’s ambition is to use industriali-
sation to transform how we build our homes in the UK, leading to more homes that can be built quickly and viably. We believe it will be the catalyst the housing sector needs to move towards advanced digital integrated manufacturing, whilst overcoming the challenges that stand between the sector today and where it needs to go in the future.”
England, and Graham Dalton, chief execu- tive of the Defence Infrastructure Organisation, have sealed the partnership by singing a Memorandum of Understanding. Through the signing, Nick Walkley says the partnership “will be able to work with local authorities and commu- nities to progress schemes faster and more efficiently providing homes where they are needed.”
Help to Buy uptake figures published
Partnership set to unlock MoD land
A new partnership with the potential to deliver over 10,000 homes across seven sites released by the Ministry of Defence has been announced by Homes England and the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO).
The partnership aims to combine the
DIO’s in-house expertise with the skills, people and finance of Homes England to help “unlock constraints, create greater certainty and speed up the construction of homes.” Throughout the project, the land will
remain in the ownership of the MoD, while Homes England prepares a site for development through planning and investment, with governance from DIO. The first seven sites under the new partnering agreement have now been announced. These are: Claro & Deverell Barracks in Ripon, North Yorkshire; RAF Henlow in Bedfordshire; MOD Site 4 in Stafford; MDPGA Wethersfield in Braintree, Essex; Swynnerton Training Camp in Stone, Staffordshire; Prince William of Gloucester Barracks in Grantham, Lincolnshire; and Chetwynd Barracks in Chilwell, Nottinghamshire. Nick Walkley, chief executive at Homes
Almost half a million completions have taken place since 2013 using one or more of the Government’s Help to Buy schemes, new figures show. The quarterly Help to Buy statistics
report that 494,108 completions have taken place using one or more Help to Buy schemes, over 93 per cent of which took place outside of London. 430,000 of these completions were made by first time buyers, who receive a £3,000 Government top up, opening 1.4 million Help to Buy ISAs. The average house price purchased through the schemes was reported to be £202,815. The most completions using the Help to
Buy ISA were recorded in the North West and Yorkshire & the Humber regions. In total, 194,379 completions have taken place across the UK since its launch in December 2015. The London Help to Buy scheme - which provides an equity loan of up to 40 per cent for buyers in the capital with a 5 per cent deposit – has helped fund 15,056 buyers across 33 boroughs between February 2016 and September 2018. Philip Hammond, Chancellor of the Exchequer, commented: “This Government supports those who dream of owning their own home, and wants to help them take the first step onto the property ladder. That’s why we’ve cut stamp duty and extended the Help to Buy equity loan scheme to run until March 2023, supporting half a million more home purchases.”
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