Archive for category: General News

 

Parts of London’s green belt must be opened up to allow home-building if the capital’s housing crisis is to be solved, politicians were warned at a summit on Wednesday.Experts at the Centre for London think tank argue that while increasing the density of homes in the inner city and suburbs is crucial, the crisis can only be fixed by building on sections of the city’s rural ring.

They were joined by Tory Lord Shaun Bailey, who said “a politician, somewhere, is going to have to be brave about where we build”.

But Sadiq Khan’s housing deputy, Tom Copley, played down the idea, saying the mayor favours a “brownfield first” approach, while acknowledging that Labour have promised if they form the next Government to allow building on “low quality” parts of the green belt.

Established in 1938 to prevent uncontrolled urban sprawl, the capital’s green belt has grown to cover an area three times larger than London itself.

Speaking at the London Housing Summit, researcher Jon Tabbush said the green belt “comes from an era when we had different policies to deal with housing demand”, such as through building New Towns like Stevenage and Harlow.

“We don’t have that any more, so we have this restrictive policy framework, without outlets for growth,” he said.

He added that this is causing a “structural unfairness” for Londoners, who are being lumped with higher housing costs and are therefore likelier to be living in poverty than in most other English regions.

It is “not plausible”, Mr Tabbush said, to close the yawning gap between the supply and demand of homes by only building more housing within London’s existing boundaries. While there is still “a role” for the green belt in providing a “more planned approach” for containing growth, he pointed to Denmark as a way of reforming it.

“In Copenhagen, they have what is called the ‘green fingers’ approach. They have a belt, but then they make sustainable, rail-led ‘incursions’ [of housing] outside the belt,” he said.

“That would be a perfectly reasonable way of doing it. If we centred it [new development] on rail [lines], it would end up looking like that anyway, with some gaps in the middle.”

Lord Bailey, a London Assembly member who stood for mayor in 2021, made similar remarks at the summit, saying there was a need to be “realistic” about the supply of land in London.

“When you say ‘green belt’ to the public, they imagine the rolling hills or the Yorkshire Downs or whatever it is,” he said. “Lots of it, particularly round big cities like London, don’t look like that.

“I think, as a group of professionals, we’re going to have to start having that conversation with people. What do you want? Do you want a park, or do you want a house for some of the most vulnerable people in London?”

But Mr Copley, the deputy mayor for housing, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS):

“In London we’re quite clear about being ‘brownfield first’. We absolutely have to prioritise building on brownfield land.”

Pressed on whether that would solve the housing crisis on its own, he said: “Brownfield land is a recyclable resource. We’ve got to be looking at building on vacant brownfield sites, intensifying areas that are already built on, as well as looking at how tall buildings should be.”

On the wider question of liberalising building restrictions in the green belt, the deputy mayor said planning laws were ultimately set by the Government, adding:

“It is no secret that the Labour party has been talking about what they are calling the ‘grey belt’.

“Should the Labour party win the next election, we would obviously have to understand what that would mean for London, but this is a national planning policy designation.”

The mayor was criticised by Lord Bailey for the slow rate of progress in London’s latest affordable housing programme, which has a minimum target of starting construction on 23,900 homes by March 2026.

“He has £4bn [of Government funding] for his affordable housing programme between 2021 and 2026,” said Lord Bailey.

“He’s halfway through, and he’s only built [started work on] 1,700 of those homes. He needs to get on that.”

The programme was meant to begin in 2021 – but City Hall said “no homes could start [construction] until the second half of last year” due to Government delays in signing off the funding for the programme, which took until July last year.

They said “delivery is now underway and will ramp up as in previous programmes”, with Mr Copley telling the LDRS he is “very confident” of hitting the target.

According to a survey by Savanta, 62 per cent of Londoners say the capital’s housing market does not work for people like them, compared with 22 per cent who say it does.

Some 50 per cent are supportive of the Centre for London’s proposals to build on parts of the green belt, while 19 per cent are opposed.

Source: Harrow Online

Stuart Dale, Key Account Sales Director for FAAC Entrance Solutions UK, has been elected as the new Chair of the Automatic Door Association.

He will undertake the role, providing strategic guidance and input to support the key deliverables of the association over the next two years. Stuart takes over from Mark Ayton, Managing Director of Record UK who previously held the position.

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Stuart is the guest on the next ADSA Tech Talk podcast which can be downloaded by CLICKING HERE  and most streaming services

 

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Stuart, has worked in the automatic door industry for almost 20 years, having previously worked in sales within the engineering sector. He has been a member of the ADSA executive committee for the past five years – an involvement which he considers has prepared him for this new role.

“The executive committee provides leadership and guidance to the association to ensure that it operates effectively and in line with its objectives. In taking on the role of chair, I hope to extend my support to the leadership team, and advocate in the interests of those involved in the automatic door industry – manufacturers, suppliers and engineers,” he said.

Stuart, who is from Manchester, trained as an apprentice electrical engineer at Weir Pumps and attended Openshaw Technical College, gaining industry standard qualifications.  A role in service sales with the Crawford Group followed, before a move into the automatic door industry with Mandor Engineering in 2004.

He joined Record UK in 2010 as Regional Sales Manager and was Sales Director with March Doors before joining FAAC UK almost 10 years ago.

He said among his career highlights was how his company responded to changing demands during the COVID pandemic.

 

“One of our customers, who became an essential retailer, wanted to ensure a safe flow of people in and out of their stores. The team at FAAC were able to design and implement a traffic light system within a three month period, from conception through to install, which was then put into over 1000 stores,” he recalled.

 

Stuart is married to Lindsey and has two children, Alfie and Ruby, aged 19 and 14. Outside of work he enjoys watching football and is a lifelong fan of Manchester United.

He is looking forward to working with the ADSA team to further help the association to grow and meet its requirements to boost industry-wide competency levels and raise awareness of security and safety standards.

Said ADSA MD Ken Price:

“We look forward to working with Stuart and tapping into his knowledge of sales and marketing to ensure that the association continues to meet the needs of its members, its customers and end users.”

 

 

 

_{SSE’s Viking Wind Farm in Shetland.Photo: SSE}

The Viking Wind Farm on Shetland has produced its first power.

The wind farm, with a capacity of 443MW, is expected to become the UK’s most productive onshore wind farm when fully operational.

The final turbine was installed in August 2023, and the project is now in the commissioning phase.

Full commercial operations are expected by late summer 2024.

The wind farm will generate enough electricity to power nearly half a million homes annually.

The milestone coincides with the Shetland High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) subsea cable project nearing completion, set to connect Shetland to the GB electricity grid for the first time.

This connection will support energy security and enable further renewable energy development in the region.

Heather Donald, SSE Renewables’ Onshore Renewables Development and Construction Director, said: “This latest milestone is another step towards cleaner, more secure, homegrown power for Shetland, Scotland and the UK.”

John Scott, SSEN Transmission’s Programme Director, said: “Full energisation, linking Shetland to the GB transmission system for the first time will be crucial in delivering Shetland’s energy security as well as enabling extensive renewable generation development and export.”

Source: Energy Live News

 

 

If they don’t come, they can’t build it.

 

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and opposition leader Keir Starmer tout ambitious plans to ease Britain’s chronic housing shortage by adding more new homes. But with little hope of luring builders from abroad, the plunge in the number of domestic construction workers will ensure those remain empty election promises.

 

Starmer told, opens new tab a televised debate on Tuesday that Britain’s dream of homeownership has “all but gone” due to sky-high prices caused by a lack of housing supply. If his Labour party wins the July 4 election – as seems likely given its 22-percentage-point lead in the polls – he has pledged, opens new tab to build 1.5 million new homes over five years. That’s remarkably similar to the government’s estimate, opens new tab that the country needs 300,000 new homes a year.

 

Both parties’ diagnosis is correct. UK first-time homebuyers face the most difficult financial environment in 70 years, according to a recent report by the Building Societies Association. That’s because real wages, discounted for inflation, have stagnated over the past 15 years but house prices have risen by around 80%, according to official figures.

 

Yet Sunak and Starmer don’t base their proposed solution on solid ground. Their pledges to “get Britain building again” overlook a simple fact: there aren’t enough workers to do that.

In the first quarter of this year, there were fewer than 2.1 million construction workers in Britain. That’s the lowest level since 2001, when just 146,700 new homes were built. The biggest loss of workers occurred during the pandemic, when building activity plunged. More than 346,000 construction jobs have disappeared since 2019. Noble Francis, economics director at the Construction Products Association, estimates that construction vacancies are currently 42% higher than the average of 2018 and 2019.

 

On top of that, the number of new houses is already behind the politicians’ target – only 234,400 net homes, subtracting demolitions and conversions, for example into offices, were built in 2022-23, government figures show, opens new tab. And given the lack of workers, the CPA forecast a drop in new housing volumes to around 180,000 in each of the next two years.

 

Better training would alleviate this problem but only over the long run. A shorter-term solution – immigration – is currently anathema to both parties. Without either, though, an unprecedented surge in housing activity is a pipe dream. A more realistic approach would be to ensure that house prices don’t grow faster than earnings by changing lending rules, taxation and planning permissions.

 

Once the electioneering ends, whoever lives in 10 Downing Street – an old home not available to first-time buyers – will have to start building a better housing policy.

 

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told a televised debate with opposition leader Keir Starmer on June 4 that the Conservatives had built 1 million homes since 2019. Starmer countered that a Labour government would build 1.5 million homes in five years.

The two were meeting in the first live debate ahead of a general election on July 4.

Source: Reuters

 

 

 

Growth in the UK construction sector gained momentum during May, with activity and new business increasing at sharper rates than in April. Rising workloads prompted renewed expansions in purchasing activity and employment, while business confidence also strengthened.

Supply-chain conditions continued to improve amid reports of good stock availability at vendors. This contributed to the pace of input cost inflation slowing to a marginal pace.

The headline S&P Global UK Construction Purchasing Managers’ Index™ (PMI^®) – a seasonally adjusted index tracking changes in total industry activity– posted above the

50.0 no-change mark for the third month running in May to signal a sustained expansion in activity midway through the second quarter of the year. Moreover, the index rose to 54.7 from 53.0 in April, pointing to a marked increase in activity that was the fastest for two years.

For the first time since May 2022, all three monitored categories saw activity increase during the month as housing activity returned to growth. The expansion in activity on residential projects was only marginal, however. The sharpest increase in activity was seen in the commercial category where the rate of growth accelerated to a two-year high. Meanwhile, civil engineering activity rose at a solid, but slightly softer pace.

According to respondents, the latest increase in total construction activity reflected sustained growth of new orders. New business rose for the fourth consecutive month, and at a solid pace that was the fastest for a year as demand conditions improved. In particular, firms linked higher new orders to the winning of new contracts and the commencement of previously delayed projects.

With new order growth sustained midway through the second quarter, construction firms increased employment for the first time in five months. Although only modest, the pace of job creation was the sharpest since last September.

 

COMMENTS:

Andrew Harker, Economics Director at S&P Global Market Intelligence, said:

“The UK construction sector looks to be building good momentum as we approach the middle of 2024, highlighted by activity increasing at the fastest pace in two years during May. Particularly pleasing was the broad-based nature of the rise in activity as work on housing projects increased for the first time in more than a year-and-a-half.

“Firms are gearing up for further growth in the months ahead, posting renewed expansions in both employment and purchasing activity as workloads increase.

“Moreover, the supply-chain environment continued to improve in May. Companies were able to secure inputs much more quickly than in April and at prices that were only slightly higher than in the previous month on average. These factors should help constructors in their efforts to ramp up operations in line with greater new order inflows.”

Jordan Smith, technical director at Thomas & Adamson, said:

“The Construction PMI figures are encouraging, but there is a lot going on beneath the surface. We’re certainly beginning to see more stability and signs of future growth. However, the market is still challenging, with a number of projects either being paused, pushed out, or held at early design stages because of issues relating to cost, viability, and the level of returns on investment.

“Cost increases are stabilising, but they are still on the rise, driven by material shortages, a tight labour market, and limited supply chain capacity. Careful consideration towards cost management and the overall approach to projects remains key to mitigate risk.

“Mechanical and electrical services are still being particularly affected, with continued anticipated cost increases greater than other trades causing budgetary issues on a number of projects. This is largely due to material and labour shortages and limited capacity within specialist supply chain resources.

“Levels of activity are generally mixed across different sectors. Whilst we are seeing a lot happening in refurbishment, commercial fit out, and the public sector, for example, there are challenges identifying suitable sites for residential developments despite the strong levels of demand outweighing supply. Reductions to NHS budgets have hit the development of new facilities planned in the healthcare sector too.

“Nevertheless, looking ahead we are cautiously optimistic about the remainder of 2024.”

Fraser Johns, finance director at Beard, said:

“A two-year high in activity in the commercial sector certainly makes for fantastic reading – as does positive performances across construction more broadly. In particular, a return to growth in housing will be most welcome for those firms reliant on the sector, who have endured considerable challenges as supply has waned.

“From our viewpoint, clients certainly haven’t been shy in committing to new projects, and both regional and national frameworks continue to provide us with a healthy pipeline of new work. We are really encouraged by the prospects for the remainder of the year, particularly given the momentum we are seeing in the commercial space.

“Of course, with a date now set for the general election, some clients may well take a wait and see approach before making any big commitments. It will also be interesting to see what impact this has on infrastructure new work with potential changes to public sector spending. Nonetheless, it’s still positive to see firms across the sector gearing up for growth and expecting a positive second half of the year. We are certainly in this camp at Beard with strong order books across our five regional offices.”