Caerphilly based UK ventilation solutions provider Nuaire is proud to be sponsoring the Building Engineering Services Association’s (BESA) Clean Air Day event on the 20th June at The Wave in Bristol. The event, which is being hosted by the BESA Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) Group, will be based on ‘Shaping the Future of Healthy Environments.’
As part of the sponsorship deal, Nuaire will have the opportunity to present its ventilation solutions and engage with like-minded delegates who share a commitment to clean air. As well as senior Nuaire personnel in attendance, Nuaire will also be inviting key customers to the event, where they can gain valuable industry insight. This will include a presentation from the BESA IAQ Specialist Group which is driving change and shaping the future of air quality initiatives, plus an update on the BESA Schools Engagement Project on Ventilation and Air Quality.
Commenting on the decision to sponsor this year’s BESA Clean Air Day event, Nuaire Managing Director Meirion Richards said: “As the UK’s largest air pollution campaign, Clean Air Day provides an opportunity to focus attention on this very serious subject. It’s important people from all walks of life understand the health risks of air pollution, but it’s also important that, as industry professionals, we look at the solutions. BESA has been at the forefront of championing the cause of cleaner, healthier air for all and we are pleased to be supporting them on Clean Air Day”.
This year’s Clean Air Day focus is on transport. With cars and vans being the biggest source of NOx pollutants, Clean Air Day is asking everyone to take action to help make travelling in cleaner and greener ways. But when it comes to air quality within our buildings – where we spend the majority of our time – external pollutants are only one part of the problem. Pollutant sources within our indoor environments vary hugely, from cleaning products and cooking through to furniture and even the fabric our homes are made from. Little research has been done into indoor air pollution, compared to external pollutants, but what we do know is that good ventilation can disperse and expel indoor pollutants, as well as help prevent damp and mould from forming. Established in 1966, Nuaire has developed a comprehensive range of ventilation solutions for the domestic, commercial, and industrial construction sectors, providing occupants with clean, healthy air.
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Timber rooves held together with ‘glue and panel pins’ and materials that turn to ‘fragile Weetabix’ when wet are ticking timebombs in our school buildings, finds Jessica Hill of Schools Week
A swollen national debt, depleted construction force and baby boom after the Second World War made Britain desperate for new ways to build schools cheaply and quickly.
Many of the quick fixes – from lightweight cement to hollow concrete blocks embedded in asbestos – were then forgotten about for decades.
Now the Department for Education is finally commissioning a £4.8 million research project into the structural dangers of post-war buildings, two years after it was proposed.
Matt Byatt, the immediate past president of the Institution of Structural Engineers, believes there is “a whole legacy” of buildings that have been forgotten about.
“Several new technologies were tried and adopted in the 1950s and 1960s. Those buildings have not been maintained as well as they should have been.”
‘System-build’ stresses
Of the 64,000 school buildings across England, 13,800 (22 per cent) come under the loose banner of “system-build blocks”. There are 12 known types made from concrete, steel and timber.
Of these, 3,600 (26 per cent) “may be more susceptible to deterioration”, a National Audit Office (NAO) report last year found.
Like those made with RAAC (reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete), most system-build blocks are fragile structures, now at double their recommended shelf life of 30 to 40 years.
But repairing or replacing them often involves disturbing the asbestos buried within them.
As of last year, the DfE knew of six system-built blocks fully or partially closed since 2017 because of structural instability.
But officials don’t know exactly how and with what materials these post-war schools were built. The DfE’s own condition data collection surveys (CDCs) are only simple visual assessments.
Schools Week analysis of CDC surveys carried out between 2017 and 2019 found 987 system-built school structures referred to as “unknown” type.
Laingspan and Intergrid
Laingspan and Intergrid are two light-frame concrete systems that sit with RAAC at the top of the DfE’s priority list. They were used in the 1950s and 1960s to speed up construction and economise on steel, and were found in two buildings that closed urgently, one following the collapse of a wall, the NAO said.
The union Unison warned “there is the potential for a catastrophic collapse” of these structures.
In March, schools minister Damian Hinds said 24 schools had such buildings. All but one are now part of the school rebuilding programme.
Unison last year accused the DfE of knowing about the risks for “at least a number of years” but not communicating the risks with “staff, pupils or parents using those buildings on a daily basis”.
CLASP
Short for the “Consortium of Local Authorities Special Programme”, these buildings were prefabricated with a steel framework. There are 1,644 such school buildings in England.
Their structures make them vulnerable to fire, so asbestos boards lined the steel. They are also prone to crumbling and easily damaged. While some local authorities replaced them over the decades, others didn’t.
Former Labour schools minister Lord Knight chairs the E-Act trust. He claims one of its schools built using the CLASP system – Willenhall Academy in the West Midlands – is now “teetering” with weak foundations. Fixing the issue is a “£10 million-plus [job]”.
Scola
A similar system, called Second Consortium of Local Authorities, was used in the construction of 767 school buildings from the 1960s on. It was often poorly insulated, contained asbestos and had a 25-year lifespan.
A quarter of Scola schools were built in Hampshire, where the council admits they’re now “well beyond their estimated initial design life”.
Rather than embarking on expensive rebuilds, the council is “recladding” as its annual school capital funding grant of £23 million is “insufficient”. At current funding levels and pace of improvement, some of its Scola buildings will have to “wait a further 20 years to be improved”.
Folded plate timber roofs ‘held with glue and panel pins’
Some dangerous construction techniques only reveal themselves when it’s too late. Two school hall roof collapses in 2011 and 2019 were linked to the failure of folded timber roofs over school halls.
In both cases, the structural engineer who reported concerns to the safety body Collaborative Reporting for Safer Structures UK (CROSS-UK) concluded the end blocks were only held together with glue and panel pins.
They warned “a significant number of these roofs…could exist, and users of such buildings may be at significant risk”.
Another engineer reported in May 2023 how a 1950s primary school roof with an “unusual hybrid concrete and steel strand truss” in the north west collapsed with no warning. Its design was “inherently defective”.
Concrete crisis
It’s not just the RAAC that’s crumbling. In the past six months, four schools in North Tyneside have been found to have used an inappropriate pour of concrete – the “hollow block and beam plank” method. This led to their partial closure.
Concrete fell from a computer suite ceiling and multiple roof cracks were discovered in Fordley Primary School. The council found three other schools – Churchill Community College, Hazlewood Primary School and Grasmere Academy – had the same problem. They were built by different companies.
Jon Ritchie, the council’s resources director, describes it as an “extremely complex situation that’s occurred on a large scale” in the four schools.
Fordley’s headteacher Claire Withers says she’d be “very surprised” if the issue was “just limited to this area”.
She claims the DfE, which says the construction issue is “historic and isolated”, was “not very keen” for the council to share the problem more widely. But the local authority insisted other councils and academy trusts knew about it.
Some of Fordley and Churchill’s children are bussed to other schools, while Grasmere’s are crammed into other buildings and Hazlewood’s make do with outdoor toilets and a marquee.
Cardinal Newman Catholic School in Luton was also built using “hollow” concrete blocks. Cracks in the ceiling forced buildings to close with some pupils taught remotely.
HACC
Other schools were built using high alumina cement concrete (HACC).
In 1973, the collapse of Camden Girls’ High School’s hall roof in north London, blamed on HACC, prompted the hasty closure of some other schools. It was banned in 1976 because it degrades rapidly when exposed to chemicals or water.
IStructE warned in 1997 that “the matter of seriously defective HACC roofs does not seem to be widely understood”.
Woodwool and stramit
Woodwool – shredded timber bound in a cement paste – was used extensively in the 1960s and 1970s, often in the roof decks of system-builds.
It’s similar to stramit, a strawboard insulation made from fused wheat or rice straw used in the same decades. Both are flammable and often laden with asbestos.
These materials cause no problems as long as they’re kept dry. But that’s getting harder to do with the DfE estimating that nearly half of schools (10,710) are at risk of flooding. That’s expected to increase to as many as 16,394 by the 2050s, with scientists predicting severe storms to become more common.
Academy funding consultant Tim Warneford says water-damaged woodwool and stramit are the two biggest building safety issues that keep him awake at night.
He recently declared the sports hall at All Saints Academy in Bedfordshire a “no-go area” because of “vertical and horizontal cracks in the woodwool and the weight of rainwater pounding on their roof”.
A recent governors’ report for the school said “academy reserves will not cover the cost of repairs/replacements”.
Sean McGinty, a technical manager for Sike Roofing, describes stramit as being like “fragile Weetabix” when wet. About one in five of the surveys he has undertaken in schools finds stramit or woodwool in their structures.
“Like RAAC, [these structures] could collapse at any time,” he says.
Solar strain
In a cruel twist of fate, installing solar panels on rooftops is also creating safety concerns.
A 2021 CROSS-UK report highlighted “dangerous assumptions” in assessments for the instillation of solar panels in schools that did not take into account the existing structure and load of roofs and did not calculate additional weight correctly.
The increasing use of air source heat pumps and air conditioning condensers are also adding weight and strain to rooftops.
Modern methods of construction
National problems that led post-war school buildings’ problems – a swollen national debt and labour force constraints – have returned.
The solution has been modular structures built using modern methods of construction (MMC), promoted through government initiatives.
But at least seven such schools built or partially built since 2020 are now earmarked for demolition because they are structurally unsafe.
In February, CROSS-UK reported a “systemic issue” with modular timber frame systems, detailing six common flaws with their design and construction.
These include issues with fire stopping, structural element protection, protection of connections and, in particular, “cavity barriers to the voids created when modules are fitted together to form multi-storey buildings”.
Of the ten companies contracted to build schools in 2021 under the DfE’s £3 billion offsite schools’ framework, two have gone into administration.
An online brochure for the new Harrier Primary Academy in Essex, which gives an opening date of 2020, shows children playing at being construction workers laying bricks . But the DfE shunned the bricks and mortar approach to build the school, contracting Eco Modular Buildings Ltd.. The company collapsed in March 2023 and the school still has no opening date.
Eco Modular had also been contracted to build The Flagship School, a special school in Sussex which remains unfinished after an opening date of last September.
The school’s last Ofsted report from 2022 found “problems caused by temporary accommodation” meant leaders’ “capacity to do anything other than react to day-to-day events” had been “severely restricted”.
Preventing ‘floor rot’
James Emery, a sales manager for modular builders Wernick Buildings, says his company always ensures buildings have underfloor ventilation to prevent “floor rot”.
But he has visited schools built by other companies that “sunk the buildings into the ground without any ventilation”.
By the time problems emerge, the original contractors have “walked away” as their warranties have expired.
Caledonian Modular, which went into administration in 2022, built Haygrove School in Somerset, Buckton Fields Primary School in Northampton and Sir Frederick Gibberd College in Harlow, which were all ordered to close. Surveys found Sir Frederick Gibberd could not withstand “very high winds or significant snowfall”.
Byatt says it’s
“almost as though we’ve come full circle” with the “quick-fix” construction problems of the past.
He sees MMC as “a quicker, cheaper way to get you out of a pickle in the short term. But if they’re not maintained – and we know that these schools are not maintained because they simply haven’t got the budgets – then it deteriorates.”
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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.
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Oklahoma City Council has approved a rezoning application for Legends Tower, a supertall skyscraper designed by California architecture studio AO that, if completed, will be the tallest in the United States.
Yesterday, the Oklahoma City Council approved an “unlimited” height for the skyscraper, part of the Boardwalk at Bricktown development, which includes three smaller structures.
The decision comes after the initial approval for the height came in April from the city’s planning commission. Yesterday’s decision was the final approval hurdle for the tower.
The proposed plans for the skyscraper put forth by AO and developer Matteson Capital put the skyscraper as 1,907 feet tall (581 metres), significantly taller than the current tallest structure – the Freedom Tower in New York, which stands at 1776 feet tall (541 metres).
The project aims to “transform the city into a global destination”
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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.
Stuart is the guest on the next ADSA Tech Talk podcast which can be downloaded by CLICKING HERE and most streaming services
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.”
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Combilift Launches National Forklift Safety Campaign: “Lift Your Standards by Lowering Your Load”
Combilift, a global leader in material handling solutions, is proud to announce the launch of its new National Forklift Safety campaign, “Lift Your Standards by Lowering Your Load.” This initiative aims to enhance awareness and promote best practices in forklift safety across industries.
Forklift safety is of paramount importance to Combilift, and every year, we are committed to using National Forklift Safety Day (NFSD) as a reminder of how forklift operations can and should be safer than ever.
This year, the NFSD falls on the 11th of June and in line with this, our key messaging for the month of June will be focused on safe forklift operating practices.
Key Points of the Campaign:
Safety First: Emphasising the importance of maintaining a lower load height while traveling to improve visibility, stability and reduce accidents.
Training and Education: Offering comprehensive training programs to ensure that forklift operators are well-equipped with the knowledge to perform their duties safely.
Industry Standards: Advocating for adherence to national and international safety standards in material handling operations.
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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.”
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Adaptavate founder and CEO Tom Robinson stands in front of the new pilot line
for low-carbon and carbon-negative plasterboard at the company’s headquarters in Bristol, UK.
World’s first full-sized, carbon-negative plasterboard announced by UK construction disruptor
Bristol-based construction disruptor Adaptavate has produced the world’s first plasterboard to store carbon permanently.
This technology is Adaptavate’s latest development following the release of its low carbon technology. It could take approximately 1kg of CO2 out of the atmosphere for every m2 of plasterboard produced, meaning that this technology is absorbing and storing more carbon than it produces.
Adaptavate’s technology platform will equip the construction industry with cost-effective, drop-in and planet positive solutions.
Adaptavate, a global leader in the development and industrialisation of low-carbon and carbon-negative construction materials, has announced the production of the world’s first carbon-negative technology to produce plasterboards. The leap from producing low-carbon construction materials to now providing an additional carbon-negative product comes through the incorporation of char – produced by the pyrolysis of ligno-cellulosic materials. This locks the CO2 sequestered by plants into a stable state, and subsequently into the board, preventing it from being released through decay.
Incorporating char makes the current technology to produce Breathaboard genuine permanent carbon-storage, as an alternative to plasterboard which absorbs and stores more carbon than it produces. Importantly, this has been quantified by Adaptavate’s independent, industry verified carbon calculation tool to the latest EN 15804+A2 standard.
Adaptavate’s innovative technology allows for CO2 savings through both its product formulation and manufacturing methods. The company repurposes ligno-cellulosic wastes, combining them with minerals and a small amount of water to create a flat board material. Unlike conventional board production, this process requires no natural gas and can absorb low concentration CO2 in the curing process, which can be sourced from industrial emissions during the curing stage.
Tom Robinson, founder and CEO at Adaptavate, says:
“Our new carbon-negative and carbon-storing technology marks a significant milestone and step forward not only for Adaptavate, a business I founded a decade ago, but also for the global construction industry as a whole. Plasterboard is one of the most heavily used construction material after cement and steel, in an industry that produces around 40% of the world’s carbon emissions. As a former builder, the potential impact of putting carbon storing building materials in the hands of every builder, architect and developer around the world as a drop-in solution is massive in our global endeavour to decarbonise construction. This announcement demonstrates with a real-world example of how we can do this and have a successful business on a global scale.”
The development of this new climate-positive technology and the pilot line for the board’s production has been made possible by UK Government grants (Innovate UK), and investment from a group of climate-focused businesses dedicated to accelerating carbon removal within the construction industry, including Counteract, Perivoli Innovations, Low Carbon Innovation Fund 2 (LCIF2), and SEMIN Group.
Jeff Ive, CTO at Adaptavate, says:
“The production of full-sized permanently carbon-storing plasterboard is a major step forward for Adaptavate and the scale up of our regenerative material solutions. We have brought together a systemic solution for carbon dioxide removal that is required on a global scale, and matched it with a product that is used on a similar scale. With our licencing business model, we aim to deliver these systemic innovations at a rate that the planet needs them. The innovations’ development is thanks to the expert international team we have at our Bristol headquarters. With their knowledge, skills and dedication we have produced a game changing carbon-storing product with a comparable performance to the incumbent. The past few years of innovation in this space have been exciting for us, and we can see that this core technology has some important attributes that could be well used in a diverse product portfolio.”
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.
London’s brownfield sites could house nearly half a million new homes – what’s the hold-up?
London’s brownfield sites hold the key to solving the city’s housing crisis, having the space to accommodate at least 414,273 new homes
Across the capital, brownfield space covers a huge 3,515 hectares – around 25 times the size of Hyde Park
At present, only around half of the city’s brownfield sites have full planning permission for works to proceed – so what’s the hold-up?
New research reveals nearly half a million homes could be built across London on land that currently lies derelict amid a worsening housing crisis in the capital.
London’s brownfield space, defined as previously developed plots of land that are no longer in use, covers a vast expanse of 3,515 hectares – around 25 times the size of Hyde Park.
Analysis of local authority data from residential block and facilities management company SBA Property Management has found that the city’s brownfield space could accommodate a minimum of 414,273 new homes if put into use.
At present, however, only approximately 56% of brownfield sites have full planning permission for work to proceed, meaning there are thousands of sites standing unused without any plans for redevelopment. The news comes at a time of acute housing shortages across the capital, with many Londoners pushed into insecure or unaffordable accommodation.
In 2021, City Hall set targets of delivering 52,000 new homes a year, though so far it has failed to reach its annual goal on any occasion. Brownfield space could accommodate most of these new homes, however strict planning laws and high development costs have slowed progress.
Habib Mogul, Director at SBA Property Management, said: “London’s vast reserves of brownfield space hold the key to alleviating the city’s housing shortages and catalysing local economic growth, while also reducing pressure to build on precious Green Belt land.
At present, however, thousands of brownfield sites lie empty across London, with development made difficult by complex planning regulations. For private owners, speaking to a property expert can help clarify key aspects of compliance and accelerate the process of bringing derelict land back into productive use.”
Of all London boroughs, Southwark holds the greatest potential for brownfield development, containing the largest amount of brownfield space both in terms of area and housebuilding capacity.
Local authority data shows that the borough’s derelict plots of land could accommodate at least 54,550 new homes. However, just 37% of brownfield sites have full planning permission for development – well below the average for London as a whole.
Other boroughs with significant brownfield capacity include Brent, Wandsworth, Waltham Forest and Haringey, all of which could house at least 25,000 new homes if derelict land was put into use.
The incentives for developing brownfield space are strong as nearby amenities and transport infrastructure are often already in place, reducing the need for further development in surrounding areas. Bringing derelict land back into use can also provide community benefits by creating jobs, improving the environment and raising property values.
The challenge for private owners and public authorities is to overcome obstacles like site contamination and poor ground conditions that often make brownfield development costly. In recent years, the government has taken steps to reduce these barriers by delivering £180m in funding to councils as part of the Brownfield Land Release Fund.
Planning rules for brownfield development have also been eased, with local authorities instructed to be more flexible when reviewing brownfield planning applications, particularly in areas that are falling behind housebuilding targets.
The changes have been welcomed by the construction industry and should resolve some of the issues that have prevented brownfield development historically.
It is hoped that the relaxed planning framework can usher in a new era of urban regeneration, maximising the immense potential of London’s brownfield space.
https://buildingspecifier.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/BROWNFIELD-2.jpg320800Lynhttps://buildingspecifier.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/building-specifier-logo.pngLyn2024-06-06 11:17:482024-06-06 11:17:48London Brownfield could provide half a million New Homes
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