January 2025 Overview – Andrew Bannister
Welcome to 2025! I hope everyone is well-rested and ready for the new year to come. We don’t know yet exactly what it will bring, but some challenges are already clear and indeed have been clear for quite some time.
For example, at the end of last year, we learnt two things about housing. First, that the Government has the ambition to see 1.5 million new homes delivered during the current Parliament, and second, that UK housebuilders do not think there are enough skilled people actually to build them.
This presents a major opportunity for capacity-building, but it needs to be the right kind of capacity. Certainly, we will always need some specialists in the wet trades, because the vast majority of our housing stock is made of bricks and blocks and most of it will still exist a hundred years from now. However, one of the best opportunities is in off-site manufacture, whether as components or modules.
The advantages of this are obvious. Compared with a building site, a factory can be safer, cleaner, can produce less waste, be net-zero in operation and more efficient. It is proof against bad weather and allows the same type of quality control which is achieved in the automotive and electronic industries – and quality control is still a challenge in traditional housebuilding. Done properly, it can remove the need for wet trades from site altogether by delivering weatherproof, fully wired, fully plumbed and even pre-decorated modules to site.
The UK already has a diverse ecosystem of modular house manufacturers but many of them are small business struggling to scale. The opportunity is for government and industry to work together in 2025 and beyond to grow this into a world-class industry that can play a major role in delivering those million and a half homes.
Finally, Local Government is a major stakeholder in approving, facilitating and sometimes providing social housing, which is one of the areas where supply is poorest. There is a chance for them, at all levels up to the Combined Authorities, to look for new ways of working in partnership with industry to build supply chains through innovative procurement, to complete the virtuous circle of local employment producing local housing to contribute to the national need.
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