As we are all aware social value is a wide-ranging topic which has become more prevalent in the public sector since the inception of the Social Value Act (2012). The squeeze on public sector budgets has exacerbated the need for social value to help generate the desired value for money outcomes.
With the many challenges and pressures facing the housing market today – and in particular those faced by the social housing sector – it’s time for providers to start exploring new solutions.
Take up of Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) is slower for the social sector than amongst private companies, but mounting and almost overwhelming issues demand that all possible avenues are investigated.
Housing First is a housing led support approach which gives people with a history of entrenched or repeat homelessness their own home and unconditional, intensive support to maintain it. It was first developed in New York in the early 1990s and has since been adopted across the world. Finland, where Housing First is national government policy, is the only EU country to reduce street homelessness in the past decade.
In this article, David Harris, Managing Director of Premier Modular, looks at the drivers for the increase in demand for offsite building solutions and how the approach is addressing some of the key challenges in UK construction.
To say that the Covid-19 pandemic has affected us all is somewhat of an understatement, although some groups have been affected far more than others. Small charities are one of the groups that have suffered the most. Many of whom diverted their usual services to address the needs of their local community in the pandemic.
Housing construction, particularly within the public sector, is facing more challenges and pressures than ever before. We are all well versed in materials shortages, the skills gap, achieving net zero goals, and the need for more diverse housing solutions to meet the current demand. Finding solutions that combat more than one of these problems is becoming more important than ever before.
Despite now being well into my career, I still feel that Construction gets overlooked as an industry for the immense value it brings into all our lives. Indeed, without the built environment, what would we have?
All workplaces can benefit from the positive effects of a culture of diversity and inclusion, they are well documented with increases in productivity, creativity, and profits – the key message that many of these metrics miss is that at the heart of these numbers people exist. At the core of it, when your employees feel happy, comfortable, and safe to be themselves they perform better.
It feels as though we’re on the cusp of a boom in the adoption of modern methods of construction (MMC) in public sector housebuilding.
You will have read a lot about modern methods of construction (MMC). You may have even investigated where you can incorporate it into your plans. But if you haven’t introduced it to any of your projects yet, now’s the time, thanks to a significant development in government policy, says John Skivington, Group Director of LHC, the contracting authority for SWPA.
