Insulation specialist Actis has welcomed a new report urging the government to put modular building at the heart of its ‘build build build’ ambition
The report, compiled by the government’s MMC champion Mark Farmer and architect Mike De’Ath, says the government should set a target for 75,000 modular homes a year. This would equate to 25% of its overall target of 300,000 homes a year.
Mark Farmer and Mike De’Ath’s ‘Build Homes, Build Jobs, Build Innovation’ report states that such a move could create 50,000 jobs and result in attractive, well designed, quality, low and zero carbon homes.
The paper calls on the government to stimulate demand for the Modern Methods of Construction, thus giving investors confidence in the manufacturing process and ensures there is sufficient factory capacity to create the homes.
Encourage wider adoption of MMC
Actis UK and Ireland sales director, Mark Cooper, says the push to encourage far wider adoption of MMC is to be welcomed.
“The speed with which such homes can be built has two-fold benefits – accelerating the delivery of much-needed new homes, while at the same time addressing the shortage of skilled workers to build them.
“Added to that, quality is far better controlled, and they can be thermally superb, cutting carbon emissions and saving money and resources,” said Cooper.
Mark Farmer explained: “There are multiple market failures that remain to be overcome in growing modular and broader MMC adoption and at the heart of solving them is a need for demand led transformation, supported by greater coordination, aggregation and collaboration in the market.
“Quality must also always come first to ensure we deliver great homes in great places to live and the report showcases real examples of what is now possible using modern and innovative techniques.”
The report’s foreword, by former co-chair of independent government advisory body Building Better Building Beautiful, explains that mass production, while often used in a derogatory sense, can be a thing of beauty.
“The Romans had standard column sizes. Victorian homes use standard window sizes. And the Americans have been building attractive prefabricated timber houses for years.
“To those who criticise the result as ‘pastiche’ the response is surely yes, in just the way that Georgian London is a pastiche.”
