How to build a town fit for the future

There was a frank and forthright debate on how to develop the new towns and communities needed to meet demand, chaired by Lord Matthew Taylor, who stated at the outset of the session in the Futurebuild arena that housing estates tagged onto towns are ‘parasitic’.

“The question shouldn’t be how do we build a volume of homes, it should be how do you build sustainable communities”

Jackie Sadek, Chair of the UK Innovation Corridor upped the ante:

“We’ve had a housing crisis since government intervention in housebuilding stopped 50 years ago.

“The construction industry needs to be put on a war footing – we need an employment and industrial strategy to match the need for homes, not just a new towns programme.”

This is where Stevenage comes in –one of the original post war ‘new towns’ the region has secured more than £1bn of inward investment in the past decade, introducing huge international businesses and advanced science companies to the region using the UK Innovation Corridor to develop a leading location for life sciences and knowledge-based industries.

There was a stark warning about failing to offered a coordinated approach between town building and industry:

“We will have failed if we just create dormitory towns surrounding the cities that will rely on people commuting in for work.”

Other members of the panel were concentrating on how to make any new town developments future-proofed, fit for purpose and pleasant green places to live.

Clare Warburton, Deputy Director, Sustainable Development Portfolio Team, Natural England flagged a wide range of case studies where Natural England has been involved in implementing the best application of the Green Infrastructure Framework

Judith Sykes of the Useful Simple Trust outlined how to enhance existing transport infrastructure and services to develop town clusters so that villages and small towns are more linked up: “We have to avoid a legacy of disconnected housing that people don’t want to live in”

There was a galvanising message at the heart of the session:

“We now have a once in a lifetime opportunity to create great places – not just housing estates”

Improving energy capture in every home

What will those houses in these new settlements look like? With a huge push towards fitting new homes with renewable energy systems that don’t rely on fossil fuels, such as heat pumps, the way houses and buildings are powered is going to dramatically change in the next decade.

There are still blind spots, in a panel session hosted by the Sustainable Energy Association, there was discussion on how we can decarbonise heating and hot water – a huge source of wasted energy.

Tony Gordon, managing director at Showersave set out that domestic water is often overlooked despite being a large source of wasted heat energy in a home, and while there is a lot of uplift in heat pump installation, this won’t cover decarbonising hot water energy.

Devices available to capture energy from used hot water are being rolled out but there needs to be greater awareness among consumers.

James Chaplen, Head of Product Marketing and Communications, Mitsubishi Electric has confidence in the government boiler upgrade scheme – which is set to rise to £295m government contribution by 2026. But notes that the big challenge is 18 million homeowners could make a decision on how they heat their homes – that’s a huge market that needs to be shown and convinced about the energy saving case and that industry also needs to find a more attainable price point for the average consumer.

The view from the panel was unanimous – the heating sector needs to collaborate more and should emphasise that there’s no reason why two types of heating can work within a home if it gets homes working efficiently and reducing wasted energy.

The clock is ticking too. Currently, 968,000 homes a year will need to be retrofitted with appropriate heating solutions to meet the Government’s legally binding 2050 carbon targets. The SEA has a white paper on how we might get there.

What HS2 can teach the sector about recruiting a diverse workforce

What do we need to achieve these kind of numbers? Skilled people…

Heading over to the Building magazine Good Employers Guide launch event at the Royal Institution two passionate and informed panels grappled with the talent recruitment and retention challenge, and improving gender and diversity equity in the industry to meet the skills shortage challenge.

Ryan Jones has written a post with some of the headlines from the evening here. Although a much maligned on/off controversial project, the HS2 project may yet help to inform how we manage large scale delivery. Natalie Penrose, set out how the full rail project has 31,000 workers based across 300 sites – which meant that from the outset the project required a different approach to recruitment.

With it being a government backed project HS2 had diversity and gender workforce targets to meet – the whole project is almost at 40% female representation, and the scheme has brought 4,800 people out of unemployment and into the workforce.

Does HS2 hold the key to how we can approach manifest a workforce to build a whole new town in the next two decades?

The thinkers in the construction industry are starting to find the answers.