HOUSING
BROWNFIELD & OFFSITE DELIVERY
EDAROTH, a subsidiary of engineering, design and project management consultancy Atkins recently highlighted the scale and opportunity of ‘brownfield sites’ as a key part in tackling England’s social housing crisis with offsite manufacture an important element.
1 The white paper report ‘Unlocking Brownfield Land - A Social Housing First Policy’, found that there are almost 18,000 sites across the country, with the capacity to support the development of at least one million dwellings. With the most recent social housing waiting lists suggesting there is a need for about 1,114,000 homes, brownfield sites clearly offer a significant opportunity for the Government to develop affordable homes using faster, lowcost construction methods which are suitable for dealing with the unique challenges of building on brownfield sites. With a driving ambition of Everybody Deserves A Roof Over Their Head (EDAROTH), it is offering a new way to tackle the social and affordable housing challenge by developing offsite manufacturing techniques to deliver sustainable homes that also enhance communities and boost longterm living. “Due to the advances in modern methods of construction,” says
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EDAROTH Managing Director Mark Powell. “Brownfield land previously deemed too difficult to develop presents a unique opportunity to deliver social housing within existing communities. This will provide truly affordable homes with access to education, employment and opportunity, allowing people to live their lives in communities where they can prosper. To meet the challenge to provide the social housing that is needed across the UK, central and local government need to continue to embrace new ways to tackle the social housing crisis and innovative approaches including modern methods of construction and offsite manufacturing.” Often located within existing communities where low-to-median income households struggle to find truly affordable homes, redeveloping brownfield land for social housing provides an opportunity to provide improved access to local amenities, education, employment, healthcare and opportunity for residents.
WWW.OFFSITEMAGAZINE.CO.UK | MAY/JUNE 2020
EDAROTH’s report calls for In 2018 around 169,000 homes were built, of which only 17% (29,000) were delivered for social housing. In the same year there were 1,114,477 households on housing waiting lists, representing 4.04% of England’s households. Research carried out by Heriot-Watt University on behalf of the National Housing Federation ‘State of the nation’ report, published in September 2019, estimated 8.4 million people in England are living in unaffordable, insecure or unsuitable homes. ‘accelerated growth in social housing and a renewed focus on brownfield land development’, including: the adoption of offsite manufacturing techniques to accelerate the delivery of new homes across the UK and enable the development of brownfield land previously deemed too difficult to develop. The report picks out offsite construction in particular as a key tool to providing new communities quickly, noting that offsite developments unlock small parcels of brownfield land that traditional developers often find too difficult and expensive to consider. “In England alone it has been estimated that we need to deliver at least 300,000 new homes a year – a target not achieved in almost half a century,” adds Mark Powell, Managing Director, EDAROTH. “In addition, England needs to deliver 90,000 new homes every year for social/affordable rent – levels not achieved since 1980. We believe brownfield sites offer the potential to tackle social housing waiting lists across the country, providing development space for affordable homes in the places people and families originate, work and want to live.”