House ‘Built In A Week’ Could Help Solve Housing Crisis
The Liverpool City Region can be at the forefront of tackling the UK’s housing crisis as a house built in just seven days was unveiled as part of a new strategy to deliver zero energy bill homes, reports the Liverpool Echo.
To unveil the Future Homes LCR plan, a specially constructed house – made entirely off-site in the space of a week – was on display outside ACC Liverpool. The unveiling of the Future Homes LCR house coincides with the opening day of the Housing Community Summit, a joint event from the Chartered Institute of Housing and the National Housing Federation. The scheme is a public-private alliance which aims to accelerate the development of ultra-low carbon housing across the region, offering a sustainable solution to the housing crisis.
Leaders hope the plan will position the region as a centre of excellence for zero-carbon, low-energy-cost homes. Using Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) such as offsite manufacture, houses can be completed within a week and have estimated heating, hot water, and lighting bills of £124-a-year – or even zero, in some cases. The homes are constructed and part-assembled off site. The Future Homes LCR waterfront house was built using a light-gauge steel frame, clad with insulation and brick slips to create a super-insulated, airtight building with an energy performance rating of 100%.
The two-storey project was delivered by the Wirral- based Starship Group and will remain in place during the period of the Labour Party later this month. It will then be disassembled and rebuilt at Starship’s Wirral Waters campus and become a prototype house used to promote MMC, and for training purposes.
Cllr Graham Morgan, Liverpool City Region Combined Authority cabinet member for housing and regeneration, said: “We’ve got some world class providers within the city region. The building we’re in has been built by Starship on the Wirral, two weeks in the factory and two days to install. The facilities, you wouldn’t think you were in a modular build house. It’s well built, it’s well insulated and I think it’s the way forward. I’m not saying it’s the answer to all our problems but I think it can make a hell of a difference.”
Cllr Morgan added: “If we can win the confidence of the government, I think it can make a massive difference to the city region. We’ve got an excellent track record over the last few years in terms of doing things like the retrofitting of homes and I think we’re in a good place to deliver nationally. With every house that’s built, it creates one job. There’s a lot of people, the traditional house builders who may have to disappear off for days to a site, but this is all inside a factory and that may appeal to a lot of people like carpenters, brickies, you still need them.”
A development of 13 modular homes, Greenleas, is already underway in Wallasey on the Wirral, also built by Starship Group and supported by £195,000 from the Liverpool City Region Brownfield Land Fund and Homes England. The build is part of a broader ambition to harness modular building techniques to make full use of the 700 brownfield sites in the Liverpool City Region, which have the potential to accommodate 42,000 homes.
