Social landlords are often under pressure to build high quality, best value housing quickly. Traditional house builders are finding skill shortages in many areas that puts pressure on house building costs.
There is a solution that provides an ideal alternative to social landlords wishing to build new housing quickly and efficiently – off-site construction. With many UK manufacturers now using state of the art manufacturing techniques in modern, highly automated factories, off-site construction has come a long way in recent years, offering landlords high quality and cost effective solutions for house building.
This is where LHC can help. Our free to use framework agreement for Off-site Construction of New Homes (design, manufacture, supply and erection) is available for public sector organisations in England, Wales and Scotland. For Wales, this framework offers a selection of 5 companies, that can service all regions whilst adhering to our strict quality standards.
Fully OJEU compliant, the framework provides local authorities and housing associations with easy access to off-site manufactured volumetric and panelised building systems for the use in new home build projects. The framework includes the option of a turnkey solution including design, manufacture, supply, installation and construction services. Alternatively, a supply option excluding construction services is also available.
Offering a supply only, as well as a full turnkey solution, the framework offers our clients flexibility of choice. The companies appointed to service this new framework meet the strict LHC requirement of offering superior quality while offering competitive pricing.
I would recommend that anyone interested in finding out more should attend our Factory Fortnight event in February 2016. This event will offer clients the opportunity to visit off site factories and find out about the benefits of modern off-site building techniques.
For further information or to register for Factory Fortnight please visit : www.lhc.gov.uk. Alternatively contact Noel Shapton directly on 07867 428777 or email noel.shapton@lhc.gov.uk.
Noel Shapton
LHC (London Housing Consortium)
Tuesday 15 December 2015
Monday 14 December 2015
No Cold Homes campaign
“Being on a meter has made me very aware of how much money is spent on energy. We make a conscious effort to use the bare minimum and check the meter every morning and night so we are constantly aware of what we are using. I dread the winter.”
“I feel guilty every time it is cold and the children have to sit with blankets around them because I am too worried to put the heating on.”
These are just a couple of the stories we’ve heard as part of our No Cold Homes campaign. As a charity fighting UK poverty, we know that millions of people are struggling to pay their energy bills and keep their homes warm - often going without food and other essentials.
As part of our campaign, we found that almost two-thirds (64%) of low income households in Wales are struggling with their energy costs, despite being in work. A huge 85% feel they will have to cut back on, or not use their heating this winter, whilst over two-fifths (42%) said they would resort to cutting back on food. Two-fifths (40%) anticipate that their energy bills will cause further stress and worry over the coming months.
It’s clear that more needs to be urgently done to tackle these serious problems and one way to help is by raising awareness. More than half (56%) of those households struggling in Wales have done so for more than a year, yet only 16% have told their energy supplier about their situation, and only 4% have turned to an advice organisation for help.
Through our campaign, we want to make sure that the help available gets to where it’s needed. We’ve been working in partnership with other charities and organisations to spread the word amongst their networks. Alongside working households, we know many other groups will suffer this winter too, and we want to reach as many people as we can.
Anyone who is worried about their energy costs this winter can use our free Benefits Calculator to check if they are entitled to any welfare benefits and tax credits, our Grants Search to see if they could be eligible for support from over 3,000 charitable funds, and find information on further sources of help including charitable trusts from energy companies, the Warm Home Discount and the Winter Fuel Payment.
We hope that our campaign will help to create more noise around fuel poverty issues and the help available, so that more people can find support that could make all the difference this winter and beyond.
For more information, please visit www.turn2us.org.uk/NoColdHomes.
Simon Hopkins
Chief Executive of Turn2us
“I feel guilty every time it is cold and the children have to sit with blankets around them because I am too worried to put the heating on.”
These are just a couple of the stories we’ve heard as part of our No Cold Homes campaign. As a charity fighting UK poverty, we know that millions of people are struggling to pay their energy bills and keep their homes warm - often going without food and other essentials.
As part of our campaign, we found that almost two-thirds (64%) of low income households in Wales are struggling with their energy costs, despite being in work. A huge 85% feel they will have to cut back on, or not use their heating this winter, whilst over two-fifths (42%) said they would resort to cutting back on food. Two-fifths (40%) anticipate that their energy bills will cause further stress and worry over the coming months.
It’s clear that more needs to be urgently done to tackle these serious problems and one way to help is by raising awareness. More than half (56%) of those households struggling in Wales have done so for more than a year, yet only 16% have told their energy supplier about their situation, and only 4% have turned to an advice organisation for help.
Through our campaign, we want to make sure that the help available gets to where it’s needed. We’ve been working in partnership with other charities and organisations to spread the word amongst their networks. Alongside working households, we know many other groups will suffer this winter too, and we want to reach as many people as we can.
Anyone who is worried about their energy costs this winter can use our free Benefits Calculator to check if they are entitled to any welfare benefits and tax credits, our Grants Search to see if they could be eligible for support from over 3,000 charitable funds, and find information on further sources of help including charitable trusts from energy companies, the Warm Home Discount and the Winter Fuel Payment.
We hope that our campaign will help to create more noise around fuel poverty issues and the help available, so that more people can find support that could make all the difference this winter and beyond.
For more information, please visit www.turn2us.org.uk/NoColdHomes.
Simon Hopkins
Chief Executive of Turn2us
Thursday 3 December 2015
Welsh Apprentice Challenge - hear from the winning mentor!
The first ever Welsh Apprentice Challenge was launched at Community Housing Cymru's Annual Conference on 19th November. 15 apprentices were nominated from all over Wales and were split into three teams. Each team faced the following challenge:
How can we promote housing as a career of choice for young people?
During their research, the team failed to find any delegates who had consciously made the decision at school to go in to housing, nor any member of the public on the streets in Cardiff that had considered housing as a career. The team highlighted that other sectors, such as the Army, had very effectively developed marketing and advertising demonstrating that there is a far wider variety of roles in the Army than fighting at the front line.
As the other teams also referred to on the final day, an obvious approach to engaging younger people is through social media. Emily pointed out that, according to research, young people look at their phones over 160 times a day. This means that using Twitter, Snapchat and LinkedIn would be far more productive than leaflets and advertisements.
The team members themselves demonstrated the wide variety of job opportunities available as they were from such varied roles such as a gas engineer, business administrators, a carpenter and a plumber.
After two days of discussing, researching, preparing and practising, it was finally time to present the team's ideas to the Annual Conference delegates. All three team members did a fantastic job of presenting their ideas, then it was over to the delegates to choose the winner... it was a win for Team 3!
Lots of conference attendees have commented that the Apprentice Challenge was the highlight of the conference, and I certainly got a lot out of it along with my fellow mentors. Most importantly, the apprentices themselves thoroughly enjoyed the experience and felt that their confidence grew throughout the two days.
Come to housing and find a home for your talents!
Jason Wroe
Newydd Housing Association
Newydd Housing Association
Tuesday 1 December 2015
Helping people to live independently
The Supporting People Programme Grant means people get help in their own communities without adding extra costs and pressure to public services.
I recently stopped a Torfaen man from being illegally evicted from his flat and becoming homeless. This would have worsened his mental health issues and put him in unsuitable accommodation.
His privately rented flat was flooded and his landlord moved him to another home. During one of my support visits, I was checking his letters and he showed me a three-month eviction notice. I could see it had been illegally post-dated.
This had been making him anxious. He is bi-polar, schizophrenic and has anger management issues.
I spoke to his landlord who wasn’t very happy that I had spotted what he had been trying to do. The extra time meant that we could get his application into Homeseeker ready to start bidding for a new place to live.
I supported him through this and, in a lovely coincidence, a flat that he lived in many years ago became available and his application was successful.
He couldn’t manage the contact with the different agencies such as removals, housing benefit, the health charities and the Department for Work and Pensions. My work with him made sure it was smooth and he knew what was happening at every step.
He is meeting all of his support outcomes which we agreed when I began working with him. It won’t be long before I stop seeing him and take on another person to help live independently.
Amanda James
Support Officer, Bron Afon Community Housing
I recently stopped a Torfaen man from being illegally evicted from his flat and becoming homeless. This would have worsened his mental health issues and put him in unsuitable accommodation.
His privately rented flat was flooded and his landlord moved him to another home. During one of my support visits, I was checking his letters and he showed me a three-month eviction notice. I could see it had been illegally post-dated.
This had been making him anxious. He is bi-polar, schizophrenic and has anger management issues.
I spoke to his landlord who wasn’t very happy that I had spotted what he had been trying to do. The extra time meant that we could get his application into Homeseeker ready to start bidding for a new place to live.
I supported him through this and, in a lovely coincidence, a flat that he lived in many years ago became available and his application was successful.
He couldn’t manage the contact with the different agencies such as removals, housing benefit, the health charities and the Department for Work and Pensions. My work with him made sure it was smooth and he knew what was happening at every step.
He is meeting all of his support outcomes which we agreed when I began working with him. It won’t be long before I stop seeing him and take on another person to help live independently.
Amanda James
Support Officer, Bron Afon Community Housing
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