A group of housing associations in South Wales are considering setting up the sector’s first offsite housebuilding factory in the region.
Welsh housing associations consider offsite partnership
The consortium has made a successful bid to the Welsh Government for funding through its £29m Innovative Housing Programme, with the amount secured still to be decided pending a meeting with officials.
It will use the money to carry out research into the viability of a modular plant in South Wales and how the scheme could work.
There are five landlords involved – Coastal Housing, Pobl, Linc Cymru, Valleys to Coast and United Welsh – though the group are keen to open up discussions to other associations.
“Essentially there is a group of us looking at the economic and environmental possibilities of bringing a modular factory to South Wales,” said Gareth Davies, director of development at Coastal, which owns and manages around 5,000 homes in Swansea, Neath and Port Talbot.
“We’ve been talking about modular and offsite construction for some years but progress has been quite slow. I think we want to understand why that is.
“We don’t yet know what model it would be, whether it’s through a privately run firm or whether we would set it up ourselves.”
He said the group was also conscious of considering how a modular factory could impact on current development supply chains in the sector through existing contractors.
Original link - Inside Housing
