social housing

The Housing Forum has now published: ‘Better Procurement for Better Homes Supplementary Guidance’.
This supplementary guide offers advice on how to procure in a hyperinflationary environment
 
The key audience for the new supplementary guidance is local authorities and housing associations who are seeking to procure new homes in the current economic climate.

Inflation is now at a 40 year high of 11.1%, fuelled by rising energy costs and global supply chain difficulties. This has created an extremely tough landscape for procuring construction work, threatening the prospects for new housing development. The Autumn statement offered little by way of help for the housing sector facing rising costs and an uncertain market.

FrameFit is a brand-new, innovative, fire-rated, and fully tested system that solves a very common but serious problem with fire doors – excessive gaps between leaf and frame.

Current legislation states that fire doors with gaps of over 4mm between leaf and frame must be reported by inspectors as non-compliant, but despite this, a recent survey by one of the UK’s leading industry bodies reported that 75% of fire doors in the UK are non-compliant, and 77% of those that are non-compliant failed due to excessive gaps of over 4mm between the leaf and frame. Non-compliant fire doors will fail a fire risk assessment. This poses a threat to building inhabitants as well as asset owners, as compliant fire doors are required for effective compartmentalisation of a building to help stop the spread of fire.

Matt Sharp took up the post of Chief Executive Officer on 3rd October, taking over from Claire Heyes who has become Group President. 

CORGI Technical Services has appointed Matt Sharp as Chief Executive Officer. Matt has also taken up the CEO position at the Association of Safety and Compliance Professionals (ASCP) Group, for which CORGI are technical partners. He succeeds Claire Heyes who becomes Group President. 

There is a backlog in DFG and social landlord funded bathroom adaptations, however, thanks to the introduction of AKW’s new standalone cubicle, safe showering and toileting can be achieved more quickly than a traditional wet room or level access solution. Here Stuart Reynolds, Head of Product and Marketing at AKW, a leading provider of bathroom accessibility solutions, discusses why the stylish Onyx Care Pod has been developed and how it helps social landlords meet tenants showering and toileting needs more quickly and flexibly.

Will a new Prime Minister mean a new housing policy?

George Clarke has some helpful suggestions for our new Prime Minister

So, after yet another Conservative Party leadership contest Liz Truss has walked through the doors of 10 Downing Street and will remain in the top job until the next general election, which is currently set for December 2024.

She will be a sitting Prime Minister with no mandate from the British Public, so it is inevitable that an early general election will be called well before that date.

With the topic of air quality gaining in importance for end users and landlords, SIEGENIA’s compact single room heat recovery ventilation unit can now provide an even healthier indoor environment as it is available with CO2 regulation on request.

Ventilation remains an ongoing challenge not just for private developers and self-builders, but also for those of us undertaking any refurbishment works on properties. With increasing airtightness standards in the UK for new build homes and the focus on procuring the most energy efficient products, we end up creating nothing more than highly efficient sealed boxes. This may sound ideal (and from an energy conservation point of view it is) but without a properly considered holistic ventilation strategy, poor indoor air quality and issues of condensation and mould will ensue and become a recurrent problem for housing managers and landlords.  

The switch to non-combustible construction materials continues to impact housing, with ever-changing regulations leaving property managers looking for compliant and cost-effective options for fire-safety remediation projects across the UK. We spoke with Richard Izzard, managing director of AliDeck to see
how they’re leading the way in providing fire-safe aluminium decking and balcony components.