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Innovators challenged to help house and building sector reduce carbon
Scanlans adds to management portfolio P roperty management firm and surveyors Scanlans has added 68 energy-efficient homes in Leeds to its management portfolio. The development, on the city’s South Bank, is part of the Ironworks development in Holbeck Urban Village. The Ironworks development is a joint scheme by Igloo Regeneration and PfP Capital and is made up of 53 apartments, 15 townhouses, two ground floor commercial units and parking. Every home will have access to outdoor space via private balconies, rooftop terraces, hidden gardens and open spaces. Senior property manager at Scanlans’ Leeds office, Michael Willans, said: “This appointment demonstrates the growing strength of our Leeds-based operation as we continue to win new business across the city. “We are delighted to win the instruction of what will be a prominent residential block in the heart of the city.”
heating solutions
• Leveraging data from end users, infrastructure and networks to create new services and business models that accelerate the transition to net zero • Enabling active, interoperable control systems that delivers more efficient and flexible operation of the whole building & estate energy system • Delivering improved living environments. A shortlist of SMEs will be generated and must be available to attend a workshop at the Catapult innovation hub in Birmingham on the 5th and 6th of May. The closing date for applications is noon on the 30th March 2020. Julie Alexander, Director of Technology & Innovation at Places for People said: “Climate change is the most pressing challenge of our time, and with the construction sector and buildings being the most prolific polluters, we need to be much more determined as a sector to tackle this issue head on.”
S mall businesses are being urged to take part in a challenge to develop innovative products or services to help the housing and building sector improve its carbon footprint. Energy Systems Catapult (ESC) has teamed up with Places for People, Geovation and Pineapple Partners to offer business incubation and support to help innovators secure investment and unlock new routes to market. Successful SMEs will be part of the fourth intake to the Innovator Support Platform (ISP), which offers access to advanced energy system
expertise from across the ESC alongside a wider network of around 40 firms offering a range of specialist business support. The ISP aims is to help innovators unlock new routes- to-market, secure investment and breakdown barriers to growth, with at least two innovator challenges running each year. The Zero Carbon: Smart Buildings & Estates challenge could include innovators working on: • Integrating innovative low carbon generation or infrastructure technologies into the building or estate fabric • Zero carbon domestic
Councils under fire for missing targets
E ight local planning authorities will have some of their planning powers curbed after failing to meet strict government targets for building new houses. Figures published by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) also show more than 100 councils have missed targets. But eight authorities have been singled out as they failed to deliver at least 45% of the target number of homes the government deemed as needed in their area over the past three years. The authorities are the City of London, New Forest, North Hertfordshire, Basildon, Three Rivers, Eastbourne, Thanet
government was to hit its targets. She added: “The government has committed to delivering 300,000 new homes a year by the mid-2020s but, as these figures show, many LPAs will need to identify additional sites to accommodate the latest HDT results. This may also necessitate a strategic review of existing green belt boundaries or increasing densities on existing allocated sites. “Attaining the volume of housing needed to sustain the UK’s growing population requires a co-ordinated approach to viability, planning, investment and delivery and LPAs need to work closely with private sector partners to unlock unallocated and undeveloped sites, or face being stripped of some planning powers.”
and Havering. As a result, their planning policy will become subject to the “presumption in favour of sustainable development”. This means they will be forced to give greater weight to the government’s National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) relative to their local policies when deciding whether to accept planning applications. The figures showed that 218 LPAs were reported to have delivered 95% or more of the targets set for them and will face no action. Mary-Jane O’Neill, head of planning in London and the South East for property consultancy firm Lambert Smith Hampton said the UK needed a co-ordinated approach if the
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