The need for an increase in the supply of new housing across the UK is now recognised as a key social and political issue but it needs to include housing for a rapidly ageing populations, says a new report. New home building needs to be widened with policymakers looking at how it can meet the needs of different buyers, especially older people, according to the latest Retirement Housing report from real estate firm Knight Frank. It points out that the population in the UK is expected to increase by nearly 10 million over the next 25 years, taking the total number of people to 74.3 million by 2039 and says that a rapidly growing population has ramifications for an already stretched housing market in the UK. But within this overarching challenge there is an issue which is becoming more pressing and that is providing housing suitable for an ageing population. Around 23% of the population are currently aged over 60. During the next 20 years this proportion will rise to 29%. This will push the median age across the UK from 40 today to nearly 43 in 2039, by which time nearly one in 12 people will be aged 80 or over, according to forecasts from the Office for National Statistics. In terms of housing, official data shows that households headed by older people account for nearly 30% of all dwellings. Of the projected increase in all households between 2012 and 2037, more than three quarters will be headed up by someone aged 65 or over, the report says. It explains that a significant cohort of home owners do not want to move house in older age, and instead will make changes to their current home to accommodate changes in their lifestyle and health as time goes on. ‘However, there are also a notable proportion of older people who do envisage moving house or downsizing to a home that better suits their requirements. This may mean moving to a more manageable property and moving to be much closer to amenities in the centres of towns and cities,’ the report adds. Specialist Knight Frank research shows that around 25% of those aged over 55 said they wanted to move into some sort of retirement housing in the future. This equates to around 2.5 million households. Meanwhile, a recent snapshot of buying intentions across 1,500 UK households within Knight Frank’s House Price Sentiment Index, produced in conjunction with Markit Economics, showed that 29% of over 55s planned to buy a property at some point in the future, while 35% were undecided. It adds that while some of these intentions may relate to investment property, the overall picture is one where the idea of downsizing is not being ruled out. It also explains that the UK housing market currently has a significant supply shortage, but the scale of the undersupply in retirement housing is highlighted when we examine the pipeline of new housing being built. Only 3% of new housing which has been granted planning permission is specifically for ‘elderly’ or ‘sheltered’ accommodation. Currently around 2% of housing stock is retirement housing according to research from the University of Reading. The current planning to development ratio suggests that around 5,500 retirement housing units are being delivered a year. In England alone, the number of households headed up by someone aged over 65 is set to increase by nearly 4 million over the next 20 years. Once levels of home ownership and desire to move are taken into consideration, data suggests potential demand for around 30,000 retirement housing units a year. ‘There is a need for an increased awareness and a shift in stance from policymakers to deliver the tools to the market which will boost the delivery of suitable housing for the increasingly discerning yet undersupplied retirement market,’ said Emma Cleugh, head of Institutional Consultancy at Knight Frank. ‘So this is a call for the Government to deliver some tools to the market to facilitate an increase in the delivery of retirement housing which is so very much required, thus benefitting all areas of the housing market and the wider economy,’ she added. BOOKMARK THIS PAGE (What is this?)      Source link

©Bloomberg Spiralling construction costs have stalled a series of residential building projects across London, with several developers seeking to renegotiate with planners on the grounds that their schemes have become unviable. A shortage of labour has driven London construction costs steeply upwards. According to contractor and developer estimates, they have risen by as much as 10 per cent in the past year and Arcadis, a consultancy, said they were now the world’s second-highest after New York. More On this topic IN UK Business & Economy Galliard Homes, a private developer with £3.6bn of projects under construction, said its Capital Towers development in Bow, east London, had become unviable in its current form because of “high build cost inflation in 2014 into 2015, with particular works packages inflating significantly beyond the average rates of increase”. It has applied for a cut in the payments it must make to the local authority in lieu of constructing affordable homes. The reduction in the obligatory payment aims to restore the developer’s profit margin. Loromah Estates, a developer building 71 apartments, late last year secured concessions from the London borough of Lewisham on its affordable homes contribution, on the grounds that “abnormally high construction costs” had made the project unviable. A 34-unit scheme in Woolwich secured similar concessions in May this year, citing costs. Another developer, Essential Living — which builds homes for rent — this year scrapped its main contractors on a project in London’s Docklands as part of a company-wide effort to control costs. But it still does not have a start date for the scheme, originally slated to begin in 2014. “This is a pretty widespread issue in the industry at the moment,” said Mark Farmer, chief executive of Cast, a planning consultancy. “There are some examples where schemes might not go ahead because of these issues.” Arcadis said in a report that “unpredictable patterns of high inflation affecting the cost of labour and profit margins have made accurate prediction of construction prices very difficult”. The rise in costs is particularly painful for residential developers in the capital, said Mr Farmer, since rapid price growth for new London homes has slowed and, at the top of the market, reversed. Michael Dall, chief economist at Barbour ABI, a construction consultancy, said: “The developers may have agreed the contracts in the halcyon days when it seemed the residential boom would never end and they were a lot more optimistic about margins.” However, he added: “Private housebuilding is still growing, still profitable and still a very good industry to be in.” Mr Farmer said a “self-checking” mechanism might take effect as “the big contractors in the market are starting to be a bit more concerned about biting the hand that feeds them”. A subsidiary of Galliard has applied to the London Legacy Development Corporation, a planning authority, to cut its affordable housing payment on the basis that its profit margin on the Bow project had dropped to 1.3 per cent from a planned 20 per cent when it initiated the project. The application was first reported by Vice News. Galliard said in a statement: “This particular viability has been materially affected by sharply increased construction costs during the build programme.” Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2016. You may share using our article tools. Please don’t cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web. Source link

Have you seen the world’s most extraordinary toilet? Published:  01 August, 2016 Lanes Group is on the lookout for some of the world’s most peculiar toilets – and they want to see your pictures. Ever visited a restaurant and been as blown away by the state-of-the-art toilets as the cuisine? Perhaps you’ve been on a hike and have stumbled upon a tranquil loo hideaway? Or maybe you’ve encountered an overly stylised sink and had no idea how to work it? Lanes Group wants to encourage everyone to get involved in its project to find the world’s most extraordinary toilets. So whether you’ve got an alternative bathroom at home, spotted one out and about, or if you’re a business that’s especially proud of your WCs, share your snaps and you could win a £250 Amazon voucher. You can submit an extraordinary bathroom or toilet photo by visiting the Lanes website. Michelle Ringland, head of marketing at Lanes Group, said: “We’re always gushing over ornate interiors but there seems to be one room in particular, both in the home and in public, that gets a bad reputation. This project is a real celebration of all of the world’s most inventive, bizarre and creatively stylised WCs, and we can’t wait to see your photos.” The project will run until 15 August 2016, with the best photo submission receiving a £250 Amazon voucher. Source link

Dame Zaha Hadid wearing the Royal Gold Medal – portrait by Sophie Mutevelian The globally-renowned architect Dame Zaha Hadid has this evening (Wednesday 3 February) received the 2016 Royal Gold Medal for architecture, the first woman to be awarded the prestigious honour in her own right.  Zaha Hadid is internationally renowned for her built, theoretical and academic work. Each of her dynamic and innovative projects builds on over thirty years of revolutionary experimentation and research in the fields of architecture, design and urbanism.  Given in recognition of a lifetime’s work, the Royal Gold Medal is presented by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and approved personally by Her Majesty The Queen and is given to a person or group of people who have had a significant influence “either directly or indirectly on the advancement of architecture”. Awarded since 1848, past Royal Gold Medallists include Frank Gehry (2000), Norman Foster (1983), Frank Lloyd Wright (1941) and Sir George Gilbert Scott (1859). RIBA President and chair of the selection committee, Jane Duncan, said: “Zaha Hadid is a formidable and globally-influential force in architecture. Highly experimental, rigorous and exacting, her work from buildings to furniture, footwear and cars, is quite rightly revered and desired by brands and people all around the world. I am delighted Zaha has been awarded the Royal Gold Medal in 2016 and can’t wait to see what she and her practice will do next.”  Speaking this evening, Dame Zaha Hadid said: “I am very proud to be awarded the Royal Gold Medal, in particular, to be the first woman to receive the honour in her own right. I would like to thank Peter Cook, Louisa Hutton and David Chipperfield for the nomination and Jane Duncan and the Honours Committee for their support. We now see more established female architects all the time. That doesn’t mean it’s easy. Sometimes the challenges are immense. There has been tremendous change over recent years and we will continue this progress. This recognition is an honour for me and my practice, but equally, for all our clients. It is always exciting to collaborate with those who have great civic pride and vision. Part of architecture’s job is to make people feel good in the spaces where we live, go to school or where we work – so we must be committed to raising standards. Housing, schools and other vital public buildings have always been based on the concept of minimal existence – that shouldn’t be the case today. Architects now have the skills and tools to address these critical issues.” Born in Baghdad in 1950, Zaha Hadid started her architectural journey in 1972 studying at the progressive Architectural Association in London. She joined her former professors, Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis, at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam, where she became a partner in 1977. By 1979 she had established her own practice in London – Zaha Hadid Architects – garnering a reputation across the world for her trail-blazing theoretical works including The Peak in Hong Kong (1983), the Kurfürstendamm office building in Berlin (1986) and the Cardiff Bay Opera House in Wales (1994). Working with office partner Patrik Schumacher, Hadid’s interest is in the interface between architecture, landscape, and geology; which her practice integrates with the use of cutting-edge technologies – the result is often unexpected and dynamic architectural forms. Hadid’s first major built commission, one that catapulted her rise, was the Vitra Fire Station in Weil Am Rhein, Germany (1993); subsequent notable projects including the MAXXI: Italian National Museum of 21st Century Arts in Rome (2009), the London Aquatics Centre for the 2012 Olympic Games (2011) and the Heydar Aliyev Centre in Baku (2013) illustrate her quest for complex, fluid space. Buildings such as the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati (2003) and the Guangzhou Opera House in China (2010) have also been hailed as architecture that transforms our ideas of the future with new spatial concepts and dynamic, visionary forms. In 2004 Zaha Hadid became the first woman to be awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize. She has twice won the UK’s most prestigious architecture award, the RIBA Stirling Prize: in 2010 for the MAXXI Museum in Rome, a building for the staging of 21st Century art, the distillation of years of experimentation, a mature piece of architecture conveying a calmness that belies the complexities of its form and organisation; and in 2011 the Evelyn Grace Academy, a unique design, expertly inserted into an extremely tight site, that shows the students, staff and local residents they are valued and celebrates the school’s specialism throughout its fabric, with student participation at every turn. Zaha Hadid’s other awards include the Republic of France’s Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and Japan’s Praemium Imperiale; in 2012, Zaha Hadid was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. She is an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Fellow of the American Institute of Architecture. Zaha has held various academic roles including the Kenzo Tange Chair at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University; the Sullivan Chair at the University of Illinois, School of Architecture; guest professorships at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg; the Knolton School of Architecture, Ohio and the Masters Studio at Columbia University, New York; the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor of Architectural Design at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut and the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Ends Notes to editors: 1. For more information, members of the press should contact: Howard Crosskey howard.crosskey@riba.org or call 020 7307 3814  2. Images can be downloaded from https://riba.box.com/s/khxkot3xbom5cawvx6w76yym7m9rom4v  3. For more information on the Royal Gold Medal, please visit https://www.architecture.com/RIBA/Awards/RoyalGoldMedal/RoyalGoldMedal.aspx 4. The 2016 Royal Gold Medal selection committee comprises RIBA President Jane Duncan with Sir Peter Cook, Neil Gillespie OBE, Victoria Thornton OBE and the 2015 Royal Gold Medallist John Tuomey. 5. The RIBA champions better buildings, communities and the environment through architecture and our members www.architecture.com  @RIBA 6. The

Category: Construction Industry Today | Subscribe to Construction Industry Today Feed Published Mon, Apr 18th 2016 ME Construction, the London-based specialist construction company, has appointed Wesley Lever as Head of its Specialised Works division. Posted via Industry Today. Follow us on Twitter @IndustryToday ME Construction, the London-based specialist construction company, has appointed Wesley Lever as Head of its Specialised Works division. Until taking up his new role in the company, Wesley had been working as a surveyor in ME Construction’s main works section for the last six years or so. Before that, Wesley worked as a surveyor for Bam Construction. “The Specialised Works division takes on a wide range of projects – each of which has its own particular requirements and challenges,” said Wesley. “Current projects range from refurbishing a medical practice to carrying out external works for a large estate management firm. “No two days – or projects – are the same,” he added. “That’s a challenge and a responsibility that I’m really looking forward to experiencing.” ME Construction’s Operations Director, Dennis Barnard, commented, “As part of our continued development as an organisation, ME Construction has – now under Wesley’s management – formed a Specialised Works division to focus on projects with values ranging from £5,000 to £250,000.” “ME Construction’s Specialised Works division delivers projects in the commercial, residential, healthcare, education, conservation, retail and leisure sectors, ensuring our clients obtain the same level of professional service provided by the business on larger value projects,” said Paul Driver, ME Construction’s Business Development Director. “Having identified a more effective and efficient approach to these projects, Wesley’s Specialised Works team can provide a client with a highly competitive service while maintaining the high level of quality that’s synonymous with the ME Construction brand.” About ME ConstructionME Construction – a specialist refurbishment contractor, active in London and the surrounding areas – was founded in 2007 to deliver high quality projects in a professional manner normally associated with the larger industry PLCs. It concentrates on the delivery of small to medium-sized projects – typically, not exceeding £4.5m. In 2012, ME Construction was recognised as the UK’s fastest growing privately owned construction company – and included in the Fast Track 100 list, published in The Sunday Times. In December 2013, ME Construction, was named in the Daily Telegraph’s list of ‘1000 Companies to Inspire Britain’. The list identified small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), drawn from over 100 sectors of the economy, that had been growing much faster than their peers.   Source link