An offsite factory that can create more than 1,000 homes each year has officially opened in Walsall by LoCal Homes. The 56,000 sq ft facility, which produces closed panel timber homes, was publicly opened by housing minister Kit Malthouse. The offsite factory is LoCal Homes’ second instalment in the West Midlands and is the result of a £1m investment from Accord Housing Association. It is likely to increase Accord’s delivery of new homes by up to 300%. The homes can be delive

Manchester Metropolitan University has outlined plans to knock down the John Dalton buildings and replace them with a new-build science and engineering campus. The 1970s-built 33,000 sq ft John Dalton West building and the larger 135,000 sq ft John Dalton East buildings sit to the north of MMU’s Campus. The university has now set out its plans for a £65m redevelopment of the site, which will see both buildings demolished and reinstated with a new-build home for the faculty. T

GEO|Design+BIM has revealed Hexagon Geosystems as a co-sponsor, to showcase its solutions that help document construction site progress and create measurable, as-built documentation. The GEO|Design+BIM event is planned to take place from 1st-2nd November 2018, in Amsterdam. With the theme “Enabling Tomorrow’s Connected Infrastructure”, key topics to be talked over at the conference include Collaborative Workflow, Digital Transformation, City Information Modeling, Open BIM, Di

A 90 second brief video reveals the latest designs for the cruise liner terminal set to appear in the River Mersey. An outline planning permission was granted for the scheme in April of this year and the city council has applied through Mersey Docks and Harbour Company for a Harbour Revision Order for the construction of the Jetty in the River Mersey. With plans to build the cruise terminal in the Liverpool Waters area, the build will include a state of the art passenger and

New research by the FMB (Federation of Master Builders) has shown that people favour building more co-living and micro-homes in urban areas as a solution to the housing crisis, whereas building on the greenbelt is the least favoured solution. The FMB surveyed at least 2,000 homeowners across the UK and asked if there is a housing shortage and if so, how best to address this. The key results are as follows: Two-thirds (66%) believe that there is a shortage of housing in the UK

The most recent report from the Town and Country Planning Association has shown that a failed planning system is delivering next to no new affordable housing in England’s most deprived areas. The report released today (11th October 2018), found that during 2016-2017, areas which have some of the UK’s lowest incomes such as Blackpool, Knowsley and Pendle saw no new affordable housing through the planning system. However, the affluent Vale of White Horse were able to produce a

JCB has revealed a record turnover and machine sales in 2017, as global markets continued to rebound strongly throughout the year. The Staffordshire-based construction and agricultural machinery maker revealed that its sales turnover in 2017 increased by almost 28% to £3.35bn (2016: £2.62bn), while machine sales increased to 75,693 (2016: 66,011). Earnings on an EBITDA basis soared by almost 19% to £341m (2016: £287m). Since 1975, JCB’s average return on investment has been o