Niche London developer Pocket Living has reconfirmed its commitment to modular housing with the practical completion of its latest scheme in London.
The £5.2m Mountearl Gardens project in Streatham Hill was designed by HKR Architects and comprises 29 one-bedroom apartments, three two-bedroom apartments and a wheelchair accessible unit.
The modules were completely finished internally in the factory with some minor finishing once on site. They were delivered complete with windows, doors, insulation, plumbing, wiring and ducting and slotted into place as final services were connected on site.
Sarah Davies, head of project management at Pocket Living, told CM that the group was already halfway through work on its next projects, Juxon Street and Sail Street, also in south London, which are both scheduled to finish in January 2017.
She said: “We’re already working on our next schemes which are both challenging in that they are geographically located near railway tracks in London, we’re using similar modules across all our projects but they are assembled differently for each scheme as is required.”
She added that last week Pocket also began construction on Wandworth’s first modular tower as part of the council’s affordable housing scheme – and it is believed it will be Europe’s tallest modular structure.
The 89-home tower project will be built as individual units on Mapleton Crescent near Wandsworth Town station. It is expected to be completed by summer 2018.
This drive toward the use of of offsite and modular methods comes as figures released last week revealed 189,000 homes were added to the housing stock in England in the last financial year, up 11% on 2014-2015. Of these, 163,940 were new build homes, up 6%.
While the figures demonstrate that the government’s plan to deliver one million homes in this parliament is on track, some believe there is still work to do.
Last month the government also revealed it hoped to step up its modular output, with plans to build up to 100,000 offsite homes. A white paper is expected before Christmas that should include measures encouraging banks to lend to offsite home builders.
