Twenty Thousand Homes? How?

Last week Gordon Brown, CEW's Director, facilitated the Structural Timber Association and Community Housing Cymru workshop to discuss exactly how 20,000 homes can be built in the lifetime of the current Welsh Government. Aimed at the whole supply chain from suppliers, erectors, contractors and members of the STA, Community Housing Cymru Group members to Local Authorities, RSLs and Welsh Government. The intent was to discuss and agree a collaborative strategy that will enable us to achieve the increased housing delivery targets set by Welsh Government.

The STA has recently commissioned an Annual Survey of UK Structural Timber Markets report which indicates there is capacity to significantly increase the number of timber frame homes we manufacture and erect in Wales. However, to do this, we need to consider. Key factors such as; improvement of procurement processes, addressing the skills shortages and the opportunity presented by offsite manufacturing methods to name a few.

The lively morning session resulted in numerous ideas on direction of travel, involving the entire supply chain from top to bottom and side to side. These should allow the Welsh industry to streamline the process and enable us as a sector to achieve this target of #20kHomes.

When challenged to be "1st Minister for a day" the room brought forward the following suggestions:

• Provide Standardisation by utilisation of the Pattern book;
• Quality assurance through STA Assure or similar schemes to provide Client reassurance;
• Leadership from Clients and what they require to provide this and
• Provision of a clear and secure work stream to drive the cost down by up to 20%.

These and other suggestions will be reviewed and actioned to be able to show progress before the STA's Conference on the 1st March 2018 – so watch this space!

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