Councils across the UK have abandoned projects involving modern methods of construction (MMC) amid issues around cost and quality, a UK parliamentary committee has heard.
Many councils now have a “pretty negative view” of MMC projects and have done away with them entirely, Anna Clarke, director of policy and public affairs at the Housing Forum, said in an evidence session in Westminster on Tuesday (4 March).
In a meeting she attended on Monday (3 March) with councils, “almost all” said they had tried MMC projects and would not try them again, Clarke told the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee.
Of particular concern was the higher costs associated with MMC projects. But Clarke also said councils did not find MMC projects were of a higher quality than traditional builds, as had been promised.
“In theory, you can control quality in factories, [but] that wasn’t their experience on the ground,” she said.
“Some of that quality issue was around the interface between the unit and the groundworks and how it plugs in effectively.”
She also flagged concerns around the high number of MMC firms that had gone bust in recent years, which had made a lot of councils “nervous”.
“They said, ‘we’ve been bitten, we’re not doing that again’,” she said.
Despite a strong start from MMC firms, some of the biggest names in the business have stopped using MMC methods, or collapsed into administration altogether.
In October, TopHat announced it would wind down its modular housing operations, weeks after modular specialist ModPods International appointed administrators.
Urban Splash House, Ilke Homes and Caledonian Modular also failed in recent years.
But Clarke said she sees a future for modular homes in the years beyond this Parliament, particularly as plans for new towns start to move forward.
“If you’re building at scale, and you’re building a large amount of houses that are quite similar, and you’re prepared to be reasonably flexible about them not being bespoke, there’s a better way forward then,” she said.
Mark Reynolds, co-chair of the Construction Leadership Council and chairman at Mace, told the committee that MMC could provide the construction and property sectors with “a great opportunity”.
But he argued that a “guaranteed workload for a guaranteed period” is key to making MMC successful.
“They have to fill that factory 24/7 in order to be productive and efficient,” he said, adding that if the volume of work fluctuates, MMC firms can face difficulties.
Construction News approached the Local Government Association and the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government for comment.
The committee session focused on the industry’s ability to meet the government’s pledge to build 1.5 million homes this Parliament.
Reynolds pointed to three issues plaguing the construction industry – delays in the planning system, costly nutrient neutrality rules, and slow progress at the Building Safety Regulator (BSR).
Nutrient neutrality rules require new homes to be nutrient neutral in areas close to rivers with high nitrate and phosphate levels. Reynolds said the rules regularly cost small to medium-sized developers up to £1m in additional fees for projects, causing them to abandon the projects because they are not sustainable. “They’re just not going to invest the money because it’s too expensive,” he said.
He also warned that delays in the BSR had caused problems for housing projects. In particular, he flagged concerns that the regulator is taking up to 48 weeks to approve plans for medium-to-high-rise buildings of more than 11 metres in height.
Under the Building Safety Act 2022’s gateway two process, the BSR must review and approve full plans before construction can begin. The legislation stipulates that the BSR should complete this review within 12 weeks.
