Specialist developer, Pulse Modular Homes Ltd, has found an innovative way to help solve the housing crisis by building affordable new homes on urban car parks. With a multi-million pound scheme already underway in Scunthorpe town centre Pulse is currently working with a number of local authorities on similar schemes to transform town and city car parks into affordable accommodation using fast-track offsite modular construction to speed up delivery.
Research released in January 2017 by JLL Residential Research has identified almost 10,500 urban car parks in the UK as being suitable for accommodating 400,000 homes – enough to house around one million people. More than half of these car parks are in public ownership where local authorities could quickly initiate the construction of 200,000 new homes and in many cases without the loss of any parking spaces.
David Brown, Joint Managing Director of Pulse Modular Homes, commented: “There is a huge shortage of development land for housing in our towns and cities and the innovative use of urban car parks for affordable homes is a real opportunity for local authorities to increase their housing stock without losing any green spaces. Our housing scheme in partnership with North Lincolnshire Council is a perfect example of how this can work.”
David continued: “Speed of delivery is also very important, and our use of modular offsite construction enables us to complete projects in under half the time of traditional building methods with a higher level of quality.”
Modular construction is now recognised as offering a high quality alternative to conventional construction. Individual modular building components are constructed in state-of-the-art facilities whilst site preparation is underway. The architect tailors the façade to the local environment making the completed building indistinguishable from traditional construction.
An additional benefit of using modular construction is the significant reduction in noise, waste and vehicle movements during the site build – an important factor when developing car parks in urban locations.
