Building Briefs – April 29th

• Solar company wins energy efficiency award for off-grid hideaway

AES Solar picked up the Best Energy Efficiency in a House Design or Build at the Highlands and Islands Renewables Awards in Inverness last week after being shortlisted for its work on Lochside House in the far north-west Highlands.

Now in its 40th year, AES Solar is the longest established solar company in Europe and specialises in PV and thermal systems and manufactures its own solar thermal panels at its headquarters in Forres.

Lochside House was voted ‘House of the Year’ in 2018 by Channel 4’s Grand Designs, where judges commented that “everyone can learn from designs like this”.

The remote property’s combination of solar thermal and solar PV means the property is powered completely by the sun with no external power source and free from electricity and heating bills. There is a diesel generator which acts as an emergency stand-by, but has rarely, if ever, been used.

• Stewart Milne Homes North celebrates gold award for customer satisfaction

Stewart Milne Homes North has achieved a gold award for customer satisfaction from In-House Research Gold Awards 2019 with 97% of customers saying they would recommend the homebuilder to a friend.

The In-House Research Gold Award is based on the ‘recommend a friend’ score for completions between January and December 2018 and to achieve it, over 90% of customers must indicate that they would be happy to recommend Stewart Milne Homes North.

The independent customer satisfaction awards are run by specialist market research company, In-house Research Ltd, and are purely based on customer feedback via an independent telephone survey which every customer is given the opportunity to complete.

• £150m scheme to provide deposit support for struggling first-time buyers

The Scottish Government is to create a £150 million national pilot scheme to provide support for first-time buyers and has also launched a consultation of short-term lets.

Under the scheme, which will be launched later this year, buyers will be required to fund a minimum of 5% of the value of their new house from their own funds and loans can be up to £25,000.

The loan will be secured on the equity of the home; is repayable in full at any time; and must be repaid if the home is sold. No monthly payments will therefore apply.

The initiative is part of a package of measures unveiled by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon which aims to ensure the housing market is fairer and delivers more people the homes they want.

In a further part of the package, oversupply of short-term lets will be tackled in order to protect the interests of local communities and ensure a safe, quality experience for visitors, with new proposals published for consultation.

The consultation will seek views on the appropriate use of planning, health and safety, regulation and taxation powers in order to ensure local authorities can secure an appropriate balance between the needs of communities and the role of short-term lets as part of Scotland’s tourism industry.

The 2018 Programme for Government made a commitment to ensure that local authorities have appropriate regulatory powers to balance the needs and concerns of their communities with wider economic and tourism interests. The consultation asks for views on what those powers should be.

• Dates for next phase of works at A890 Stromeferry

The Highland Council has held a drop-in session in Lochcarron Village Hall for the community to find out more about the next phase of slope stabilisation works above the A890 at Stromeferry and to discuss the plans for traffic management. 

The 2018 annual inspection report highlighted areas for the council to consider and plan future works.

These works are currently being designed and have been programmed for September and October 2019.

• Dundee construction start-up targets £2m turnover

A Dundee construction business which formed under two years ago is staffing up as it hopes to achieve sales of £2 million this year.

Alpha Projects (Scotland) Ltd is a partnership between Forfar-based Paul Cortese and Kevin Brown, from Dundee.

Established in July 2017, the West Pitkerro Industrial Estate company has achieved revenue of £1m in the first six months of its current financial year.

The firm, which also has an office in Aberdeen, is a building contractor carrying out a mixture of residential, commercial and local authority work. It specialises in refurbishments, extension projects, joinery work and office fit-outs.

The firm employs 13 staff across the two sites and is planning to add an additional three employees in the coming weeks.

• Clyde Property acquires two letting portfolios

Estate agency Clyde Property has increased the coverage and diversity of its rental offering throughout central Scotland with the acquisition of the portfolios of property companies Gordon Shields and Wura Property.

The incorporation takes Clyde Property’s letting portfolio to in excess of 3,000 properties, making it one of the largest residential letting portfolios in Scotland.

• Constructive day as kids pay visit to Urban Union

Housebuilder Urban Union has welcomed a host of new team members – after taking part in Bring Your Child to Work day.

The children learned about the construction industry and gained a better understanding of their parent’s working world, what they do and where they spend their days.

Ursula Read, who works as the office manager, welcomed her son and daughter Becky and Cameron, aged fourteen and seventeen to the office, while the team’s receptionist Julie Sweeney was joined by her eight year old son John. Pauline Mathieson, Urban Union’s customer service advisor also brought along her twelve year old daughter Karis.

The children started their day at the Urban Union offices in Glasgow, finding out more about the company and their parent’s jobs, before heading to the firm’s Laurieston Living site where they were given a site tour.

• Third of Brits fail to check if gas engineers are working legally in their homes

A third (33%) of UK adults admit they’ve not checked if the engineer working on their home’s gas appliances is doing so legally by being on the Gas Safe Register, according to the latest research findings by the gas registration body.

The findings come as the Gas Safe Register nears completing 2,000 illegal gas work investigations in three years, more than two thirds of which (69%) were found to be unsafe meaning the people living in the properties investigated were in potential danger from faulty gas work.

Alarmingly, respondents thought they’d correctly verified that their gas engineer was on the Gas Safe Register by noticing a logo on the engineer’s website or uniform (28%), or by asking the engineer (13%), rather than checking with the official body - Gas Safe Register - directly (28%).

When asked why they hadn’t thought to check if their engineer was working on their home’s gas appliances legally, the research revealed that there’s a lack of understanding and an assumption that all engineers are registered (40%) so people didn’t realise they had to check (29%). Some of those who let in an engineer without checking their registration information blamed being in a rush (15%) or forgetting to ask (18%), putting their safety at risk. British politeness also stopped 14% of adults checking if their engineer was on the Gas Safe Register as they claimed they were ‘too embarrassed to ask’.