Millwood’s Managing Director John Elliott tells ExecUK how carbon neutral construction projects and the benefits of timber frame housing are helping the award-winning firm add sustainability
By James Hurley
Tonbridge-based company Millwood Designer Homes was established in 1992 and has a range of small exclusive developments in locations throughout Kent, Sussex and Surrey. Most benefit from individual designs, ranging from contemporary apartments and smaller three and four bedroom homes, through to its large flagship luxury detached dwellings.
The Millwood product typically has a traditional exterior design, using reclaimed materials, has an impressive high level of specification, meticulous attention to every detail and Millwood's trademark quality of build.
Carbon neutral homes
The quality of Millwood’s houses has been established for some time. The company has been recognised for its health and safety initiatives, luxury apartments, community developments, family homes and its energy saving developments by publications including the Evening Standard, Daily Mail, and What House? The company’s passion for innovation, quality and sustainability most recently manifested itself when
Millwood Designer Homes became the first housebuilder in the UK to be assessed as ‘carbon neutral.’
“We buy carbon credits to offset the emissions from our head office and company cars,” explains John Elliott, Millwood’s Managing Director. Elliott has been working in the construction industry since 1975, and has been with Millwood, alongside his brother Jeff, Deputy Managing Director, since 1992.
As part of this commitment to environmental sustainability, currently a hot topic in the construction industry, Millwood Designer Homes has launched its first Carbon Neutral development - Coppice Mews in Tonbridge Wells, Kent. If Government targets for a 25 percent improvement in the energy/carbon performance set in building regulations by 2010 are to be met, more housebuilding firms would do well to heed the example being set by Millwood.
"There’s a lot of fuss at the moment about moving house building to carbon zero,” says Elliott. “Coppice Mews represents the first of this new breed of homes, combining an attractive development with a commitment to preserving our environment for generations to come.”
Timber frame efficiency
To achieve carbon neutral status, all of the homes at Coppice Mews, which Elliott calls a “classic Millwood project,” are offset by the company’s support of a range of renewable energy, energy efficiency and sustainable forestry projects. With these steps, Millwood will be able to save or absorb one ton of carbon dioxide for every ton the company creates. But Millwood already had a reputation as an energy efficient house builder long before the Coppice Mews project was initiated, thanks in part to its use of timber frame.
In the 80s, estate agents in England and Wales felt that consumers were reluctant to accept timber frame and builders back-tracked on the concept after a TV documentary portrayed it as an attack on `traditional' building methods. This attitude has taken some time to change, but timber frame is now an increasingly popular alternative to traditional ‘brick and block’ building methods, especially when it comes to sustainability.
“We’ve been using timber frame ever since we began – we find it to be the most efficient material. Using a timber frame envelope for your house both retains heat and keeps it out – it’s a very efficient insulator. It’s also environmentally friendly in its own right,” says Elliott.
The company sources its timber from managed forests in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, and Elliott is pleased to say that these are now more trees in these areas than there were a decade ago. “Timber frame is better than brick and block methods in terms of the carbon cost of building and using it,” says Elliott.
Developments in timber frame building methods in Scandinavia and North America have seen timber frame steadily gaining market share. In England and Wales, timber frame would account for more than the ten percent of new homes it already does if there were more factories up and running to meet the increasing demand. Elliott believes that there will soon be a certain amount of bandwagon jumping to be found in the British construction industry, which will be inspired by a growing sustainability agenda. Should this happen, Millwood’s established experience with timber frame will place the company in an advantageous position.
“Some constructors are utilising reclaimed materials like us to make them look more environmentally friendly. But the market for timber frame is flat out at the moment. Apart from England and Wales, 75 percent of new builds in Europe use timber frame. That makes us experts in our fields rather than lemmings. We already know how to produce quality and longevity from the materials.”
As a relatively early adopter of timber frame housing, Elliott says that the company did meet with some resistance in the marketplace. “There was an assumption that people wouldn’t like timber frame housing,” he says. “But we’ve only ever experienced a couple of problems with timber frame from end customers – the problem was with estate agents, which was why growth was initially slow.”
For mortgage purposes and insurance, most lenders and insurers rank timber frame equally with blockwork. As far as resale values are concerned, there appears to be no difference at all between the two systems; acceptance for the viability of timber frame is now comprehensive – the only concerns that remain are with the education level of the sub-contractors that build the houses. All systems, trading relationships and company know-how are invested in the status quo. Change requires re-thinking business models.
“We’ve got a strong reputation for quality, and to achieve this we had to ensure that the sub-contractors knew the product well.” Building a timber frame home does involve a different process to that of a traditional block home, so the company does have to be extremely careful about the contractors it chooses to work with. Timber frame homes are more complex to design, and the process is still not well understood by many UK builders outside Scotland, which makes Millwood’s excellence in this area all the more valuable and impressive.
The affordability challenge
The availability and affordability of housing is an issue that’s constantly challenging consumers, politicians and those in industry. “The UK isn’t building enough homes. We have a laborious and bureaucratic planning system that ties the builders up in red tape. As a result, we’re falling short by 60, 000 units a year. Even when sites have technically been allocated, conservation of wildlife – which can include anything from badgers to crested newts – can cause huge delays and consequently huge costs,” says Elliott.
“It will take government to deliver consented land to market before the industry can begin to truly tackle the problem. When we build a development of 14 units, 40 percent of them have to be affordable for key workers. That’s a big cost challenge – it means we’re developing the affordable homes at less than cost and ignores the restrictions that we’re subject to. There’s also the risk that legislation can change halfway through a project, and pricing could become even worse if there’s an increase in the requirements.”
Elliott says that the company, and the industry in general, accepts that housing needs to be delivered for those with lower incomes – it’s the way that it’s delivered by central government that is the problem.
As such, the company is faced with a double challenge; the machinations of the planning process and locating suitable land. Alistair Darling is currently planning a shake up of Britain's mortgage market and planning system in an effort to tackle the problems with affordable housing, suggesting a simplified planning process and longer fixed rate mortgages. This may well provide some much needed relief for industry and house buyers alike. In the meantime, Millwood’s current hunting grounds in Kent, Sussex and Surrey may well expand as the company begins to look further West of London, but it’s likely that Millwood’s focus will remain in the South East for the foreseeable future.
“We believe we can outsell our competitors in hard times,” says Smith. “Interest rates will be a dampener, but we’re not looking to change our overall strategy. Coppice Mews has been very well received by buyers, and as awareness of climate change and sustainable living grows, more people will buy into this type of solution.”