Initial findings from one of the UK’s most innovative pilot projects looks to be pointing the way forward for future housing developments.

After early statistics from the construction element of the MMC homes built at the Gateshead Innovation Village project were released, data on energy efficiency of the now lived-in homes are starting to trickle out.

The most impressive of which are the results from the new heating systems installed in the homes, which have been built by Home Group, one of the UK’s largest housing associations.

The 41 homes within the project are fitted with four different electric heating systems, in order to review things like the balance of install, servicing, customer running costs and impact towards switching from natural gas.

Three of the systems have already met the Government’s 2025 Future Homes Standard of 75% – 80% less CO2, with a fourth not far behind.

Simon Williams, Head of Delivery at Home Group, said: “The initial results coming from Gateshead Innovation Village are really pleasing. The project has been a challenge given its complexities, but when you see early results like these it makes all the hard work worthwhile.”

Gateshead Innovation Village – a two year research project- emerged from the need to help tackle the country’s housing crisis.

There is a need to produce over 300,000 new houses per year just to satisfy current demand. But in 2016/17 only 217,350 were built and in 2017/18 that figure dropped to 163,420.

Early findings from the construction phase of the project showed positive responses to issues such as air tightness, thermographic imaging analysis, dynamic simulation and pulse heating tests.

Overall results from the project will be released in the autumn of 2020 and shared with the sector.