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Building or bodging? Attitudes to sustainability in UK public sector housing construction development

Author

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  • Mark Hall

    (Department of Management, University of Bristol, UK)

  • David Purchase

    (Independent Consultant, UK)

Abstract

The UK government has established an agenda for 'greening' government activity and, as it accounts for approximately 40% of all UK construction procurement, is actively encouraging sustainability initiatives in this particular sector. However, there have been criticisms of its approach. The UK government anticipates investing approximately £3 billion in the social housing sector over the next three years and, as a prelude to this, has asked the Housing Corporation to promote a raft of sustainable development initiatives. This paper draws on two tranches of data in order to examine the impact of the UK government's sustainability policy on the way the public sector procures housing construction. The first of these is the sustainability improvement targets from 143 public sector housing associations. The evidence from this first tranche of data suggests that sustainability is currently seen as a low priority and that government initiatives have yet to make a significant impact. The second tranche of data uses comments from housing association development managers to examine the reasons for this apparent lack of impact. This focuses on their views and opinions of sustainability as an issue in social housing development and enables inferences to be made about their attitudes to this issue. There has been criticism about the lack of progress so far seen and the results in this paper suggest that this criticism is justified. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Suggested Citation

  • Mark Hall & David Purchase, 2006. "Building or bodging? Attitudes to sustainability in UK public sector housing construction development," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 14(3), pages 205-218.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:sustdv:v:14:y:2006:i:3:p:205-218
    DOI: 10.1002/sd.265
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Ali M. Saad & Mohammed Dulaimi & Sambo Lyson Zulu, 2023. "Examining the Influence of UK Public Clients’ Characteristics on Their Own Innovation-Decision towards the Modern Methods of Construction (MMC)," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(5), pages 1-25, February.
    2. Walker, Helen & Brammer, Stephen, 2012. "The relationship between sustainable procurement and e-procurement in the public sector," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(1), pages 256-268.
    3. Isabel M. Garcia-Sanchez & Jose-Manuel Prado-Lorenzo, 2008. "Determinant factors in the degree of implementation of Local Agenda 21 in the European Union," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(1), pages 17-34.
    4. Nur Fatin Syazwani Abu Bakar* & Syuhaida Ismail & Rohayah Che Amat & Serdar Durdyev, 2018. "Sustainable Construction in Malaysian Mixed Development Projects: The Barriers and Critical Success Factors," The Journal of Social Sciences Research, Academic Research Publishing Group, pages 885-892:6.
    5. Testa, Francesco & Iraldo, Fabio & Frey, Marco & Daddi, Tiberio, 2012. "What factors influence the uptake of GPP (green public procurement) practices? New evidence from an Italian survey," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 88-96.
    6. Wim Lambrechts & Andrew Mitchell & Mark Lemon & Muhammad Usman Mazhar & Ward Ooms & Rikkert van Heerde, 2021. "The Transition of Dutch Social Housing Corporations to Sustainable Business Models for New Buildings and Retrofits," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(3), pages 1-24, January.

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