In an interview with the Baltic Triangle Podcast, Liverpool entrepreneur Jamie Blennerhassett says he is going to revolutionise the UK housing market with his zero carbon model. Tony McDonough reports
Liverpool entrepreneur Jamie Blennerhassett is working to what he claims will be the most sustainable housebuilder in the UK.
In June 2020 his company, Hasset Homes, secured a financing deal with business finance provider TGF. Hasset said it is looking to initially deliver three Liverpool housing projects worth a combined £12m. But that, he says, will just be the start.
In an interview with this month’s Baltic Triangle Podcast, Jamie claimed Hasset Homes is a “disruptor and an innovator” and he outlined his three-phase plan to create a truly sustainable housing building model.
“If you look at how homes were built in the 1930s and look at how homes are built today, they are very similar,” he said. “They are not built to suit today’s way of life. We are going to start to create different types of housing for different areas by the end of the year.”
As Jamie points out, housing accounts for around 40% of the UK’s annual carbon emissions which offers a huge amount of scope for helping to meet the Government’s carbon-neutral of zero carbon targets. But he thinks the current targets are not enough.
He explained: “We have a three-phase process. The first is to make our own business carbon zero. That means things such as a paperless office and using electric cars. Phase two is to make sure the homes we build are carbon zero. Houses that are not reliant on fuels such as gas.”
Phase three, he said, is the most challenging one. It is to use building materials that are produced and transported in a sustainable way. He added: “We have to change the methods of how those materials are produced. We cannot roll this phase out yet until we have perfected it. But it is coming down the line.
“That is our vision of a sustainable housebuilding industry. It will have to happen. Government policy will force it to happen. But the current targets are not good enough. We want to be known as the company that pushed people forward to get it done.”
Click here to listen to the full interview on the Baltic Triangle Podcast.