Climate considerate housebuilder Newland Homes welcomed the MP for Chippenham, the Rt Hon Michelle Donelan MP, for a hard hat tour of its revolutionary collection of zero carbon homes in Semington, Wiltshire this week.
Progress is well underway on the first of 24 zero carbon homes on St George’s Road in Semington, which will come complete with solar panels, air source heat pumps and wiring provision for electric vehicle charging, reducing the reliance on fossil fuels and providing a cleaner and greener alternative to homeowners. Newland Homes is also making space for 14 new allotments for the community to enjoy and several features have been introduced across the site to encourage biodiversity, such as hedgehog highways. The new development will be called St George’s Mead and the homes will go on sale in May with a showhome launching in July 2022.
The highly-efficient four and five bedroom detached homes and three bedroom bungalows have the potential to produce more energy than the buildings themselves require to run and the excess can be sold back to the National Grid. The idea of a house with substantially lower energy bills is appealing to many in the current climate. Furthermore, all properties will achieve an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating in excess of 100, placing them firmly in the top energy performance band of A, which is achieved by only 2% of houses in the UK.
Michelle Donelan MP comments: “I was really pleased to be invited to see the zero carbon homes being built by Newland Homes in Semington. These homes are what we have considered the future of housing for so long and are now coming to fruition here in the constituency, there is no better time to realise the benefit of zero carbon homes than now while so many households are facing extremely high energy bills. The development in Semington will also include a proportion of affordable houses and I look forward to coming back to see the houses once they are completed and to be shown the energy saving technologies when they are up and running.”
Newland Homes has spent two years finessing the design of their zero carbon homes and investigating the best renewable technologies. As an independent housebuilder based in the West, the company is revolutionising the way homes are built and run in the UK. The company’s most recently completed development in the county, Newland Place on Bradley Road in Trowbridge, was commended by Wiltshire Council’s Urban Designer, who recognised Newland Homes’ efforts to ‘design an exemplar scheme’ for the town. These exacting qualities have been applied to the design of St George’s Mead, with generous green spaces, large gardens and traditional architecture that reflects the rural setting, along with state of the art, climate-considerate technologies to reduce running costs.
Jeremy Drew, Developments Director at Newland Homes, comments: “Demand is greater now than it’s ever been for highly-efficient homes which are more cost-effective to run and are kinder to the planet. We know how critical it is to be taking action on climate change. The volume housebuilding industry is awash with future intentions but we’ve yet to see the deliverables of zero or low carbon homes built at scale. As a smaller, private developer we can be nimbler and create the type of homes that the public want. Companies can’t sit back and wait for change to happen, you have to be out front leading it.”
The new homes in the popular village of Semington have been orientated to maximise solar gain and solar panels built into the roof of each house capture renewable energy by absorbing sunlight. This energy will be used for electricity and will power the home’s air source heat pump, which provides heating and hot water. An optional battery allows homeowners to store energy from the solar panels for use when they need it, like for charging an electric vehicle overnight.
Air source heat pumps (ASHP) will replace gas boilers. ASHPs absorb heat from the outside air to heat rooms within the home and provide hot water. They are highly efficient and can still extract heat when outside air temperatures are as low as -25 degrees.
These renewable initiatives means that the house creates as much prime energy* as it needs.
Seven of the 24 properties will be ‘affordable’ homes in conjunction with Wiltshire Council.
Newland Homes was the first traditional housebuilder in the UK to sign the United Nations Climate Neutral Now Pledge, which is a commitment to measure greenhouse gas emissions, implement means to reduce them, to consider offsetting and to report progress annually. It is on course to achieve at least a 50% reduction in its company carbon footprint by the end of 2024 and it is retrospectively carbon neutral through offset.
To register an interest in the upcoming zero carbon homes at St George’s Mead in Semington, please click here
Newland Homes Limited is a property developer registered in England and Wales number 2582221.
Registered office: Brighouse Court, Barnett Way, Barnwood, Gloucester, GL4 3RT.
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