Special Report - Built Environment

Sep 14 2006 North East Vision

We're setting out to restore some of the old skills our heritage needs
By Simon Murray Senior Education Manager for CITB-ConstructionSkills, England and Board Member of Constructing Excellence in the North East.

The North-East's historic architectural and listed building stock is at crisis point. The maintenance and upkeep of some of our oldest and most important buildings and structures has been allowed to slip and some are in such a poor state of repair that unless immediate action and work is undertaken they are in danger of either collapsing or needing to be demolished for safety purposes.

Obviously, world renowned iconic buildings such as Durham Cathedral, Alnwick Castle and Cragside do not fall within the "at serious risk" category due to adequate resourcing and planned maintenance programmes but structures such as Ravensworth Castle, featured on Restoration, plainly do.

Following the publication of a national piece of research, Traditional Building Craft Skills, which highlighted some serious national and regional skills shortages for the built heritage sector, a regional call to arms was announced in order to directly address the issue.

Some excellent organisational, project and localised activity has taken place over recent years such as the Northumberland National Park apprenticeship programme for dry stone wallers and Beamish Museum's recruitment and training scheme but a far more structured and co-ordinated regional approach was needed.

A major traditional skills fayre was held at Wallington Hall during the last weekend of September 2005 to launch the research findings and also to formally start the process of establishing a coordinated strategic approach to solving this problem and hopefully ensure that some of our oldest and much loved buildings do not disappear from the landscape of the North-East.

It was agreed that the misconceived image of the beard-and-woolly sweater/tweed skirted heritage worker needed to be dispelled and career options within the sector be made far more attractive in order to stimulate increased interest, applications and employment of new recruits.

A regional heritage skills action group has been established to co-ordinate work and organisations include English Heritage, Museums Hub, Rina, ConstructionSkills, Civic Trust, Institute of Historic Buildings Conservation and a variety of education and training providers among others.

One of the first issues identified is the limited amount of good quality heritage and conservation education and training within the region's universities, colleges and private training providers.

Discussions are currently under way to change this and possible heritage options are being developed for those on apprenticeship routeways at levels 2 and 3 - eg, wood trades, roofing etc. Trainees will be given choices in order to qualify as a joiner specialising in new housing or perhaps having a skillbase for working with 15th Century timber.

At least two regional events with a heritage theme have been planned for National Construction Week in early October, with the key messages highlighting the state of dilapidation some of our oldest and most historic buildings are in, as well giving accurate information, advice and guidance to young people, labour market returnees and those considering a change of career as to the exciting opportunities that exist in this field.

If we wish our children and future generations to enjoy our historic building stock we must taken action now and not leave it to others or until "tomorrow".

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Developing for the future

Earlier this year, the Housing Corporation awarded Three Rivers Housing Group, the Durham housing association, a £5.9m grant for its2006-2008 development programme.

The money is part of £20.5m of grants the corporation has allocated to the region via the Spirit partnership, of which Three Rivers is a major part.

The partnership, which was set up last year to raise social housing standards by providing more and better quality homes at less cost to the public, also includes Two Castles Housing Association, Tees Valley Housing Group, Erimus Housing, Housing Hartlepool and Coast & Country Housing.

The money will be spent on developing good quality, affordable homes in the North-East including apartments, family houses and bungalows with a mix of rental, shared ownership, equity purchase and supported housing for those in need of care and support.

Three Rivers will develop 12 schemes, providing 101 homes throughout the North-East in areas including Durham, Hartlepool, Sunderland, Redcar and Cleveland, South Tyneside and the Wear Valley at a total cost of more than £10.1m.

Among Three Rivers schemes to be developed in its current two-year programme are:

West Rainton, Durham (Phase 2): This scheme replaces out-of-date bungalows with two three-bedroom houses and eight two-bed bungalows at a total cost of £833,750. The project will be built to eco homes standards, which will reduce carbon emissions per property by 30% compared with houses constructed to current building regulations and will pass on savings to customers.

Demolition and construction work is scheduled to start in November and the contractor will be CGR Ecohomes Ltd. They should be available for occupation late next year.

Howden-le-Wear, Wear Valley: Six Eco and Lifetime Home two-bedroom bungalows for elderly people. This rural regeneration scheme for 18 people will cost £480,000. Work is expected to start on site in December, with completion in November next year.

Florida Street, Sunderland: A mix of 12 apartments and eight houses for 72 people at a total scheme cost of £2.36m is scheduled to be completed early in 2008. Fourteen units will be developed for mainstream rent and six for shared ownership.

Westoe Crown Village, South Shields (Phase three, four and five): There will be 30 units for 96 people, to include two- and three-bedroom houses and two-bedroom bungalows, 18 for mainstream rent and 12 for shared ownership.

The developer is George Wimpey North and phase three is expected to be completed next June, with the remaining phases expected to be completed by January 2008.

Bowburn, Durham (Phase 2): Four two-bedroom Eco and Lifetime Home bungalows and two four-bedroom Eco family houses are to be developed for a total cost of £626,000, taking Three Rivers' total investment over three years to £3.3m in this community alone.

Saltburn, Redcar and Cleveland: Supported housing unit providing five very large one-bedroom flats and one two-bedroom flat. Total scheme cost is £674,000 and is expected to be on site next February with completion in August next year. The scheme, to be developed by Koru, will be the conversion of a large Edwardian house in a conservation area and has been designed so that all period features will be kept.

Three Rivers Housing Group chair Peter Gavin said: "We are looking forward to continuing our exciting new development programme with the Housing Corporation and hope that the schemes we will be developing over the next two years will enhance our reputation as a leading housing association within the North-East.

"The new programme will support our vision of providing good quality, affordable homes in desired locations where people want to live."

In addition to the schemes mentioned, there is also a proposed develop-ment at Ferryhill Station in Sedgefield, County Durham.

Three Rivers is already a substantial stakeholder in Ferryhill and is working closely with the council and consulting local people about regenerating and sustaining this local community.

Sedgefield Borough Council outlined in its local development framework the need to "improve the quality of where people live" and "new developments are to be modern, sustainable, well designed and constructed using modern methods of construction (MMC)".

The proposed development at Ferryhill would use some of the £60,000 house designs by Northern Edge, a limited liability partnership of four northern housing associations, of which Three Rivers Housing Group is a partner.

Northern Edge won the Innovation Award at the Constructing Excellence in the North-East annual awards last March.

This achievement builds on success since last year's announcement that Northern Edge was one of the nine winners of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister's Design for Manufacture Competition.

The competition challenged developers to build a high quality family home for £60,000. Other partners in Northern Edge are Yorkshire Housing Group, Tees Valley Housing Group and South Yorkshire Housing Group.

The house design by Northern Edge is intended to meet "excellent" Eco Homes standards, which as well as benefiting the environment, also benefit the occupier through lower energy bills.

The homes, which will be built to Housing Corporation Scheme Development Standards (SDS) and Housing Quality Indicator (HQI) compliant, will be constructed using MMC.

Furthermore, the innovative design means the homes are not only practical, but eye-catching too and are a perfect way to encourage the regeneration of an area.

Working to EcoHomes standards, the consortium designed a range of modern homes with proven light steel frame technology which uses recycled British steel - this product was recently used to acclaim by Three Rivers for the development of a four-bedroom care home.

Three Rivers director of development and regeneration Lynda Peacock said: "Due to the knowledge and expertise of the partners within Northern Edge, we have the resources and capacity needed to produce homes that are not only great in design, but also by sourcing the best suppliers for materials, we can keep production costs low, thus benefiting the buyer.

"Three Rivers Housing and Sedgefield Borough Council are jointly visiting residents and tenants in Ferryhill to assess their housing options and to listen to their views and suggestions.

"We want to ensure that residents and tenants have been consulted before a planning application is submitted, which is expected by the end of this year."

On page 3:
Focused on skills challenges plus CSR: a necessary evil?