Building Briefs - August 27th

  • Barratt East Scotland hike Edinburgh’s seven hills for St Columba’s Hospice Care

Barratt East Scotland has fundraised £16,000 for their new charity partner, St Columba’s Hospice Care.

Building Briefs - August 27th

Taking on the seven hills challenge to reach the top of Calton Hill, Castle Rock, Corstorphine Hill, Craiglockhart Hill, Braid Hill, Blackford Hill, and Arthur’s Seat, 19 Barratt East employees completed the capital city hike in under seven hours as part of their fundraising efforts.



St Columba’s Hospice Care is an independent charity that has been providing vital hospice and end of life care to people with incurable illness and their families for over 40 years. Throughout the pandemic, the Hospice Team has continued to offer their services to those who need it most across Edinburgh and the Lothians – be that at home, in care settings or at the Hospice itself.

The donation from the Barratt East Scotland team will help to ensure the hospice can continue to offer its support to people in local communities across the capital. As well as nursing and medical care, the Hospice offers patients and their families whatever social, practical, emotional and spiritual support they may need, from physiotherapy and counselling, to immersive art and music therapy.

 

  • Huge demand as new BHA homes handed over in Ayton

A new development of energy efficient and affordable homes in Ayton has proved extremely popular with Berwickshire Housing Association’s (BHA) tenants.



Building Briefs - August 27th

(from left) Allan Callaghan (Cruden Building managing director), Angela Taylor (BHA property director), Michelle Meldrum (BHA chief executive), BHA tenant Derna Lough and Frank Gallagher (Cruden Building construction manager)

The Association has not built any affordable housing in Ayton for 18 years and the 31 homes at Beanburn attracted a total of 3,293 applications.

Built by Cruden Building (East), these homes make up phase 1 of the development providing a mix of bungalows, wheelchair accessible properties and three and four-bedroom family homes.

The street names in the development will extend the existing numbering in Lawfield Drive and Summerhill Park and also create two new streets - Mennon Loan and Claypots Cottages.



BHA has owned this site for over 20 years and has spoken of its delight that it is being developed. It has worked in partnership with Scottish Borders Council and the Scottish Government, bringing much needed affordable homes to Ayton.

A masterplan exercise was carried out with architects Smith Scott Mullen, which included public consultation, and the results of this were fed into the final design with a mix of house types and sizes aimed at meeting local demand as identified in the recent local housing needs assessment. The family housing will also help support the local primary school and local amenities.

Building Briefs - August 27th

Allan Callaghan, Michelle Meldrum, Angela Taylor and Frank Gallagher at the new development in Ayton

All properties are set in generous plots and offer modern and spacious homes that are energy efficient, keeping running costs low for tenants. All houses meet Silver Standard for energy efficiency and have the latest in heat pumps for hot water and space heating and two meet Gold Standard.



The range of properties proposed takes account of existing BHA stock and aims to fill unmet demand by providing more housing choice for applicants in the Ayton area.

The Beanburn project is the fifth project to be delivered by Cruden Building (East) in partnership with BHA and will bring the total number of homes they have delivered jointly to 129. Smith Scott Mullan Associates led the design team and were also the project architects.

Cruden has supported the local economy through the use of Borders companies as sub-contractors including A.S. Crawford, Denholm (groundworks), Teviotdale, Jedburgh (plumbing) and CIS, Duns and St Boswells (bricklayers). They have also generously donated £2,000 to Ayton Primary School, located close to the new development, as part of their commitment to investing in the local community.

As part of the development some land has been allocated to Abundant Borders for use by the community while bird and bat boxes have also been included in the work carried out



Planning approval was granted for a total of 50 homes at Beanburn with phase 2 expected sometime in the future.

 

  • North Lanarkshire to focus on active travel with new strategy

North Lanarkshire Council is putting active travel at the heart of its transport policy and plans for new town and community hubs with the publication of its first Active Travel Strategy.



The ten-year strategy aims to provide better active travel networks between communities and help deliver improved health and well-being and environmental, social inclusion and public access across the area.

The council will work with private, public and community partners to create active travel networks in North Lanarkshire and with links to neighbouring areas.

The strategy includes cycle parking facilities and shared walking and cycling paths in town and community hubs, as well as environmental improvements to improve accessibility for all.

In developing the strategy, the council used information from a series of transport studies carried out between 2018 and 2020 in Airdrie, Coatbridge, Cumbernauld, Croy, Kilsyth, Motherwell, Wishaw, Bellshill, Harthill, Shotts and Salsburgh.

The new strategy recognises the Scottish Government’s updated National Transport Strategy (NTS2) which prioritises active travel.

 

  • Highland Council announces Meiklefield redevelopment information event

The Highland Council has invited the public to an open information event regarding its Meiklefield redevelopment in Dingwall.

Demolition is nearly complete for Phase 1 of the redevelopment of 1 – 23 (odd numbers) on Meiklefield Road.

The event has been organised by the local housing team and will be attended by tenant participation staff and the designer HRI Architects will be available on the day to speak face to face with the public.

The event will be held on Friday 3rd September from 12 noon until 4pm at the grassed area at the end of Grant Street and the beginning of Meiklefield Road.

Information will be available on the project and the opportunity to ask questions to the design team.


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