Unsworth Sugden Group

March’s PR snap shot of the month shows members of Biggleswade Scouts, all smiles, as client David Wilson South Midlands, makes a donation of £500.

The 219 members, aged between eight and 18, will see the money spent on the two Beaver colonies for their ‘The Beds Giant Country Sleepover’, as well as some of it being allocted as the first prize for the grand draw, to help raise more funds for the scout group.

The remainder of the money will be used throughout the year to support other events and activities.

Jackie Day, Sales Director at David Wilson, which has a development of new homes in Biggleswade called The Maythorns, comments, “When we were approached by Biggleswade Scout Group to make a donation, we didn’t hesitate in saying yes. The scout group is an important part of the local community and we are delighted to be able to support in such a positive way.”

This morning’s Leicester Mercury features more post-Budget coverage for another of our local PR clients.

After Westleigh Developments appeared in last Thursday’s paper, today is the turn of fellow property developer Raynsway Properties as managing director Tom Watkinson gives a cautious welcome to plans to overhaul the planning system and further reaction to the removal of red tape for businesses and Leicestershire not being named as one of the 10 selected enterprise zones across the UK.

For those of you with a copy of today’s paper you can read the article on page 10 of the business supplement, otherwise you can read a PDF of the article here.

Tom Watkinson, MD of Raynsway Properties, gives his reaction to the Budget in today's Leicester Mercury

One of the Chancellor’s announcements yesterday during the 2011 Budget was a new £250 million shared equity scheme, called First Buy, aimed at helping around 10,000 first time buyers to get onto the property ladder and purchase a new build home.

When the Leicester Mercury came looking for an immediate response to this particular part of George Osborne’s speech, we were able to supply a comment from client Westleigh Developments.

As part of his quote on Home Buy, Ian Jones,  Business Development Director at the regional property developer, urged caution saying “the devil will be in the detail and it will be interesting to see how these changes are implemented in the coming weeks.”

You can read the full article on page 9 of today’s Mercury or HERE if you haven’t a copy. This forms part of the paper’s comprehensive post-Budget coverage.

Will George help the commercial property market in tomorrow's Budget or won't he?

EDIT: Afternoon of Wednesday 23rd March - Reaction to the Budget:

In response to the question posed in the title of this blog - not an awful lot! At least not at first glance. There are a number of reforms earmarked for the planning regime which sound interesting, which on paper could make life for developers a little easier. But as with all these things, whilst they sound very nice, how long will it take these new rules to kick in? Hopefully not “a number of years”, which the Chancellor seemed to say about a number of his proposals today.

Keep watching for the blog for more ‘post-Budget’ comments from our clients.

Client and regeneration specialist, Urban Rhythm was last night (Monday 21^st March) granted planning permission for the £20 million redevelopment of the former Wheatsheaf Works Boot and Shoe Factory, on Knighton Fields Road East, Leicester.

When it was built in 1891, Wheatsheaf Works was one of the largest footwear factories in the world. Owned by the Co-operative Wholesale Society, it supplied a wealth of employment opportunities in the south east of Leicester. 

The landmark site, with its two Grade II listed factory buildings and clock tower, will now be transformed into 172 high quality homes to meet the housing needs of the local community.

Plans for the development, which comprises a mixture of brand new townhouses and converted homes in the original buildings, have been devised by Leicester architects JSP Architecture.  The project will be developed by Urban Rhythm - the specialist regeneration arm of luxury local housebuilder The Hazelton Group.

Richard Hazelton, Commercial Director at The Hazelton Group said, “We are delighted to have been granted planning permission for this stunning new development.

“We’re sure our refurbishment of the Grade II listed buildings, which have been left derelict for the past 10 years, and development of the surrounding site will act as a catalyst to draw homeowners to the area and help to regenerate the local community. 

“The scheme will breathe new life back into a building steeped in history so that it may be appreciated as an integral part of the community once again.”

Justin Fox, Design Architect at JSP Architecture said, “We are pleased to be working with Urban Rhythm on such a landmark site in the city of Leicester and deliver a scheme of this quality and magnitude in the current economic climate.

“We will continue to liaise closely with Leicester City Council to ensure that our desire to score very highly on the Building for Life criteria, which is a new integral part of the City Council’s core strategy, is achieved.”

The ornate, Neo-Jacobean main factory building will be converted into a series of townhouses using contemporary interventions into the existing fabric of the building.  The homes will be located around an extensive landscaped courtyard.  This layout will help ensure the development has a real sense of community.

The design of the new build houses will contrast the beautiful historic façade of the listed buildings and help to further create this new community drawing on the founding principles of the Co-operative philosophy of community living. Urban Rhythm will work to ensure that these homes reach either Eco Homes Level ‘Very Good’ or Code Sustainable Homes Level 3.

For more information about the new homes at Wheatsheaf Works, call Urban Rhythm on 01536 714920 or visit www.hazeltonhomes.com/urban/

A CGI of the Wheatsheaf Works development

There were lots of happy dogs at the East Midlands Dog Rescue last week, after client David Wilson East Midlands donated £200 worth of dog food to the centre.

The charity has recently opened up a new shop in Barwell, near David Wilson’s Haswell Meadows development on The Common, so they sent Wellington, their own friendly golden retriever along to deliver the food to the waiting dogs.

Both the greyhounds and the smaller breeds were well looked after, with a mix of specialist dry food and tins of ‘Cesar’, which were all gratefully received.

Wellington and his new friends at the Rescue Centre

This morning, planning manager for client David Wilson Mercia, Jon Rowson, appeared on BBC WM’s Phil Upton breakfast radio show.  He was discussing a planning application for a new development of homes on the site of the former Moor Green football club in Hall Green, Birmingham.  Take a listen bbc-radio-west-midlands-140311-0741.

The company has been working very hard to engage with the local community during the planning of this project and with both resident and local MP, Roger Godsiff, backing, its application should be well received when it is submitted later this month. 

If the plans are approved David Wilson will gift land to two local schools for sports use as well as fund improvements to a local community centre and junior sports pitch.

Watch this space for more information about the scheme’s progress.

The PR team recently went all ‘Time Team’ and dug in to achieve some great coverage when it was revealed that client Westleigh Developments had unearthed the first example of a Roman cemetery plot for the historic Lincolnshire town of Sleaford during construction work on a new affordable housing development .

The regional property developer discovered the Roman remains, thought to be up to 1,800 years old, at the site on Boston Road in 2009 and analysis by APS Archaeology since has not just confirmed their age and origin but also provided a unique insight into the health and lifestyle of those who inhabited the town.

After working with the client to sieve through a wealth of technical information and researching further details with APS, the PR team recently issued a press release, with the Lincolnshire Echo running THIS SUPERB PIECE in today’s paper.

One of the Roman burials recovered at Boston Road in Sleaford

The PR team visited EcoBuild yesterday, the world’s biggest event for sustainable design, construction and the built environment and the UK’s largest constructon event of any kind.

Held at the ExCeL London exhibition centre in the heart of the Docklands, there were over 1,300 exhibitors and a whole host of free seminars, demonstrations and lectures available. As well as catching up with some of the construction trade media titles, we also visited the stand of client Schlüter-Systems, the leading UK supplier of tile solutions, which was extremely busy.

As you can see from the pic below, there were plenty of visitors interested in learning more about their range of market-leading products including universal structural panel Schlüter^®-KERDI-BOARD and Schluter^®-BEKOTEC-THERM, its advanced underfloor heating system.

There were many interested visitors to the Schlüter-Systems stand at EcoBuild 2011