Over the next four years Nottingham will see its skyline transform and watch nearly 400 brand new council homes being built - the biggest building programme since the 1960s.
As part of the city’s overall Building a Better Nottingham programme, Nottingham City Council (NCC) and Nottingham City Homes (NCH) will be managing the demolition of eight of the city’s iconic tower blocks, to be replaced with family housing, bungalows and Independent Living schemes. Homes will also be built on a number of smaller sites across the city.
Fourteen properties have already been completed on three disused garage sites across the city, with another twelve homes to be finished in Spring 2014.
Work is set to begin soon in Radford where construction partner, Wates Living Space, will be building 52 family homes to replace the tower blocks that were demolished earlier this year.
The biggest single site is based in the Lenton area of the city, where demolition work is currently underway. The site just off Derby Road has been home to five 16-storey tower blocks since they were built in the sixties.
One of the blocks has already been demolished, as well as a two storey garage building. Tenants are still living in three of the blocks, but it is expected these will all be empty and demolished within the next few years.
Demolition experts, Total Reclaims, are taking the flats down using the ‘top down’ method. Bringing them down in this way enables the demolition team to safely strip out any reusable items from inside, before beginning to gradually remove the outer walls. The top few floors are removed with the aid of a robotic digger, which is operated remotely by one of the engineers and the remaining floors are taken down with the aid of a high-reach machine.
Nearly 99% of all material removed will either be reused or recycled.
Once completed, the new neighbourhood will include 142 homes - a mix of family homes, bungalows, flats and an Independent Living Scheme for older residents. Construction partner, Keepmoat, will begin work on the Independent Living Scheme in November this year.
Cllr Alex Ball, Executive Assistant with responsibility for housing and regeneration, said: “Nottingham hasn’t seen a social housing project like this in more than forty years. Having already seen the work completed on the smaller sites across the city, I can’t wait to see the impact this next phase of demolition and building will have.
“This is not just about bricks and mortar, it’s about transforming the Nottingham skyline, creating communities that people will be proud of, and improving the health and wellbeing of tenants.
“The work being done on social housing forms part of the council’s much wider Building a Better Nottingham scheme, which is developing the city’s roads and public transport system, creating greater leisure facilities and regenerating the city centre.”
The programme has already created a wide range of employment and training opportunities for local people, with each contractor committed to employing people directly from within the Nottingham city boundary.
As well as this for every £1m spent, contractors will also be expected to take on an apprentice.
Nick Murphy, Chief Executive of Nottingham City Homes, said: “It is important, when we are carrying out such a major programme of new house building, that we ensure the positive impact on Nottingham stretches further than just the tenants who will live in the new homes.
“We are committed to creating jobs and training opportunities for local people and we also ask our contractors to do whatever they can to source from local suppliers. In fact I know that all materials on the homes we’ve built so far were sourced from within a 20 mile radius.”