When you look at developments across the whole of the UK, you often see that many are met with opposition before they even reach the planning stage. Many are under the impression that the development of new housing is something which is detrimental to the areas around it, either in the case of clashing with the character of an area, or even taking away from resources such as supermarkets, doctors or schools. There are construction Denbighshire companies which are taking on the need for additional housing in ways which actually give back to the communities around them, rather than detracting from.
Sustainable building is a term which conjures images of many things. Mostly renewable energy, energy efficiency built into these buildings, or even reuse of materials which would otherwise move into landfill. There are other ways of ensuring sustainable building too – which is geared toward creating sustainable communities.
It is imperative to ensure that the communities behind the buildings have the opportunity to become communities, and also to integrate with the existing community for the benefit of all in the area. Furthermore, it is paramount that sustainability is integral to providing local firms and local tradesmen with work, pushing the money back into the local economy through local business.
A good example of such is Brenig Construction’s work in Llanfairfechan on Penmaenmawr Road. The project was a development of 17 houses – attached onto an existing estate.
While of course the development involved the usage of local materials as one would expect from a sustainable development build – Brenig Construction went even further with the concept of sustainability by only employing the services and materials from local firms from the North Wales area in order to ensure that as much of the money as humanly possible spent on the build went directly to local companies and local firms. Their subcontractors were all local firms as well.
Furthermore, Brenig Construction worked with the local community to host Meet the Buyer events, as well as provided visits to the site for a number of schools in the area. Brenig Construction worked hand in hand with the local college, Coleg Llandrillo, in order to provide site visits and on-site training to construction students which normally would not be able to get hands on experience on sites until well after their graduation.
Brenig Construction provided work throughout the duration of the build to three apprentices from the local area as well. Because of the local nature of all of the supply chain, Brenig Construction were able to finish the works much earlier than projected, and finally culminated their efforts with improvements to local facilities such as the Llanfairfechan library from excess materials.
This construction company in North Wales have shown that sustainable building isn’t simply a matter of what a building is made of. Sustainable actions have to be shown through community involvement, in order to create communities that will last just as long as the buildings themselves.
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