Community

At the heart of sustainable development is the commitment to improving people’s quality of life. We achieve this through the creation of attractive built environments that support a sense of community. We encourage local people to participate in the development process and in the management of community facilities to help promote social inclusion. We also give advice and financial support to local groups and organisations.

We recognise that there is much more to creating a sustainable community than planning and building. It is about social interaction between local people, groups and organisations. It is also about understanding and meeting rich and diverse cultural, spiritual and economic aspirations. To achieve this we engage with local residents and other interested parties to include them in the process of planning and delivering new and regenerated communities.

Early dialogue with stakeholders is key to ensuring a better mutual understanding of the development’s objectives and the site’s constraints. We use such an inclusive approach to enable our masterplans to reflect community aspirations and concerns. Best practice engagement typically involves three stages covering pre-planning, planning and design, and development.

Many of the lessons we have learnt are transferable, although they need to be tailored to local circumstances. We will endeavour to develop a framework for all future schemes. This will help us to create inclusive communities where we can channel the knowledge, energy and enthusiasm of local people to provide sustainable places to live, work and enjoy.

We recognise that, at the outset of some of the estate regeneration projects in which we are involved, local people experience high levels of unemployment and associated deprivation. Local employment schemes can bring immediate benefits to local people and we therefore place a high priority on them.

On our major estate regeneration schemes we have accordingly allocated substantial resources to set-up Local Labour in Construction (LLIC) Schemes, which we have 17 years’ experience of carrying out. We currently have 13 such schemes in operation. On our major estate regeneration schemes we are currently securing up to 20-25% of our total employment requirements through local people, depending mainly on the skills of the local workforce and duration of the project.

A key factor in this achievement is the partnering arrangements we have with our sub-contractors who will be employing much of the local labour. These arrangements result in the provision of more secure and sustainable job opportunities. We also use local suppliers wherever possible, including the local supply depots of national networks.

In Islington, we have supported the LLIC scheme for 8 years and have found it an excellent way of offering young people a good insight into the construction industry. Also by working with Tower Hamlets LLIC and the local schools and colleges we are ensuring that the opportunities within Countryside Properties, and the construction industry as a whole, are promoted.

We have also forged close working relationships with Notting Hill Housing’s Construction Training Initiative. At Grahame Park in Colindale we are endeavouring to set up a National Skills Academy with all the major local stakeholders.

In addition, our developments comprising a mix of housing, commercial and social uses provide job opportunities for new and existing communities.

We actively support the wider community where we are developing and a number of charities, as well as local environmental initiatives have benefited. In 2006 we donated £47,649 (2004 - £86,525) including 'time in kind' giving. This included donating £22,833 to health charities, £1,862 to schools and children's causes, £1,250 to culture charities and £19,231 to community focussed charities, and we matched funds of £2,473 for our 'staff charities' which during the reporting year were Kidney Research UK, PARC (Braintree) and the Warrington NHS Trust Hospital Special Care Baby Unit. In addition, in the reporting period we sponsored a number of community events with a value of £49,800. The Group does not make donations to political parties, organisations or their representatives.

As part of our commitment to continually improving our standards of customer care, we operate a best practice Customer Satisfaction Strategy across all our residential divisions. During the reporting period, in-house research revealed that 84% (2005: 81%) of purchasers were satisfied with the overall service provided by the Group after a month of occupation. A creditable 80% (2005 – 77%) of our purchasers would be prepared to recommend us to a friend.

The overall objective of the research is to provide the construction, sales and marketing functions with timely and actionable information, fed back directly from purchasers at key periods during the buying, moving in and occupation phases. We benchmark our results against National House Building Council and Home Builder’s Federation research to ensure the comparability of our performance with our peers.