RE:GEN make progress on £19m housing improvement scheme for Gentoo
With just over a year to go on the multi-million-pound improvement scheme for Gentoo, we take a look at what’s already been achieved in the first eight months of the project.
The transformational £19m housing scheme includes more than 1,100 homes in the Pennywell area of Sunderland that are undergoing a range of modernisation works, using a unique whole house approach.
Tenants are benefiting from: new roofs to their homes and outbuildings, new front door canopies, double glazing, loft insulation, cladding or render on outbuildings, new front garden fences and decoration to the outside of their homes.
As a result of the works undertaken, properties will also see an increase in the EPC rating to C, meaning they’ll require less energy to heat or run.
So far, team RE:GEN has started works on nearly 500 homes, and have completed:
- 415 new roofs
- 345 homes with new windows
- 228 new flat roofs
- 320 outhouses rendered
- 337 lofts insulated
- 86 new walls
- 126 new Willowcrete boundary fences
- 374 timber divide fences
- 175 new steel gates
- 90 existing wall repairs
Tenants are delighted with works completed to date, with some commenting that they’re already seeing a difference in energy savings.
Over and above the main scope of works, we’ve also been looking at ways to positively impact the local community.
We have upwards of 80 people working on this scheme including our RE:GEN site teams and supply chain. With our commitment to providing jobs for local people, we’re delighted to report that since the project started, 11 of those working on this project are from Sunderland and five are from the Pennywell area. We have also supported work experience students from the nearby Academy 360.
We also wanted to look at ways we could help the local community centre, which is where our site office is based. The centre opened in 1981 and has been a staple feature for the local community ever since. Over 1,000 people visit each week and enjoy a variety of activities from tea dances to trampolining.
Since setting up our site office in the centre last November, we could see that a few areas were needing some attention, having not had any refurbishment works in the last 20 years.
After speaking with centre manager Bill Leach, he asked if we could help update the disabled toilet.
In just over two weeks, we handed back the key to the centre having ripped out the existing facilities and transformed the space to include: a rewire, installation of new fire doors, new suspended ceiling, new flooring, and a new bathroom suite, complete with pull emergency cord that wasn’t previously in place.
Bill and the rest of the community centre team were absolutely thrilled with the results and couldn’t thank the team enough.
