Wrexham Council’s Housing Service and Glyndwr University have won a national award for a tenant-led regeneration engagement project…
A partnership between Wrexham Council’s Housing Service, tenants, and students from Glyndwr University has been recognised for its work.
The partnership was created to engage council tenants in the housing improvements set to take place at the Plas Madoc housing estate. It was awarded the ‘Best Practice in Tenant Engagement’ at the Welsh Tenants Community Awards.
Wrexham Council’s Tenant Participation Officer Clair Evans explained why the partnership was launched. She said: “To ensure the Plas Madoc community felt engaged in the re-generation project, we invited them to participate in two days of traditional consultation.
“For the consultation event, officers sought the assistance of three students from Glyndwr University who were about to sit their degrees in the Built Environment.
“The students had a wealth of new innovative ideas and inspired us to be more creative and to think outside the box.
“Working together with our planning colleagues and the three enthusiastic architects, we completed a design and created some thought-provoking activities to inspire the stakeholders into visualising the potential to reshape their community.”
The Plas Madoc housing estate comprises of some 400 non-traditional, steel framed, Cubbitt properties—most of which were built towards the end of the 1960s and were based on the outdated Radburn design principle.
The council owns a significant number of these properties, which are set to receive External Wall Insulation and roofing improvement in the future. This will improve the efficiency of the properties and modernise the external appearance.
These measures form part of the council’s extensive improvements project, which aims to make all its housing stock fall in line with the Welsh Housing Quality Standard by 2020. This will see all 11,000 homes within its portfolio improved at a total spend of around £228m.
Work will include External Wall Insulation on all non-traditional properties, new kitchens and bathrooms where necessary, as well as other work such as new electrical rewiring and central heating installation.
A table top sized model of the estate was built by Architectural Design Technology Graduates, Thom Gordon, Darren Pleavin, and Ben Turner. This was used at the tenants open day event and is now in the process of being transformed into a 3D computer generated walkthrough video to show how the estate could look after the improvements are carried out.
Lead Member for Housing Councillor Ian Roberts said: “The work the students have done for us has been invaluable so it’s fantastic news that the partnership has received national recognition at the Welsh Tenants Award.
“We were able to use the model they created at the open day event to show where potential changes could take place and it was so useful for tenants to be able to see the whole estate in front of them.
“The 3D walkthrough video the students are working on will also be a very useful tool which will help us see what a modernized Plas Madoc estate could look like.
“It’s taking us one step closer to making this ambitious project a reality for these tenants and it shows that there’s bright future in store for the tenants of this estate.”
Novus Property Solutions and Top Notch Ltd, the two contractors carrying out the improvement work for the council, provided sponsorship for the partnership.
Gary Robinson, Director at Top Notch Ltd, said: “This has been a great project to be involved with. We want to ensure that our work with Wrexham Council leaves a social and economic legacy and that the local community will be able to benefit from the huge investment being made in housing improvement work.
“The partnership that’s been created with Glyndwr University has ticked all those boxes and it has also opened the doors for further opportunities in the future, now that we know what is possible if we work together.”
Jeremy Anderson, Planned Works Manager at Novus Property Solutions, said: “We’ve been working alongside Wrexham Council for a number of years now to support the huge modernization project they are carrying out to bring all their properties up the Welsh Housing Quality Standard.
“Contributing to the local economy, engaging with the local community and providing training and educational opportunities are all a vital part of the work we do together and we are very happy that we’ve been able to play a part in this innovative and forward thinking partnership between Glyndwr University and Wrexham Council.”
For more information visit: www.wrexham.gov.uk/whqs
