News - 28/07/2009
Wates Living Space Presents Rch With Cheque
Employees of affordable housing provider Wates Living Space presented a cheque for £10,000 to Scotland’s newest social landlord, River Clyde Homes in support of their 'Up Close’ campaign.
Wates Living Space was able to donate the money due to the award of a long term partnering framework in 2008 which will see Wates modernise the associations stock to meet the Scottish Housing Quality Standard for the next two years. Wates are currently on site providing external cladding works, re-roofing, new windows and other communal works to multi storey flats in Inverclyde.
The donation is being used to support River Clyde Homes "Up Close" community initiative which includes a major community exhibition profiling social housing in Inverclyde across the generations. The exhibition has witnessed over 8000 visitors since the opening in May.
Karen Neary, Chief Executive of River Clyde Homes, said "River Clyde Homes has developed an excellent working relationship with Wates, who have met our expectations on specification, cost and customer care as well as outperforming their programme to date and scoring well as 'Considerate Constructors'. This donation demonstrates the commitment from a partnering contractor that enthusiastically supported our significant community engagement initiatives."
Gillian Lavety, Partnership Manager, Wates Living Space says "currently over 80% of our projects nationally are frameworks or with repeat customers and we intend to grow this figure to 90% by 2010. We are absolutely delighted to be in a position of long term partnership working, this allows us to make this sizeable donation and support our client’s aims of creating sustainable communities. Our goal is to regenerate areas and give something back to the people living in the areas where we work. We trust this support will help River Clyde Homes improve the lives of their tenants."
Wates Living Space is soon to commence a "Building Futures Programme(tm)" in partnership with River Clyde Homes and local stakeholders. This company initiative was developed by the Wates Group to give something back into communities and tackle the Government agenda of sustaining places. The programme will benefit twelve long term unemployed people, by providing them with skills, training and qualifications before providing a working placement.
"Building Futures(tm)" underpins Wates core value of respect for people and communities. The award winning programme was developed to help vulnerable people overcome the barriers of unemployment into sustainable work and/or further education. It demonstrates Wates commitment to the Governments agenda of offering opportunities to provide financial stability for families, to assist on making them less dependable on welfare and greater social cohesion which in turn will lead to greater self esteem and wellbeing and inevitably creates and sustains communities.
