Member Article

Riverside Dene wins national social housing award

Newcastle based regeneration has been celebrated at a national awards ceremony for its efforts to improve living conditions for social housing residents.

The Riverside Dene regeneration scheme in the West End won the award for best social housing development at the 2011 LABC Building Excellence Awards after it incorporated new safety and green features into its refurbishment programme.

This included a biomass heating system, which will improve energy efficiency by 80%, fire protection improvement, and the installation of LED illuminations.

The scheme was pitted against entries from across the country, including developments in London, Kent and Cornwall. Each one illustrated the importance of building strong relationships between building control, architects and contractors in order to build safer, more cost effective buildings.

LABC chief executive Paul Everall stressed that the judges has a difficult job to choose between entries, but Riverside Dene was finally chosen due to the cooperative attitude between parties working on the project.

He commented: “The thing that marks out the winners is how feedback given by local authority building control, often as early as the design stage of a project, can make the difference.

“Our awards are unique because only they recognize this unnoticed work of local authority surveyors in helping to improve building standards and boosting sustainability and efficiency despite continued economic difficulties.

“My congratulations go to all the finalists – and especially the winners.”

The award was presented in front of 500 guests at a ceremony hosted by Channel 4 News’ Jon Snow.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .