Member Article

Ascent Homes provide building blocks for education

Ascent Homes, a Northumberland-based house builder recently opened up its new development to pupils from New Delaval Primary School, Blyth, by giving them exclusive access to the scheme with visits to the show home and escorted site tours.

In total, 14 visits were arranged with an overall number of 140 eager pupils, from all year groups, visiting Ascent Homes’ Plessey Green development, situated next to Blyth Golf Course.

Consisting of a mix of two, three and four-bedroom houses and two-bedroom bungalows, Plessey Green is one of three sites the house builder currently has under construction.

As a responsible builder, Ascent Homes is committed to engaging with the local communities close to its development sites. Following an initial school assembly, the developer saw a perfect opportunity to engage further with the school and its pupils by arranging the site visits.

While on site, pupils were given the opportunity to learn first-hand how to read a site map, gain mathematical skills, such as working out deposit percentages and how many bricks it takes to build a house. They also learned about health and safety.

Commenting on its involvement with the school, Ascent Homes’ Claire Scott, head of sales and marketing, said;

“We fully appreciate the impact that construction can have on the surrounding neighbourhood and therefore it is very important to us to be able to build up a relationship and trust with our site neighbours.

“In this instance, we saw an ideal opportunity not only to engage with the local community, but also to provide valuable educational experiences for the pupils of New Delaval Primary School. The site visits have gone extremely well, sparking a lot of excitement amongst the students and who knows, we might have inspired one of them to become Britain’s next top builder!”

Paul Struthers, deputy head teacher of New Delaval Primary School in Blyth added;

“We were delighted when Ascent Homes first came to the school to lead an assembly and talk to the pupils about the work it is doing. As the children had lots of questions and were very curious about the building work which they can see from school, we were thrilled when they offered us the chance to go out on site. We couldn’t think of a better way to fuel their interest, whilst enriching their curriculum, than to experience first-hand life on a construction site. I would like to thank the Ascent Homes’ team for the positive contribution they have made to the school and our pupils.”

Plessey Green is scheduled to complete in August and is already proving popular with six houses being sold to date. Elsewhere in the region, Ascent Homes has a number of new developments which it expects to get underway in January 2016 including ones in Alnwick, Jesmond and Ellington.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Sarah Bosnyak .