latest news 

As reported last September, we’ve been busy working on a project in Brighton which
focusses on the circular economy. The building is a ‘meanwhile space’ which is
actually part of the Brighton Pavilion Estate and has been kindy made available
through Brighton & Hove City Council. We were pulled in to manage the project with
our extensive experience of empty buildings and have not only configured the space
but also curated over 25 ‘Makers’ who work with recycled and repurposed materials.
There was a very successful opening this month, attended by Councillors and
officers and the project will run to the end of May.

Our friends at Action on Empty Homes reported at the end of last year that London is
the only region in England to have experienced increases in residential vacancy
every year since 2016. The number of homes classed as ‘long-term’ empty (over six
months) has been steadily rising in the Capital, whilst more households are forced
into temporary accommodation. During 2024 the number of long-term empty homes
in London increassed to over 38,000. See the full piece on the Action on Empty
Homes website.

We’ve recently been working with Tech-Takeback, a Brighton-based organisation that focusses on tackling ‘waste’ electrics through repair and re-use initiatives. We are excited to run a building with them in Brighton which will host a range of events
based on the ‘circular economy’ – keeping materials in use for as long as possible. It’s an approach particularly relevant to the construction industry and we’ll be announcing a number of events in the coming months focussed on green building and careers in the circular economy.

Many thanks to the London School of Astrology, and in particular Frank, for their recent fundraiser on behalf of PHASES. It resulted in a donation of £900 which will go towards running our training workshop. It’s really appreciated.

Stoll (formerly Sir Oswald Stoll) provide supported housing to vulnerable veterans. We’ve worked with them in the past as many of our trainees are ex-services personnel. We were pleased to learn that Zoe, who we know through her work with other charities, has recently joined their team and in fact we’ve already made a housing referral to her on behalf of one of our trainees. We look forward to lot’s of future collaboration.  

Sixteen year-old Noella, from Limoges in France, contacted us last year. She needed to carry out a project for the ‘British International’ section of her exams and really wanted to work with a charity in homelessness. After agreeing the parameters of the project with Noella, we sent her a couple of videos, one of our workshop in action, and also replies by some of our trainees to questions that Noella had devised. She’s just completed her project and apparently it went down really well. Good luck to Noella in her future career.

We decided at the beginning of this year to undertake a significant programme of repair and refurbishment works on our affordable rent properties. It’s coming up to ten years since we first brought many of these, formerly empty, properties back into use and annual maintenance costs have been steadily rising. Apart from the roof in Beckton (see February 2023) we’ve been replacing boilers, pre-empting damp issues and tackling some structural challenges. A costly business but it’s been great for our trainees on site.

We’ve been at our training workshop in Rotherhithe for about 12 years now. Our Lease from Southwark Council has recently expired but we’re pleased to inform that after negotiations with Southwark a new ten year Lease has been agreed. The less happy side is that our rent goes up about 65%. So if anyone fancies chipping in to help on this, please contact us. In the meantime, here’s to another ten years of construction training in Rotherhithe.

Our friends at the charity Action on Empty Homes have published a report this month titled ‘Retrofit Empty Homes Action Partnerships’. It looks at how communities can unlock empty homes through a process of retrofitting them at scale and at speed. The report identifies retrofitting empty homes as a crucial piece of the transition to net zero. It also explores the spillover effects of community-led retrofitting, including job-creation in emerging green industries and upskilling in local economies. Pop over to their website and have a look.

We don’t usually feature the maintenance work we do on our renovated empty properties, many of which require extra TLC as the years go by. These maintenance jobs offer great opportunities for our trainees to hone their skills. A quick mention here for some recently completed work at a three-storey house we have in Beckton, East London. We’d had recurring problems with the roof over the years so decided to invest in some tech and had a drone fly over the property. It revealed all sorts of issues which we’ve now been able to remedy ! A big shout out to our helpful drone contractors on this one – Sparks4Growth.