The Somerton blog: March 2024

Hello!

Welcome to our March update about our work in Somerton.

Our March Resident Steering Group met on the 6 at Nexus House, and online via Teams.

We had five residents and one councillor attend the meeting online and at Nexus House.

Tony and Phillipa from Oxford Architects alongside Pravin DeSilva, Rebecca Sluman and Phillip Lott from Newport City Homes chairing the meeting.

You can read the minutes in full here.

Project Plan

We will be submitting planning permission for Acacia Avenue (Phase 1) in May 2024. The design team are working through getting this application ready for submission.

Design Update

We will be focusing on Acacia Avenue (Phase 1) and will be submitting a planning application for this area only. This is to reduce the planning risk and will be the quickest and most efficient way to get this phase underway.

We have submitted a formal Secure by Design Application - we have received their feedback and we are working through their comment.

We have had an internal review between NCH colleagues and their comments have been captured and will be looked into if they couldn’t be answered during the meeting.

We also had the community consultation event which was held at the Hope Centre on Thursday 8 February. We had really good feedback from the information that was shown and the fly through video.

Please see minutes of March’s meeting for the detail that came out of the internal review and the community consultation event.

Paper copies of the information shown at the community consultation event have been left at the Hope Centre if residents want to look through. We tried to get this information onto the website but due to the file size and the amount of information this wasn’t possible. If you would like to see this information, please contact Rebecca Sluman – Rebecca.sluman@newportcityhomes.com or call 01633 227808.

Work is also underway on eight of the void properties that will be refurbished and returned back to our housing stock for them to be re-let. These works will take several months to complete and each property will be having, damp proof works, new kitchen and bathroom, heating and electrical upgrade and external works to gardens, paths and steps if needed.

Communication

The Steering Group have been a pivotal part of getting us to the planning application submission stage.

While the design team are working in the background finalising the application, there will be less information to update the group on, therefore these meeting will move to quarterly. For 2024 there will 3 meetings, June, September and December.

Time and Date of Next Meeting

Wednesday 5 June at 17:30pm.

We hope that this blog has been useful – if you have any questions, or if there’s anything you’d like us to cover in future blogs, please get in touch with us at rebecca.sluman@newportcityhomes.com.