Hello!
Welcome to our June blog update about our work in Somerton.
Our last Resident Steering Group meeting was on 1 June at Nexus House, with a combination of people attending in person and online. 8 residents attended, and Terry and Andrew from Oxford Architects attended too, to talk through the design activity we’re working on.
You can read the minutes in full here.
Project Plan
We have reached our key milestones for May and we are working hard on exploring design options for Somerton. Surveys will be carried out on Newport City Council land to carry out a retaining wall survey. Over the next few weeks we will be carrying out home visits to our Newport City Homes customers, this is to find out as much information as we can on our customers to ensure we plan for the regeneration and refurbishment projects.
Valuer
Jones Battye have officially started on the homeowner valuations, they will be carrying out valuations for homeowners that have expressed an interest in selling to us. All information will be confidential between Jones Battye, Newport City Homes and the Homeowner.
Refurbishment activity
The 10 intrusive surveys have been carried out, we have floor surveys to carry out in 2 properties which will be carried out this month. A pilot refurbishment scheme will be carried out on 2 properties to ensure we get the right scheme of works for our refurbishment programme.
Design Updates
Acacia Avenue – Newport City Council provided formal written feedback to our pre-application, the overall feedback was positive and we will be working on their comments over the next few weeks.
Laburnum Drive – We will be carrying out further surveys such as topographical and ground investigation surveys on Newport City Council land at the back of Laburnum Drive.
Hawthorne Fosse – Two design options were shown for this area, we will be speaking to the school about these designs as we are looking at how access to the school can be improved. Both these options are with the wider design team looking at mechanical and engineering services that are already in existence on this site. We will look to provide more information on these design at next months meeting.
Sycamore Avenue / Hawthorne Avenue
We have been looking at this area as we own a vast majority of the properties here. Two design options were shown with a diverse mix of 1 and 2 bedroom flats, 3 bedroom homes and in one of the options there were some bungalows. Flat could possibly located on the 2 corners of this area, there would be off street parking for the properties. For the flats we would look at 3 storeys.
We also discuss older persons accommodation and whether this site, Acacia Avenue or another site in Somerton would be a better location, this will be looked at in more detail by the design team.
We are also looking at home zone areas, to see if we can make the area look less vehicular, so it meets the needs to children, cyclists and pedestrians, this will be looked into further as this idea is something that would fit well into Somerton.
Next Steps
We will continue our discussions with Somerton primary school on the proposed designs for Hawthorne Fosse.
We will continue to look at place making, quality homes, green spaces and public spaces throughout the proposed designs.
Develop the Sycamore and Hawthorne Avenue site.
Time and Date of Next Meeting
Wednesday 6 July 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 community@newportcityhomes.com.
Thanks,
The Somerton team