Building Communities

Homes or houses? We all spot new housing developments on our travels and few of us will have been able to resist the thought that so many of the new houses on some of these estates look like uniform and even characterless boxes. Does it have to be that way?

It’s a fact that people need places to live – genuinely affordable homes – and we’re all too well aware of the acute shortage of new homes being built throughout the UK. It’s verging on a national crisis: there just aren’t enough new houses to meet demand and that can’t be good for local communities or society in general.

There are certainly no question marks over the build quality of these sometimes vast, modern estates. Modern regulations ensure minimum quality standards. But is there too much focus on filling land with bricks and mortar rather than creating sustainable communities?

There’s the argument that it’s people, not housing developments, that create such communities but are developers doing enough to support that ideal?

Our own approach is to design and develop a housing scheme that promotes in our homebuyers a sense of belonging – not just to the property they buy but to the development itself and its environment. That for us is the key to creating communities that last. Idealistic? Perhaps, but these are values that have helped us become one of Conwy’s leading homebuilders.

It's not just about building houses to help meet a shortage and give people the new home they need. For us it’s about giving people what they want: a sense of community, a place to live and pride in their environment.

What does being the area’s leading homebuilder mean to us? It means being acknowledged for the thoughtful and careful way in which we design our developments and the professionalism we apply to constructing our houses.

It means being recognised for the way we maximise energy sustainability and minimise adverse impact on the environment.

It means an appreciation that we build homes in the communities where we ourselves live with our families, and being prepared to be judged on the quality of what we do, and more importantly, how we do it.

It also means taking seriously our responsibility to support local businesses by contributing several millions of pounds a year, and using local materials, suppliers and skills.

We think hard about how we design a housing development.

That’s what brings and binds people together. That’s what develops a sense of belonging. That’s how we believe you should go about creating communities.