Wates Living Space helps Walton Leigh School to give students green fingers

28 September, 2010

Staff from affordable housing contractor, Wates Living Space, have swapped their hard hats for gardening gloves to deliver a new wheelchair-accessible garden for Walton Leigh School in Walton-on-Thames.

As part of the company’s annual community day, a 14-strong team from Wates Living Space, with a little help from colleagues at Ground Construction Limited (GCL), spent 150 hours converting some of the school’s grounds into a wheelchair-accessible garden with a new patio and raised flowerbeds and benches.

Rob Chiles, Senior Planner for Wates Living Space, explained: “Each year every member of the nationwide Wates Living Space team downs tools to spend the day undertaking community projects suggested by staff or clients.

“This year I suggested that we improve the outdoor facilities at my son’s school in Walton-on-Thames, which is a special school for pupils with severe, profound and multiple learning difficulties.”

Rob Chiles approached sub contractor GCL for support, who volunteered to help build a patio which would drastically improve access to the school garden and help with improving access to the school’s allotment.

Rob said: “With GCL helping out it meant that we could be much more ambitious about what we could achieve on the day. We decided that in addition to creating a new patio at the school we would also create five new raised flowerbeds at the allotment that could be reached from a wheelchair  We then added some turf to give the children some grass to play on as well as painting the benches and school shed.”

Each year affordable housing contractor Wates Living Space donates a working day for each of its staff members to carry out projects which will benefit the local communities in which it works. 

Last year’s community day saw 1,050 people from the Wates Group contribute over 10,000 hours on 89 community day projects; an investment worth more than £250,000.

Linda Curtis, Headteacher for Walton Leigh School said: “We are very grateful to the Wates Living Space team for their contribution. Gardening is especially beneficial for children with special needs as it provides a hands-on learning experience.

“The finished result looks amazing and we really enjoyed having the team around. But most importantly, you can see the difference it has made to the children, who are really enjoying developing their green fingers in the new garden.“

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Categories: regeneration, affordable housing, people, london & south east

Tags: Community day, GCL, Ground Constrution Limited, Walton Leigh School