Park East, being delivered in partnership with Orbit and the London Borough of Bexley, will see 320 mixed tenure homes built in Erith.
The Park East regeneration is a £95 million development in Erith, being delivered with housing association Orbit, in partnership with the London Borough of Bexley. The project will see 320 new homes built, of which 80% will be for affordable rent and the remaining 20% for shared ownership in order to accommodate a mixed tenure community. Work is expected to be completed by 2023.
Providing Training Opportunities
Wates Residential and Orbit are committed to providing employment opportunities for local people in order to reduce the amount of unemployed people in Erith and surrounding areas, and also help combat the skills shortage that there is in the industry.
Wates Residential has hosted two bespoke training courses in Bexley; Building Futures in October 2019 and Construct a Career in March 2020. The courses support unemployed adults in gaining valuable practical and theoretical experience in the construction industry. The programmes involved site visits to Park East and West Street, another of Wates Residential’s sites in Erith, basic health & safety and asbestos awareness training and practical carpentry skills before a celebration event on the final day.
Providing Employment Opportunities
Along with providing training, Wates and Orbit have pledged to provide employment opportunities, which includes hiring at least 31 apprentices and 25 people in full time employment from the local area. The first two ‘Apprentice Demolition Operatives’ were hired in October 2019 and worked with Erith Group, the demolition contractor on site.
Supporting the Local Community
Throughout Wates Residential and Orbit’s partnership they have been supporting the local community through donations, volunteering and charity work.
This has included an IT donation to a local Youth Centre, Active Horizons to help young people who do not have access to computers or WIFI at home with school work or connecting with family and friends.
In December 2019 the site team collected items for the local Re-Instate W-rap project which were made into care packages for patients experiencing mental ill-health at Oxleas and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trusts.
Antiviral Mist Tunnel
During the Covid-19 pandemic the Park East site team installed an Antiviral Mist Tunnel to help minimise the spread of the virus and to keep operatives and site visitors safe.
The tunnel incorporates a thermal camera that takes each person’s temperature as the approach. A green light will flash to indicate a temperature below 37.8 degrees and from there, they can enter the tunnel.
Once in the tunnel, individuals are sprayed for up to five seconds with a mist solution made up of water and hypochlorous solution which is a natural chemical designed to fight and kill 99.9% of germs and is 100% safe and totally non-toxic.
