Housing companies team up to support Rackheath Primary School

Lovell and Flagship recently hosted an assembly at the school for 200 pupils about site safety and the stages of working on a building site, before setting a challenge for students to design a poster about hazards. The winners will have their winning posters on display at Trinity Meadow at Rackheath.

We also hosted Year 5 and 6 students from the school at the site at Rackheath, which features 157 new affordable homes, to give them a tour and show them the stages of homes being built. As well as donning hard hats and PPE and having a short walk from the school to the site, they also had to spot some Bob the Builder posters on their visit! Batemans also provided them with a photo opportunity with dumpers, diggers and JCB equipment to sit in.

We also teamed up with Batemans to support the school with a new fence for a new ‘wild area’ at the school, which is set to open in the spring. We also sponsored a football kit for the school.

Chris Ashman, Head Teacher at Rackheath Primary School, said: “We have been hugely impressed by the opportunities and generosity that Lovell, Flagship and Batemans have shown to the school. The partnerships have helped the children to be more aware of their own environment and what is on their doorstep, motivate and spark an interest about construction, give them social skills as they hear from different people and show them the work and stages of building a home. The team have been brilliant, pitching things to the different age groups at the right level, and the children have been fascinated by it, and returned buzzing from the site visit. We can’t wait to open the wild area, which will provide a place in nature for the children to relax and learn. A massive thanks to everyone involved.”

Holly Baker, health and safety advisor at Lovell, said: “It was great to highlight the safety implications with the pupils given the site’s proximity to the school. The best part of the assembly was going through the different PPE required on site, bravely modelled by one of the pupils! The children asked some fantastic questions, from how many dumpers are on site to how long it takes and how expensive is it to build a house. We were extremely impressed at their enthusiasm. As a company, it is so important that we work with and support our local community, and a big thank you to all the team who worked so hard to ensure the students had a brilliant time on site.”

Tony Tann, managing director of Flagship Homes, said: “Thank you to Rackheath Primary School for allowing us to host the assembly. We really enjoyed our visit and involving the children in our latest partnership development. A lot goes into building a home, and it was great to share this journey with them and highlight the importance of safety. We do all we can to involve local people in what we do, as it helps to ensure that the homes we build are the beginning of a sustainable community.”

Stuart Andrews, project manager at Bateman Groundworks, said: 'We were thrilled to welcome the next generation of construction workers from Rackheath Primary School on site on behalf of Lovell and Flagship. It was great to see such enthusiasm and share our expertise with them on the specially prepared build stage route. The plant viewing area was very well received and the children loved getting to grips with the machinery. The Construction Industry provides a broad range of hugely rewarding career opportunities for young people, and to get onto a working site and see what matters in their own community being built, homes, and roads is very inspiring. We hope to see more partnerships like this happening in the future."