LANDSCAPING
Lugano block paving used throughout the Nansledan streets
National housebuilders are increasingly needing to adhere to Design Codes the better to reflect regional aesthetics. Merchants can make their own paving stock decisions based on the regional trends being driven by housebuilders and landscaping specialists.
REGIONAL ACCENTS W
ith the new government determined to deliver high quality new homes, at volume, and to a standard that places local stylistics at the heart of
the design, merchants can take a lead from the major housebuilders, to inform what hard landscaping products to stock on a region-by- region basis. Manufacturers hold the data that can help merchant buying groups at national, regional and local level make smart stocking decisions, focused on what home owners and local specialists want.
Danielle Thorpe, head of marketing at Brett Landscaping, says that, in August, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner announced a New Towns Taskforce commissioned to lead the largest housebuilding programme since the post-war period. The aim is to build new towns over the coming decades, with a ‘New Towns Code’ dictating criteria developers must meet, such as ensuring 40% affordable housing with the necessary local infrastructure and public service provisions also in place. “The Deputy Prime Minister said that New
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Towns will deliver housing fit for the future, shaping new communities with real character that people can be proud to call home,” Thorpe explains.
In addition, the new government will pick up where the previous government left off, adopting the National Planning Policy Framework which emphasised a commitment to achieving beauty in setting design expectations for new developments. “Design Codes are not a new concept, but they will become increasingly central to the design and delivery of new developments. At the heart of these codes, from an aesthetic perspective is to build new homes that look like they acknowledge the local surroundings, history and heritage of a location, to help build a greater sense of community cohesion to the local surroundings,” Thorpe says. “This offers the regional operations of merchants the opportunity to tailor their available hard landscaping product selections to meet the prevailing demand of housebuilders and landscaping specialists working in the area,” she says.
“This thinking does translate to practise on site. For example, my analysis of Brett Landscaping’s sales data year to date demonstrates that our Omega Flow paving block in Brindle colour, which is similar in colour to the well known London Brick, is being used at volume in a wide range of housing schemes for a number of housebuilders operating in East Sussex, West Sussex, Essex and further around the southern sweep of the M25 in Surrey and Hampshire. This indicates that housebuilders will continue to complement the aesthetics of more than five million homes across London and the Home Counties through the paving products they buy from us when paving new housing estates.”
Thorpe highlights another example, in the South West, a RIBA South West award winning development set near Newquay and within the Duchy of Cornwall called Nansledan, Brett Landscaping worked with local merchant partners to deliver more than 18,000 square metres of premium block paving in-keeping with the Cornish granite
A supplement to builders merchants journal September 2024
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