We're into our new building...
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The new building |
After months of work on the site in Crimea Road, we have moved in to our lovely new building.
New facilities
The new building has been purpose-designed to meet the current and future needs of clients and staff and to provide a bright, clean, safe and environmentally friendly place.
The new four-storey building
will enable us to bring all our services and management into one building. The top two floors will have 30
single study-bedrooms with communal areas for cooking, laundry and leisure. This will give our young people a
quiet and secure environment in which to live and study.
The
ground floor will house Youth AIMS (our information,
advice and mediation service), along with other services including counselling, training and family mediation. Staff offices, interview and
meeting rooms will be located on the first floor.
Reasons for re-locating
As Step by Step has grown over the past 18 years, more services have been added until we now work across five different locations around Aldershot town centre. The existing buildings are quite old and have been adapted rather than built for our purpose, and communications between staff and clients becomes more difficult over several locations.
Moving into a specially designed building will enable us to make saving on the cost of heating and maintenance, improve communications and make all our services more accessible to our young people, as well as providing accommodation to a good standard. This should lead to better outcomes for all our clients and staff. The old buildings will be returned to community use once we have moved out.
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Architect's elevation of finished building |
Partnerships
Obviously, we couldn't undertake this project on our own. We are very fortunate to have the enthusiastic support of Rushmoor Borough Council and a number of other partner organisations (see left), including Hampshire County Council, surrounding local councils and the Homes and Communities Agency.
We are very grateful to have secured funding for the building, which will cost £3.8 million. (A list of funders is available.) Sentinel Housing Association will own and manage the building and together with them we did some wide-ranging research covering around 30 other similar projects to ensure that we have the best possible facilities for our young people. In fact, we're hoping this will be one of the best such schemes in the country. We've also been keen to ensure that energy and maintenance costs are kept as low as possible.
Our builders, Wilding Butler, have experience in this type of building, having recently completed the Trinity Centre for
homeless people in central Winchester and the new
Church on the Heath in Fleet.
Our Project Management team of retired professionals has been working with Sentinel Housing, Wilding Butler and our suppliers to ensure that the project is successfully completed. We are hugely grateful to them all.
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