A team on our Facilities Management National Housing Prime (NHP) contract recently worked with the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO) and our supply chain to carry out an extensive garage and car park refurbishment project across the Central region.
The DIO, in consultation with the NHP Central teams, the local community and Garrison Welfare teams, had identified the need for additional parking within the Service Family Accommodation estate. Following a number of complaints from families in areas where there was shared on-road parking within a mixed civilian and Service community, a series of refurbishments began across the Central region to improve life for Service families in the area.
Projects in Strensall, Scampton, Marham and Colchester have now been completed and a project in Henlow is still underway. Local Amey teams across the region, together with supply chain and local DIO Accommodation teams, removed disused, old and tired buildings, some of which had been fenced off due to their dangerous condition, and improved parking for Service families in the areas. The poor state of some of these garage blocks and car parks discouraged people from parking there and encouraged fly tipping and antisocial behaviour issues.
Since the refurbishment, more parking spaces have been created and in some places Amey has provided brand new parking areas, giving families access to their rear gardens and spaces to park for the first time. This refurbishment has also benefitted some of the local schools, as safe drop off areas for families with additional spaces have also been created.
Deborah Hilton, Housing Estate Manager for DIO, thanked our teams for their work on the Colchester project. She said, “Work has finally been completed but this would not have been possible without the hard work and collaboration between the local DIO Accommodation and Amey teams. Thanks go to Amey’s project team; David Wright and Hollie Markham for project managing this, Sophie Davies one of the local Accommodation Officers for onsite inspections and community liaison during works and to Tina Denmark for taking this forward.”
The work has also received positive feedback from Colchester Garrison. Such improvements on estates are a relatively new enterprise for local DIO Accommodation teams as funding is often prioritised within SFA where the need for improvement is often greater. This is just one example where regional spend opportunities have much improved a community facility, helped alleviate some of the parking issues within this estate and provided a platform for continued collaboration between DIO Accommodation, Amey and Garrison welfare teams to identify and prioritise future improvement opportunities.