Following lockdown easing and return to work guidance from the UK Government, leading volume housebuilder Weston Homes has confirmed that on 11th May 2020 the company is reopening its construction sites across London and the Home Counties, with new anti-Coronavirus safeguarding and social distancing procedures in place; underling a carefully managed return to work by ensuring health and safety whilst helping to protect jobs and the UK economy.
Founded in 1987 by Chairman & Managing Director Bob Weston, Weston Homes is the largest privately-owned volume housebuilder in the Home Counties with some 7,000 new homes in the production and planning pipeline across London and the Home Counties with a completed value of £3 billion. Currently the business is marketing over 1,000 new homes for sale including one, two and three bedroom apartments and four and five bedroom houses, at prices starting from £172,000 sold through marketing suites, dressed showhomes and ‘virtual tours’.
Working in strict compliance with the Government and Construction Leadership Council’s guidance on COVID-19 and social distancing, Weston Homes have instigated a series of policies and procedures to ensure safe working of all those – employees, contractors and visitors – involved on construction sites.
Weston Homes will be maintaining self-distancing at two metres on all sites, and creating one-way pedestrian traffic routes through sites, walkways and buildings where possible by the installation of items such as signposted routes and temporary external stairways.
Upon arriving and leaving site, construction staff, delivery drivers and construction site visitors will be required to thoroughly wash their hands with soap and water and on all sites Weston Homes have created special bespoke Wash Stations for site staff comprised of sinks with their own independent water supply and sanitiser suppler.
All sites will have a rota of enhanced cleaning regimes with all touch points regularly sanitised such as doors, buttons, handles, vehicle cabs, construction tools and equipment, with a system of workers washing hands before and after using all equipment.
For internal fit out work individual apartments and houses will be limited to two people at any one time, with operatives working in isolation in one selected room. There will also be staggered start, finish and break times and a focus on site staff bringing their own food into work and eating in isolation at their allocated work station rather than the traditional canteen-based system.
All non-essential site visits and meetings have been stopped and replaced by video or telephone conference calls and allWeston Homes site staff have been fully briefed on COVID-19 to help ensure that anyone with symptoms will not be on site and will be self-isolating at home to help maintain the safety of other employees.
Bob Weston, Chairman of Weston Homes says: “Whilst Weston Homes is pleased to be returning to work and reopening our construction sites, the health and safety of our employees and other site staff is Weston’s number one priority and we are doing everything we can to assist in safeguarding against the spread of COVID-19. We are now planning a safe and managed start back to site on our developments. We have reviewed every aspect of our site activities and implemented strict procedures in order to fully comply with the restrictions imposed by social distancing and health safeguarding requirements. We are confident that we have a robust and comprehensive set of guidelines which mean that we can operate our construction sites safely and comply with strict social distancing requirements.”
