Cooks Lane, Sittingbourne

We are closed for the festive period.

We are closed from;

Thursday 23rd December 21 - Tuesday 4th January 22.

Thank you for all your continued support and patience.

Enjoy the holiday season!

EQUANS and Sanctuary Housing came together to help plant trees within Swale Borough Council's Milton Creek Country Park in Sittingbourne. We planted 200+ native tree species to form important hedgerows which will help to support and encourage protected Bumble Bees and create biodiversity within the park. This was part of EQUAN'S Tree Planting Week.

For 2 days in October, EQUANS helped a Kent based homeless charity called Porchlight.

Porchlight are Kent’s largest charity for homeless and vulnerable people. They’re here for people who have nowhere to go and no-one to turn to. Some are living on the streets; others need their support to prevent or resolve any issues that could put them at risk of homelessness.

Our EQUANS volunteers have spent 2 days painting and decorating the 5 communal rooms at Craddock House in Canterbury. Craddock House provides emergency accommodation for rough sleepers as well as services around health, employment, and wellbeing.

EQUANS are currently carrying out responsive maintenance to properties all over the Kent area on behalf of our clients, with the initiative forming part of our social value activities.

As part of our responsible business commitments, ENGIE has partnered with the Prince’s Trust in supporting the construction industry to address the current skills shortage and encourage new talent, as well as providing valuable knowledge and skills to support young people into employment. The ‘Get Started in Construction’ programme offers a multi-skilled programme, which can lead to apprenticeship opportunities on site and help unemployed young people gain valuable training and experience.

ENGIE was pleased to be able to get involved in this worthwhile initiative and, with four young care leavers also attending the recent course in Kent, to further extend our support as a signatory member of the Care Leavers Covenant.

From 19th to 23rd July, 12 young people attended the Prince’s Trust’s Get Started in Construction programme in Kent. The week long programme was filled with different activities each day, including accredited training courses such as Asbestos Awareness and Manual Handling, and the QNUK 1 day Health and Safety course they need to apply for the CSCS card. The courses were delivered by ENGIE trainer, Tony Bates, though our Learning and Development Centre of Excellence. ENGIE’s Trainee, apprenticeship and Graduate Officer, Suzanne Bingham, and Social Value Manager, Karen Field, also led sessions on CV writing skills and mock interviews alongside information on routes into the industry such as work placements and apprenticeship schemes. Trainees also had the opportunity to see a live construction site with a visit to our Cooks Lane development.

Progress on the Cooks Lane project is going very well. We currently have 32 homes occupied and a further 17 homes ready for occupation.

We are currently working to deliver a further 27 homes within the coming months.

This will complete the upper section of the project and we will be concentrating on completing the landscaped areas and re-align the security fencing.

Within the next few months we will complete the first apartment block names “Mill Way” Apartments, situated on the corner of Cooks Lane with a further 27 homes within the block.

Local to the Cooks Lane project in Milton Creek Country Park. Set in 128 acres, Milton Creek Country Park stretches from the shores of the Milton Creek, past Asda and Milton Regis’s Holy Trinity Church, to the paper mill and fishing lakes in Kemsley. There is a community events space and natural play area as well as an extensive network of paths and lakes used by both the local community and an abundance of wildlife.

EQUANS are always looking for ways to combine benefitting the local community and the natural environment, so we were more than happy to donate 2 pallets full of bricks that will be used at one of the parks many events to create bug hotels.

Bug hotels provide snug and safe places for insects to hibernate. Full of dark holes a bug hotel will benefit lots of different types of minibeast and insects such as ladybirds, bees, spiders and woodlice. Minibeasts can then use a bug hotel as a safe space to shelter, lay their eggs, raise their young, and seek refuge from predators.

New name, same faces!

ENGIE has announced the launch of a new global entity called EQUANS, which as of 1 July 2021 will now separately manage the majority of its client solutions/services-led activity. The creation of EQUANS reflects ENGIE’s desire to simplify its structure and refine its existing strategy to have a clearer focus on energy infrastructure and grid-scale renewables.

For our services activity within EQUANS, it will mean optimal focus and greater agility in the way we operate.

In the UK & Ireland, all our activity in facilities management & technical services, energy efficiency and regeneration - as well as our specialist energy related capabilities including smart buildings, green mobility, district and embedded energy, and decentralised renewables will continue to operate within EQUANS exactly as they do today. This equates to a £2 billion revenue business, employing 13,500 people.

EQUANS continues to belong to ENGIE and for our customers nothing changes with this announcement as we remain committed to our existing high levels of service performance. Our current management and on-site teams including your Site Managers and Resident Liaison Officers will stay the same, still wearing ENGIE branded clothing for easy identification. With this in mind, future newsletters may look a little different when we change to EQUANS branding, however the content of your regular newsletters will stay the same, continuing to provide you with an update on our progress, contact details for your site team, important safety reminders and news about community events and initiatives.

We are happy to announce that good progress has been made in the past month with the successful hand over of 18 properties which residents are now starting to move into.

An additional 20 properties are due to be completed by the end of April 2021.

We have now completed all the off site road works to both Cooks Lane and King Street.

We continue to progress well with the erection of timber frames for houses that are due to be handed over at the end of the year.

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Local to the Cooks Lane project in Chalkwell Road Sittingbourne, is The New House Youth Centre. Working with the local council, this youth centre provides a range of fun activities for young people from arts and crafts, sporting activities and pool tables, as well as educational presentations to discuss road and cycle safety and gun and knife crime. This is a very popular youth centre providing a safe haven for young people between the ages of 6 – 18 who need somewhere to meet their friends away from the streets.

ENGIE has already carried out a range of different activities with the youth centre, and to help further, we offered to install new shelving units and cupboards to the activity room which can be used to display different art projects created by the young people that attend the youth centre.

With help from our carpentry subcontractor at Cooks Lane, Martin Robinson Carpentry Ltd, we were able to arrange for the carpenters to donate their time and materials to create and install the cupboards and shelves that went around the perimeter of the room.

Also a big thank you to our kitchen supplier and fitters at Cooks Lane, Magnet Kitchens, for donating the cupboard units and work tops used by the carpenters.

Martin Robinson Carpentry Ltd
3rd Floor The Whitewall Centre
Whitewall Road, Medway City Est
Rochester, Kent ME2 4DZ

Magnet Kitchens
Unit 7a/b Trinity Trading Estate
Sittingbourne, Kent ME10 2PG