Carrowbreck Meadow, Hellesdon wins at 2017 LABC Building Excellence Awards Grand Final

The project at Carrowbreck Meadow, Hellesdon, Norwich was awarded the title of Best High Volume New Housing Development at the Grand Final of the LABC Building Excellence Awards – one of the most recognised events on the building industry’s calendar.

A panel of industry experts judged a list of the highest quality projects from around England and Wales to reward the best in technical innovation, sustainability and design.

This innovative development has been designed and delivered by certified Passivhaus architects at Hamson Barron Smith (HBS) for Broadland Growth Ltd (BGL), a company set up by Broadland District Council and the NPS Group to provide positive intervention in the marketplace driving up the quality of the housing product through design, space and material selection, income generation to support local community needs and protection of front line services and environmental excellence.

The development at Carrowbreck is a contemporary rendition of a typical ‘Norfolk style’ – defined by a number of references to the historic barn vernacular seen throughout the county incorporating white render, black stained timber cladding and either slate or plain red roof tiles. The positioning, orientation and design of the homes maximises the access to solar gain in winter and prevents over heating in summer. This exemplar scheme, constructed by RG Carters, is innovative in its design, combining high standards of design with sustainability to achieve passivhaus performance levels . The dwellings are attractive in their form and sensitively laid out in an area of woodland, creating a highly desirable new neighbourhood.

Chairman of Broadland Growth Limited and Broadland District Council Leader, Andrew Proctor said “Achieving environmental excellence in everything we do is one of our key ambitions and I’m proud of this development. The homes will meet exceptionally high standards of energy efficiency making them much cheaper to run than the average house as well as good for the environment. “Selling some of them on a shared equity basis will also help local people looking to get on the housing ladder. We intend this to be the start of development that Broadland Growth will undertake to provide top quality housing in Broadland.”

LABC Chief Executive Paul Everall said: “Our building excellence awards are an opportunity for the industry to celebrate innovation and good practice. Our winners demonstrate how positive working relationships with local council building control teams achieve high quality, sustainable buildings. Our awards are unique because they recognise how this cooperation improves building standards and professionalism across the industry.”

The Grand Finals of the LABC Building Excellence Awards took place on Friday 10 November 2017 at the Westminster Park Plaza in London and was hosted by Gyles Brandreth, writer, broadcaster, actor, and former Conservative Member of Parliament. Over 800 building industry professionals including contractors, architects and engineers attended the celebration to find out which projects won across the 15 hotly contested categories.

Find out everything you need to know about the LABC awards

About the LABC Building Excellence Awards

The LABC Building Excellence Awards showcase buildings and design teams that have had to tussle with complex technical or construction issues and building site constraints. They highlight innovative and creative solutions and building control professionalism that leads to safe, sustainable and high quality construction projects.

For media enquiries, or to arrange an interview, please contact: Louise Williams louise.williams@labc.co.uk or Philip Hammond phil.hammond@labc.co.uk. LABC tel 020 8616 8120.