Broadland Housing Association
Homes, community & support since 1963
With Norwich City Council, in February 2023 we completed 7 affordable rent houses in the former car park of the Ketts Hill Tavern in Norwich.
Broadland Housing Association is working in partnership with the council to deliver affordable homes across the city.
Our apprentice Gracie Symon has won 2 awards in quick succession. In March she won Lewisham College’s plumbing competition for women training in construction, held to celebrate International Women’s Day.
Then in June she was named Construction Apprentice of the Year by City College Norwich.
City College Norwich selected 12 of its 1,650 apprentices for the Apprentice of the Year awards, celebrating those who had excelled and acted as a role model to their peers throughout the year.
Gracie was awarded Apprentice of the Year in the construction category (electrical installations, plumbing and gas).
I feel really happy and honoured to win this award. With my achievements this year, I’m pleased to say my confidence has grown. Ian [my supervisor] has really helped me to get where I need to be in my apprenticeship and has pushed me along with my social skills when talking to new people, such as tenants. The award has highlighted to me how far I have come since I first started with Broadland!
Gracie Symon, plumbing apprentice
Gracie first joined Broadland as a plumbing apprentice in 2020. She chose Broadland because it offered a wide range of work and opportunities to learn on the job. She also enjoys meeting tenants from a range of different backgrounds.
Gracie first went into plumbing after leaving school, working with her Dad, who is also a plumber, before looking for an apprenticeship in her area. She is due to qualify in 2024.
Gas engineer Ian Willis, Gracie’s supervisor, said:
It’s a pleasure to train Gracie. She is enthusiastic and excited about learning new things, and always willing to give things a go. I am very proud of her. Gracie’s positive can-do attitude shines through – she is a credit to Broadland. Hopefully we can produce more apprentices like her in the future! Well done, Gracie!
Broadland is delighted to have acquired 3 beautiful new affordable homes at Bricknel Close, Castle Acre, from the Holkham Estate.
Two of the 2-bedroom properties are for social rent and another 2-bedroom house will be available for shared ownership.
Andrew Savage, Executive Development Director, said:
We’ve been working closely with the Holkham Estate on this project and it is great to see these high-quality homes come to fruition. There is a chronic shortage of affordable rural housing, so this is a timely development.
The new development is called Bricknel Close, after the original name of the field where the houses are built. In old English, ‘brik’ means bright and ‘halh’ means place – suggesting a bright place open to the skies, rather than in woodland.
A ground breaking ceremony marked the start of work on 18 new council flats in Great Yarmouth. Broadland is working in partnership with Great Yarmouth Borough Council on the £3 million development.
Jubilee Court is named in honour of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee in June 2022. It will comprise 3 blocks of 3-storey buildings containing one-bedroom flats for council tenants.
Each 50sqm flat is designed to be suitable for two people and will be built to high energy-efficiency standards. There will be a communal garden and parking area.
Andrew Savage, Executive Development Director, joined members of Great Yarmouth Borough Council, One Public Estate and H. Smith and Sons the ceremony by the Beach Coach Station in May.
The need is outstripping supply. It’s the first time in a long time social and affordable housing has been developed here by the council. It’s good to be able to help the council piece this together. The council are really trying to meet that demand and I think this is fantastic for Great Yarmouth.
Andrew Savage, Executive Development Director
At the event, Great Yarmouth Borough Council Leader Carl Smith said the new development was the “biggest expansion” of the council’s housing stock in almost 20 years. Speaking to the Great Yarmouth Mercury, he said:
The 18 new flats will offer valuable new housing, particularly for single people and young families.
Carl Smith, Leader, Great Yarmouth Borough Council
The homes are due to be completed in around 12 months.
Main picture credit: James Weeds
Volunteers from Broadland Housing and YMCA Norfolk have raised £2,616 for an innovative project that will help set up young vulnerable homeless people in their first homes.
Around 30 volunteers, including Broadland Housing Chief Executive Michael Newey and 9 other Broadland staff, slept out on a wet and cold night in March in the car park of the YMCA Community Hub in Norwich. They bedded down in cardboard boxes to raise money for the Housing First project. The cash will be used to buy furniture for young people setting up in their own home.
Michael Newey returned to the Community Hub to present the money to YMCA Chief Executive John Lee – who was also among the volunteers sleeping out for the night.
Spending one night in the cold and wet was an eye-opener for those taking part, who will fortunately never know what it is like to be sleeping rough on the streets. For us it was just one night. For people who are homeless, they face the cold, the wet and the dangers of being on the streets night after night.
Broadland Housing is absolutely committed to tackling the problem of homelessness, and we are delighted to be working with the YMCA to be delivering the Housing First project with them, the first of its kind in East Anglia.
Michael Newey, CEO, Broadland Housing Association
We are delighted at the amount raised from the sleepout, which is part of the partnership between the YMCA and Broadland Housing, which is helping to deliver a really worthwhile project aimed at homeless young people who have difficult or chaotic backgrounds.
For a number of reasons, these young people find hostel accommodation difficult, so the aim of Housing First is to skip that step and get them established in their own homes, with a support package to help them succeed in their tenancies and get their lives back on track.
John Lee, Chief Executive, YMCA
Housing First is an approach which aims to tackle homelessness among people with particularly complex needs by aiming to get individuals into their own home as quickly as possible and providing them with the support they need to make it work. It involves minimising the amount of time spent in temporary accommodation and seeks to minimise the number of moves someone has to make before they move into a permanent home.