Barratt Developments : wins NextGeneration innovation award for new swift brick

26 Sep 2017

Barratt Developments plc has won this year's prestigious NextGeneration innovation award. The award was given for the company's work in partnership with the RSPB to produce an innovative new brick that is also a nesting box for swifts.

The NextGeneration initiative benchmarks the sustainability performance of the UK's largest housebuilders. The NextGeneration executive committee consists of the HCA, UKGBC and the initiative's secretariat JLL. Their annual innovation award goes to a housebuilder that goes above and beyond their normal criteria for ranking sustainability innovation.

With the UK's population of swifts having fallen to less than 90,000 pairs, down from 150,000 two decades ago, building new homes for the birds was an important goal of the partnership between the RSPB and Barratt Developments.

The bricks are an industry first as they are fully drained, ventilated and are unobtrusive by matching the colour of the bricks. They are also much cheaper than others on the market, so as to boost their uptake with other developers and housebuilders. The manufacturer of the new bricks, Manthorpe Building Products, is receiving substantial interest in the bricks from other housebuilders and developers.

Barratt Developments won this year's award for helping boost the number of swifts in the country by installing the special swift bricks at its developments around the country. In just one year nearly two hundred of the specially designed nest boxes have been installed into new Barratt homes being built at developments in Aylesbury and Exeter. Overall Barratt is aiming to install up to 900 of the boxes at its flagship nature development, Kingsbrook in Aylesbury, with hundreds more being planned across the rest of country.

Michael Finn, group design and technical director at Barratt Developments, was presented with the NextGeneration innovation award for his work on the swift bricks. He commented: 'This award is enormously prestigious as it showcases our commitment to both sustainability and innovation throughout the housebuilding industry. By installing hundreds of them across the country we are helping support the UK's swift population by giving them new homes.'

A spokesperson for NextGeneration commented: ''The swift bricks were utterly deserving of this award. They showed industry leading innovation which benefits not just Barratt, but the whole of the housebuilding industry, the swifts and homeowners alike. With swift numbers falling so dramatically, having almost halved in twenty years, these new bricks are a super sustainability innovation.'

-ENDS-

For further information, please contact:
Derek Harris, head of public relations
Tel, 020 7299 4873 / e-mail, [e-mail]

NOTES TO EDITORS:
Barratt Developments plc sold 17,395 homes in the year to June 2017, making it the biggest housebuilder by volume in Britain. Over the past six years Barratt Group has increased its housing output by more than 55% - building more of the homes the country needs. Barratt is committed to building quality homes and this year was awarded five stars by the Home Builders Federation (HBF) for customer satisfaction and won more NHBC Pride in the Job awards than any other housebuilder. Last year Barratt won the prestigious Sunday Times Homebuilder of the Year prize at the British Homes Awards.

26 Sep 2017 Barratt wins NextGeneration innovation award for new swift brick

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