Children from Hambleton Primary School have been getting ideas about the careers they might one day take up during a visit to a local residential development.
Housebuilder Banks Homes welcomed 24 Year Six pupils to the site of its new Pastures development off Gateforth Lane for a behind-the-scenes tour of the site and a range of demonstrations of the work that’s going into building more than 60 new properties.
Hosted by site manager Vinny Hardcastle and assistant site manager Stuart Handy, the hour-long visit covered all the different aspects of the site’s development and finished with some group activities at the development’s Customer Centre, including a quiz on what the children had seen and the chance to build and knock down some giant Jenga walls.
Aaron Griffin, senior civil engineer with subcontractor Connaught Construction, also led demonstrations of the various diggers and other equipment that they’re using around the site.
And several of the young visitors have already picked out housebuilding jobs that they’re keen to take on when they get older.
The Pastures, which is Banks Homes’ first residential development in North Yorkshire, includes a range of three, four and five-bedroom homes, as well as two-bedroom bungalows.
New wildlife habitats and areas of public open space are also being created around the development to encourage and enhance local biodiversity.
Hambleton Primary School teacher Ellie Waterton says: “Being able to get a close-up look at something that’s happening so close by made everyone feel really involved and it helped to put a lot of the classroom learning we’ve been doing around coding and materials into context.
“Everyone on the site team was absolutely amazing with the children and shared so much interesting information about what they did and how they did it – they could all be teachers!”
“The children were really upbeat when we got back into class and had lots of things to say and questions to ask about everything, we’d seen on site, with several of them already picking out the housebuilding jobs they want to do in the future.
“Our trip was a resounding success and a real day to remember for the children.”
Banks Homes is currently seeking planning permission for a second phase of development, which would see a further 75 new high-quality private and affordable family homes of different sizes and types being built to the east of The Pastures.
Kate Culverhouse, community relations manager at the Banks Group, adds: “With The Pastures being close to Hambleton Primary School, there’s naturally been lots of interest from the children as work has progressed on site and we wanted to show them at first hand all the different things that go into building our high-quality homes.
“The children’s enthusiasm for everything that was happening around The Pastures was wonderful to see and their visit has clearly given them lots of ideas for the property industry roles that they might one day work in.”
