Jackson Rowe’s S106 Employment & Skills Offering

Since 2020, Jackson Rowe has been working with Crest Nicholson, Winchester City Council and Hampshire County Council at their £13m residential new build development in North Whiteley to provide employment and skills opportunities to local residents and the community.

Harry Rippon (Employment & Skills Co-ordinator) planned and delivered a virtual work experience placement to 11 students from local Hampshire schools. The placement lasted 3 days and involved the students meeting and putting questions to various construction professionals, working on some of their soft skills such as communication, teamwork and leadership and completing tasks across the construction, marketing and accountancy industries. Feedback was very positive, especially considering this event took place during a time when work experience was very hard to come by due to Covid restrictions.

On behalf of Crest Nicholson and Jackson Rowe, Harry attended a number of career events to publicise the construction industry offering to young people at school or college and to inspire them to think about it in the future. Some students were already keen, so offering them advice on what to do next to reach their goal, or where to find more information, hopefully helped them on their way.

Another two day educational event involved Harry planning and teaching a Design Your Dream Home workshop to 8 classes of year 7 students. An evaluation form was handed out at the end which was very positive, including one comment saying “Harry and Miss Debbie were amazing. Thank you guys!!”

Jackson Rowe created a 2-part video series titled “Careers in Construction” and circulated it to schools and colleges in the area to provide a better understanding of what the construction industry can offer.

This development created over 20 new jobs for local residents in disciplines such as groundworks, bricklaying, maintenance, site management, labouring, traffic management, drivers and the sales department. Some of the roles offered involved training and apprenticeships to either new industry recruits or further training to existing professionals/operatives. The youngest of these new employees was 17 and the oldest 54, showing excellent diversity in hiring.

Over 25 formal qualifications were achieved on this site, some of which were the result of the training mentioned above. Other formal qualifications achieved included CSCS cards, Health & Safety, Fire Safety, specific vehicle licences and other site specific training.

If your employer is interested in delivering S106 Employment and Skill Obligations or increasing their social value and want to give something back to the local community, please don’t hesitate to get in touch; Harry Rippon & Gemma Good.