00:00...lead for the regeneration, redevelopment of the former Prince Philip Barracks, which is on the eastern side of the town.
00:09I just wanted to focus today on the town centre work that we're doing, but obviously we've been doing more
00:14than that.
00:15And as you can see, there's a lot of work being done on green spaces, green loops, and links around
00:21the town,
00:22which was part of the original planning application that was approved back in 2016, from memory.
00:30So we're 10 years on into a 20-year project, so roughly halfway through.
00:36And in terms of housing delivered, everybody says it's housing first, it isn't.
00:40We've done most of the infrastructure apart from town centre, and so far there's about 800 houses occupied out of
00:48the approved 2,400.
00:50So we're a third of the way through the housing, but we're more than 70% of the way through
00:56the infrastructure work, including schools and so on.
01:01Next slide.
01:05Sainsbury's, you'll have started to see the steel go up, as explained before Christmas.
01:12And that sort of started in March.
01:15The car park steel will arrive, we think, in May, when the car park steel goes up.
01:21So you've got a period of steel, and we're trying to get the cladding on the food store part done
01:26by the time that the steel goes up on the car park.
01:30So you'll see quite a quick transformation of the site, which has been a lot about what's in the ground,
01:37groundwork drainage, and some quite deep foundation work that we've had to do down to four metres below ground.
01:44So all of that work's largely complete, the substructure's largely complete, and we're now on the steel structure,
01:50and that's visibly what you can see more of now.
01:55And Sainsbury's themselves, they're gearing up for a May sort of launch of the new store.
02:01They'll start pushing Nectar into the town, you know, sign up to Nectar, and they'll start their recruitment in May.
02:07And then Sainsbury's will host an event in September.
02:10Hopefully the town council can host that event with Sainsbury's in September to talk about the store.
02:17And it's one of their new stores, it has about 50,000 line items within the store.
02:24The choice in the new stores at Sainsbury's is very good.
02:29You might know I would say that, wouldn't I?
02:31But I've been to visit one of their new stores in Orkenbury, which is near Reading.
02:37It's worth seeing one of their new stores to see how the layout looks compared to a traditional food store.
02:44But again, in September, they will show you how that new store looks and feels as well.
02:51And they will start taking the store for fit-out, their own internal fit-out, in October.
02:56So that's when they start their work.
02:58So they're on track, we're on track, and it's progressing well.
Comments