New £8m dementia care home under construction welcomes trainee plumbers

Linden House, a care home currently under construction in Lymington, was visited by over 20 Newbury College students last week.

The students are all trainee plumbers and were shown around the site to give them valuable experience of a ‘live’ construction site.

Brian Evans, curriculum manager of Technology at Newbury College hopes these students will go on to apprentices or full time plumbing roles and commented that “we’re grateful to Colten Care for hosting the visit by these new recruits to the building industry”.

The home that the students visited will be 4.250sq m and aims to promote its residents independence while living with dementia. The layout will be an ‘L’ shape and give clients access to exceptional facilities whilst living in small house groups.

The focus of Linden House is for residents to benefit from shared daily activities, memory stimulation and ‘person centred’ care so they can retain practical life skills.

The home will have three storeys and George Colwell, joint managing director of Colten Developments explained “This is our biggest building project to date involving more than 150 bricklayers, plumbers, electricians and other trades. On any one day more than 50 people can be on site.”

It will replace the former local authority home in New Street after its demolition in April 2012. Mr Colwell welcomed the students' visit, explaining “we were more than happy to show them first-hand what site management is all about.”

Students were given advice from project teams working on the £8m site about health and safety and equipment as well as the important links between plumbing and other building trades.

Linden House is part of the family run by Colten Care Ltd group and will be their fourth dedicated dementia care home, due to open in Autumn 2013.

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