The Weston Homes Community Stadium in Colchester was named this year’s overall winner in the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors East of England Awards. The project also won the Community Benefit award for its contribution to the wider community at the awards event held on 14 May at the Imperial War Museum, Duxford. 

The new stadium is far more than just a new home for Colchester United Football Club. It is managed by an independent company charged with balancing commercial and community interests. It offers conference and meeting facilities for local businesses as well as a study support centre, five a side football pitches and a growing list of other facilities for the local community, operated by a separate Community Sports Trust. It will act as a centre-piece for future growth with up to 3,700 new homes expected in the area.

David Ralph, Chief Executive of the Haven Gateway Partnership said:

“It is tremendously encouraging to see top quality projects such as this being delivered in our sub region. The project was one of a series of key infrastructure projects put forward for funding from the allocation made by the Government to the Haven Gateway. This “New Growth Point” funding was made available to support sustainable growth in the Sub Region and the Weston Homes Community Stadium received £1 million in 2007/08. It also received a further £1 million of EEDA funding. “

Steve Clarke, former Colchester Stadium Project Manager and now Development Director with the Haven Gateway believes that one of the reasons the project won these prestigious awards is that it was the first major project to use the Inspire East Excellence Framework. He said:

 "This on-line toolkit helps projects to achieve excellence by considering the components of a sustainable community and measuring them against set standards. “This on-line toolkit helps projects to achieveHaving used the Tookit, we made a number of changes to the stadium project to improve its sustainability. Created by Inspire East, with support from the Building Research Establishment, we think this toolkit is immensely helpful and we have adopted it here in the Haven Gateway Partnership. We will be actively promoting its use to deliver the highest possible standards in all new Haven Gateway funded projects.”

 For more details see:

 http://www.inspire-east.org.uk/welcome.aspx

Two other projects in the Haven Gateway area (not funded using New Growth Point grant) received recognition in the RICS awards. These wereUniversity Campus Suffolk, Ipswich, which was highly commended in the Regeneration Award categoryand the Clayfield Housing project in Elmswell, Suffolk which was highly commended in the Sustainability Award category.