Sure Start for Bucks County Council

Requirement

There’s not a typical design for a Sure Start Children’s Centre as far as we are concerned, because every centre has different requirements, especially relating to the external appearance of the building. For instance, the six children’s centres Wernick designed and built for Buckinghamshire County Council were each treated as bespoke projects, with the exteriors designed to blend in with their surroundings.

LEA’s choose modular construction because factory produced buildings guarantee a consistently high standard of finish and greatly reduced construction times on site. Modular construction is also much cleaner on site and causes less disruption than conventional building methods to a client’s on-going business. At the Bucks CC projects this greatly benefited the schools that share the same sites as their new nurseries. For this reason and also because of the tight time scales and budget constraints that are generally features of their build programmes the education, nursery and healthcare sectors continue to be the most pro-active in specifying modular construction.

Ann Winsor, the children’s centre co-coordinator for Buckingham East and Buckingham West said, “Our building at Steeple Claydon was craned in, in sections, in one day. This was a great day for this rural community, many of whom turned out to watch. Eight weeks later the finished centre was handed-over to us. Two weeks after that we opened for the first time for a parent and toddler music session. The speed with which this building came together was amazing.”

The photographs are of the Oakfield & Bedgrove Children’s Centre at Broughton Community Infants School and the school’s outdoor play area.