By Isle of Wight Observer
Island-based business Captiva Homes has delayed a return to its building sites putting the safety of the community before construction.
It was the first home builder on the Isle of Wight to send its teams home during the current pandemic and despite many of the national builders already back at work, Captiva has taken a more cautious approach waiting for further guidelines from the Government to ensure the safety of the community before announcing a restart of works.
Director James Pink said: “As Islanders we care about our communities and despite increasing sales at our current West Acre Park development in Ryde, we knew halting construction was the responsible thing to do.
“We have been advised by the Government that we can restart on site, but we want to reassure everyone that our commitment to our Island-based work force, employees, our residents and our neighbours hasn’t changed. We want to do our bit to get the economy on the Island up and running but only after significantly increasing our safety measures.
“We are hoping to reopen our construction sites on May 18 and have planned very carefully for how we do this as safely as possible for our communities.
“We are putting processes in place to significantly increase our handwashing facilities and cleaning procedures and even plan to temperature check every member of the team.
“We know that the next few weeks will continue to be difficult for the UK, and our plans will remain flexible to ensure we react to Government and the Construction Leadership Council advice at every stage.”
Captiva Homes launched its West Acre Park development in February and sold seven homes off plan over the first weekend. By lockdown the whole of the first release was sold out.
The housebuilder has developments across the Island, including Princess Court in East Cowes.
