DIY SOS BBC Children in Need Special 2017

On Wednesday 15^th November at 8pm Lochrin Bain will be eagerly tuning into this year’s DIY SOS Children in Need Special to see Nick Knowles and his team demolish a dilapidated building, the home of a Swansea based charity, before re-building a modern support centre and transitional housing in its place.

The Roots Foundation Wales, established in August 2011, offers support to children and young people in care or leaving care, those in kinship care and their carers based in Swansea and South Wales. The Foundation’s current building was run-down and falling into disrepair, so the infamous Purple Shirts were tasked with knocking it down, before starting work on the new building. The DIY SOS team along with the support of hundreds of volunteers and tradespeople had eleven days to build a brand new purpose-built support centre with short term accommodation for young people leaving the care system.

Halfway through the 11 days build the project team realised that an area to the rear of the new property required a boundary fence to compliment the new garden area. At such short notice a request was posted on websites, local press and social media, and a chance scroll through LinkedIn that Saturday night by our Operations Manager Gary MacGregor set the ball rolling. Speaking of the initial request Gary commented ‘’Being a fan of both DIY SOS and BBC Children in Need, my first thought was to see how we could help Nick and the team on such short notice. I was surprised that with so many security fencing manufacturers located closer to Swansea compared to our Glasgow based facility, that DIY SOS would struggle so much. As soon as I mentioned it to the rest of the team it was agreed that we couldn’t just stand by and watch.’’

From the initial call to the shows researcher to delivery of material took just over 2 days with the designers opting for 50 metres of the Lochrin WaveGUARD™ mesh panel system. Feedback from the BBC was excellent with the research team emailing us later that week with an update.  ‘’Thank you again so much for stepping in at the last minute to support the Children in Need build in Swansea. The garden looked amazing in the end, however it was a huge challenge to finish. Access was a major issue, with everything having to go through the adjacent park in really muddy conditions.’’

The whole experience from start to finish was incredible and supporting BBC Children in Need is something that we are all extremely proud of. So if you are watching this Wednesday please keep an eye out for our fence in the background. It may not be the star of the show on this occasion, but we don’t mind as it’s for an excellent cause!