Kids receive a safety lesson in West London

Pupils at Coteford Primary School have been given a great lesson in staying safe, from leading local house-builder George Wimpey West London.

Around 40 seven and eight year-olds pupils went along to the Sandringham development Visitors Centre in High Road, Eastcote where Sales Executive Karen Newman and Site Manager Jim McKay showed them a scale model of what is being built, explaining the materials they are using and how new homes are constructed.

Karen and Jim also spoke about the fascinating history of the site – once home to World War II code-breakers – and outlined the dangers of playing on or around building sites, reminding pupils that large vehicles can have difficulty seeing small children, that scaffolding, bricks and pipes can collapse, and that sand can hide sharp metal and glass.

Jim says: "I’m delighted to have had the opportunity to speak to local children about what we’re doing at Sandringham, and to highlight the dangers associated with playing near any construction site.

“The construction of Sandringham will be ongoing for some time, and our children are very interested in the changes they see around them. However, with the long summer holidays ahead of us, it would be easy for children to see the development as a playground.”

Sandringham lies within 19 acres of landscaped grounds and the first phase of the development will comprise 113 new properties including contemporary apartments, a wide range of spacious family homes and exclusive Live/Work units for those who wish to run their business from home.

A new community hall and public open spaces are also included in the development design.

The site of Sandringham was once home to wartime code-breakers, operating 24-hours a day between 1943 and 1945 as an outstation of Bletchley Park, the famous decoding centre of the Government Code and Cypher School.

Known as HMS Pembroke, Lime Grove housed more than 100 decoding machines operated by Wrens who worked through sequences of possible Enigma encryptions, generated by the Germans for disguising strategic messages.

Today it is set to become a vibrant new community, with the showhome now open and the first homes available to reserve off-plan.

Sandringham Visitors’ Centre and showhomes off High Road, Eastcote is open between 10.30am and 5.30pm seven days a week.

For more information, log on to Georgewimpey.co.uk.