Environ Communities today launches its new website (www.environcommunities.com) following a revamp of Environ’s corporate identity by designers Showler and Showler.

The site is designed to provide details of all current, future and past schemes with a comprehensive photo gallery of schemes to include a gallery on landscaping as well as images and detail of the quality products that we use as part of the construction of our homes.

A blog, video blog and Twitter will keep the site’s followers up to date on various topics and news as well as progress on each individual site.

This is an exciting time for Environ with new sites at planning stage across the south of England from Kent to Cornwall. We strive to create places of timeless beauty be it iconic contemporary designs overlooking the Atlantic, spacious and light family homes in a new Kent village or cosy retirement homes in a Devon market town. Attention to detail and landscaping are paramount.

Not for us standard boxes on boring estates. Rather, we try to achieve a real “sense of place” and a development that through its variety and mix achieves a real sense of that old fashioned notion of “community”. This is our objective and the reason why we are called Environ Communities.

The quality of housing design in the UK trails behind that of the US and mainland Europe in design and many people through their travels have become aware of this. Programmes such as “Grand Designs” show that there are different exciting ways of living with functional and intelligent use of space but not everybody of course is able to commission their own dream home.

So too, in terms of specification, Uk housing fails in the main to provide ecological and health values as the foundation and housing with low energy consumption that will remain exemplary in years to come creating a home with long term value.

Environ is not a normal house builder. We want people to visit our schemes and go “wow”. We want people to tell us after they move in that they love living there. We want to visit our schemes years after and still be proud of what we have built.

In the words of John Ruskin “When we build , let us think that we build forever”.

UK house prices showed a sharp increase in February according to a closely watched index in contrast to the findings from the mortgage lenders.

The Acadametrics house price index extrapolates movements from the official Land Registry data and shows an increase of 1.9% in February and being 9.7% higher than prices a year ago. According to Peter Williams, chairman of Acadametrics, there are a number of factors giving rise to the difference.

Firstly, the survey excludes Scotland and Northern Ireland where the market has been badly affected. Secondly, the survey includes homes sold for cash as well as including homes priced at more than £1m.

Certainly, the survey correlates with the high footfall and number of sales achieved at Kings Hill during February and once again highlights the different methods for the various surveys and the variances between prime locations in the South compared with northern areas.