Fourth award in four weeks for Crewe Lifestyle Centre

Cheshire East Council’s Crewe Lifestyle Centre has snapped up two more awards –making it the most successful building project undertaken by the council.

The project won two out of three categories at the North West Construction Awards, in Manchester, where it was nominated by building contractors Kier, who built the leisure and community hub.

The £16m centre, which brings together community services, the town’s library and state-of-the-art lifestyle and leisure amenities – all under one roof – was opened last spring, and has already collected awards for its design and community-based services.

In the construction awards (on Friday) it even pipped one of the region’s major highways schemes – the A556 Knutsford to Bowden relief road, linking the M6 and M56 motorways, which has brought relief to one of the borough’s biggest traffic congestion points.

The lifestyle centre, which has seen more than 750,000 customer visits since it opened in April 2016, won the ‘value award’ for delivered outcomes and ‘sub-regional project of the year for Cheshire and Warrington’.

It also picked up a ‘highly commended’ in the overall ‘project of the year’ category, beating some of the region’s 40-plus large-scale schemes put forward for this event which was held at The Principal Hotel, in Manchester, and attended by around 500 guests from the world of construction, design and the public sector.

Councillor Liz Wardlaw, cabinet member for health, said:: “The Crewe Lifestyle Centre has been a tremendous achievement for this council and I applaud all those people – contractors, architects and council staff – who have created this iconic leisure and community hub.

“When projects such as this are recognised in this way by the peers of the industry and public sector, then we know we have got it right and that our faith in our own judgement on investment and provision for our residents is well placed.”

In May, The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors voted the lifestyle centre the best for local community feedback and at the North West Local Authority Building Control Awards it picked up the ‘best public service building’ award and was runner-up in a second category.

The teams behind the project, which was delivered on time and on budget, now hope for further success when it is put forward for two national award events in London in the autumn.