Cladding Industry Gets Behind DIY SOS Getaway Girls Charity Project

Getaway Girls building entrance|Craig Matson of Vivalda|Getaway Girls Centre|The DIY SOS team

TWO UK façades firms – EQUITONE and Vivalda – have joined forces to support a refuge for young women in Leeds.

Featured recently by the BBC’s DIY SOS show, the project harnessed the goodwill of the UK construction sector to create a purpose-built centre for the Getaway Girls charity based in Seacroft, Leeds.

Getaway Girls Charity Project

Established in the area for more than 35 years, the charity empowers young women between the ages of 11 and 25 in one of the city’s more deprived areas. Among the hundreds of volunteers and supporters who were involved in the nine-day build, fibre cement façade brand EQUITONE and rainscreen cladding distributor Vivalda were front and centre of the project.

Craig Matson of Vivalda at the Getaway Girls centre.

Regional Director at Vivalda, Craig Matson, said: “Given the fact that this new project was for such a worthy cause, our London branch jumped at the chance to work with the team at EQUITONE to provide an attractive and hard-wearing façade for the building. Utilising our in-house design software, CNC routers and panel saws to ensure the job was to exacting specifications. We also used our own logistics fleet to make sure the cut-to-size EQUITONE panels were delivered to site in Seacroft within a demanding time frame.”

“It was great to see the finished structure looking so good. The Getaway Girls is such a valuable charity and we’re delighted to have done our bit to support them.”

EQUITONE Specification Manager, Mike Lee, added: “Community and sustainability are very important to our business, so we didn’t need to think twice when we were asked to support this great project. Our range of façade products are very popular with schools, colleges and universities, so the use of our [natura] cladding for the Getaway Girls’ centre was an obvious choice.”

The new Getaway Girls centre.

New Building

The new building is intended to act as a safe space for those who the charity supports, including facilities such as a crèche, counselling rooms, activity spaces, and a garden. It is clad in 8mm thick EQUITONE [natura] fibre cement panels in chalk grey. In total, the new building uses 120m² of cut-to-size cladding, all of which have been rivet fixed.

Charity Director, Flavia Docherty, said: “We are so grateful to the whole DIY SOS team, Radio 2 and their presenters and, of course, BBC Children in Need for supporting us for 12 years. Without their funding we wouldn’t have been able to continue our work for this long and have the impact that we have done for girls and young women in Leeds over the years.”