Funding Opportunities For New School Playground Projects

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How We Can Save You A Lot of Time and Hassle When Looking To Raise Funds For Your School Playground Project

If you are looking to raise funds to pay for a new playground project at your school – this could be playground equipment, outdoor classrooms and shelters, safety surfacing, trim trails, forest school projects, sensory and communication spaces, gardening projects etc – then we have 25 years experience of helping schools find and raise the required funds to pay for our products.

But the first question we always ask of schools is this – how much time do you realistically have to give to this? Raising money is something that typically requires quite a bit of effort on all stakeholders’ behalves   –  researching applicable grants, reading all of the funding criteria, completing and submitting bids, knowing what makes a successful application or not, re-submitting if turned down originally etc.

But at the Hideout House Company, we can offer you a solution and a way round all of this. Firstly, we don’t just rely on one particular avenue for funding (e.g grants) as we feel that it makes much more sense to pursue a varied mix of initiatives so as to maximize opportunities and thereby reach your funding target a lot faster. Our proven method involves accessing grants (and we can tell you which ones we would recommend you apply for and which are applicable), crowdfunding, unique PTA fundraising ideas, company or corporate sponsorship, the exploitation of revenue generating streams (such as renting out your existing school grounds and facilities) and we can also offer part payment plans whereby you can pay in annual, monthly or termly instalments over typically three to five years. If you have already raised some money towards your playground project, then you can have the equipment installed now (and the children can enjoy the benefit of it immediately) but this gives your school the flexibility to pay in pre-arranged instalments over a longer period of time which can work within your budgets. Once we have your quote drawn up, we can easily give you some quotes for using this option.

We have built up many associations and partnerships with specialist companies who can help you with all of the above and we have proved that they work. We have also put together a comprehensive and informative page on our website which can be found on this link: School Grant and Funding

Basically, we can get you from A to B a lot faster and with far less hassle.

To see our comprehensive product range of school playground products, please have a look at our website www.hideouthouse.com

And then please get in contact with us so that we can talk through your project with you, offer some suggestions and advice and explain how we can help with funding opportunities.

The Hideout House Company

Tel: 01832 275902 or email: info@hideouthouse.com

 

 

 

 

Corona Virus (Covid-19) PPE Face Shields For Schools

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Hope you and your staff and families are well in these difficult times.

One of our suppliers temporarily shut up shop because of the corona virus as their orders dried up overnight. However, they were approached by a local care home who asked them to make some protective face shields for their staff. Within 48 hours, they had designed and developed a face shield to protect against the corona virus and are now currently producing 2,500 face shields per day with shipments currently going out to hospitals, care homes, GP surgeries, dentists and local councils.

If you would like to order some of these shields for your school staff, these are the details below:

FlexiPPE Face Visor (Min Pack of 5) 

The Flexi face visor is made of Poly Vinyl Chloride (PVC). This enables the visor to be cleaned, and used multiple times.

The elasticated head band can be removed, cleaned, and if necessary, replaced.

The face shield visors are hand made in the UK in an effort to support the national fight against COVID-19.

They are constructed using a high frequency welding machine with a step process tool, in order to efficiently create a robust product.

Flexiplastics has extensive experience in the medical isolation and protection industry. With all our materials we operate to the highest standard; including ensuring the material is UV resistant and fire retardant.

 Features of the FlexiPPE Face Visors 

With unbreakable materials and contouring fit, the FlexiPPE Face Visor is as comfortable as it is convenient

  • Unbreakable material
  • Latex-free
  • Glare resistant
  • Contoured foam along the band makes for a comfortable fit
  • Fits comfortably with glasses or surgical masks
  • Convenient alternative to goggles
  • Material used 20thou.


Price: £8.50 + VAT per face shield

Minimum order quantity per school: 5 units

Delivery: 1-50 x units: £6.95 + VAT

Delivery times: 3 – 5 working days
For every order received we, as the Hideout House Company, shall donate £1 (per shield) to an NHS Charity

The Hideout House Company

Tel: 01832 275902

Email: info@hideouthouse.com

We Are Still Open For Business

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We are still here and open for business  – so please do contact us to place your order or enquire about our products.

We would love to hear from you as always

Article in Q&A Magazine

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The most recent issue of Q&A Magazine (the most essential guide for schools to purchasing services and products) has featured an article from our managing director Simon Fearnehough. The article talks about how the company is supporting environmental issues by incorporating them into the design of our products – most notably, our play equipment range which is manufactured entirely out of recycled plastic and our unique eco classrooms.

The article can be seen below

Funding Assistance For Our Playground Products

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A lot of schools need to find external funding for our extensive range of playground products and we get asked so many times about where do you start and how much time is this all going to take. We have therefore recently partnered with an excellent company called GD Funding who can help schools access the required funds for their projects.

GD Funding are one of the UK’s leading and most successful funding providers who have delivered funding solutions to well over 700 schools since 2014. As part of their overall service, they provide an extensive funding and bid writing service for schools & community organisations (including PTAs) to obtain funding through a variety of different sources. Projects we can help you find funding for include the following:

FOREST SCHOOL PROJECTS including fire pit shelters and cabins; den making; seating; storage
TRIM TRAILS including adventure and fitness trails in recycled plastic or timber
OUTDOOR CLASSROOMS AND SHELTERS

ECO CLASSROOMS

ARTS AND PERFORMANCE PROJECTS
SENSORY AND COMMUNICATION SPACES
NATURE OBSERVATION PROJECTS
GARDENING

We know how hard it can be to raise funds to get those all important upgrades and new equipment items. We are here to help ! With over 15 years experience in achieving funding totalling over £8,000,000, we can now offer low cost solutions to achieve your funding goals and allow you the time to do what you do best.

Business as Unusual

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What strange and challenging times we currently find ourselves in where the only certainty at the moment is the uncertainty.

With schools now shut until further notice, we do all appreciate that there will be a sense of nervousness about the future – which is totally understandable in light of the mitigating circumstances – but this time will pass and we will beat it. Life will eventually go on – it has to.

At the Hideout House Company, we are taking every single day in our stride and are going forward with a positive mindset. Of course, our primary aims are to keep our staff safe and well, to keep business coming in and to keep installing at schools up and down the country.

We are always asked by school staff for a holiday time installation for the products we sell them. It is simply easier as you don’t have to disrupt a school day if there are workmen on site installing playground equipment or an outdoor classroom, we don’t have to work to restricted arrival times for unloading etc and we can easily get access to the school building for toilets, power and water. And we don’t have to down tools during play time hours or seal off the site area with security tape and cordons.

So let’s take advantage therefore of this extraordinary time when schools are shut due to the corona virus. Our installation crews – which are usually no more than two to three men – will be working outdoors (and not indoors) so there is very little risk of passing on the virus and they will keep to the social distancing guidelines when they do meet staff at the school such as the site manager.

And with school staff and leadership teams working from home, we are very much hoping that orders can still be processed and placed with companies such as ours so that we don’t have to shut our doors with the obvious consequences. We will always support schools with our high quality products at affordable prices and so therefore we very much hope that they will continue to help companies such as ours by placing orders to keep the old engine ticking over until the better times return.

In the meantime, stay safe and positive.

 

If you would like any further information regarding the above, please do not hesitate to contact us.

The Sunday School Room Cabin at St John the Evangelist Church

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We have just completed a building for St John the Evangelist Church in Littlewick Green, Berkshire which is going to be used as a Sunday school room. We have provided many kinds of these types of buildings in the past to schools but not one for a church so it was quite a unique and welcome brief for us.

The reason for the building’s requirement in the first place is that there is nowhere within the current church where families and children can congregate on a Sunday and where the local church community can also convene.

The church wanted a building which was sympathetic to the local environment, was not a me too “box” and was capable of being self-sufficient. We therefore designed a 7m x 4m building which was to be clad externally in cedar in order to give it that extra “cabin” look and feel with a hipped cedar shingle tile roof.

The building was also to feature a lot of glass to allow in extra natural daylight. Internally, we allowed for a timber vaulted ceiling (rather than have a suspended roof which would have boxed in the cabin) and the internal walls featured a white painted, profile grooved boarding. As the cabin had to be independent from the church, we also allowed for a WC (which is actually off grid) and a kitchenette facility to make hot drinks and to act as a food preparation area. The building is also fully insulated to the floor, roof and walls.

Part of the stipulations of the planning permission was that we had to protect the roots of the nearby surrounding trees so our standard foundations were not in play in this instance. We therefore used a non-intrusive plinth foundation system which is only dug into the ground by a maximum of 300mm thereby not disturbing any of the roots. 12 of these were used under the building.

After gaining all of the necessary consents from the planning authorities and the Church, we started the work fairly quickly once it had been green lighted. The whole build job was completed within 10 days including all of the electrics and plumbing which were undertaken by local contractors. The Church are already using it and are delighted with the building.

These buildings are modular so we can build them to different shapes and sizes and we offer a whole host of options – roof and external timber claddings, hipped, pent and traditional pitched roofs, different levels of insulation, foundation systems including ground screws and plinths, renewable energy systems and assistance with planning if so required.

For further information on our range of enclosed buildings, please contact the Hideout House Company on 01832 275902 or email: info@hideouthouse.com

With toilet and kitchenette

Grants Supporting Environmental Projects in Schools

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For a long time now, we have developing products for schools which promote environmental awareness and nurture an appreciation of the planet and its finite resources. Such products include our playground equipment and other playground products (planters, sandboxes, mud kitchens etc) made entirely out of recycled plastic; our eco classrooms which feature living roofs and living walls, renewable energy systems, sheepswool insulation and even special dynamo bikes the children have to pedal to produce electricity!

This year we have seen an increasing amount of sales for our educational renewable energy equipment. We usually sell this as part of our eco classroom package but this equipment can also be installed onto existing playground buildings. The equipment is comprised of a solar panel and mini wind turbine (roof mounted) which then feeds down into a control board which is usually sited within our outdoor classroom. This board features two isolator switches, a datalogger, a battery (to store energy produced by the solar panel and turbine), an inverter, two power sockets and a bulk head light.

We have therefore been doing some research work on trying to find specific grants which will fund such equipment and have come up with the list below. This list is by no means exhaustive but is a good as place to start as any.

1) Greggs Environmental Grant
https://www.greggsfoundation.org.uk/environmental-grant

2) Joseph Rowntree Sustainable Fund
https://www.jrct.org.uk/sustainable-future

3) Ernest Cook Trust
http://ernestcooktrust.org.uk/grants/

4) Persimmon Community Champions
https://www.persimmonhomes.com/charity

5) Heathrow Community Trust
https://www.heathrowcommunitytrust.org/need-funding/environmental-and-sustainability-grants

6) M&S Energy Community Fund
https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/mandsenergyfund

 

For more information on our product range, please contact the Hideout House Company on 01832 275902 or email: info@hideouthouse.com

Environmental Benefits of Eco Friendly Play Equipment

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Did you know….?

• Each year about 12.5 million tonnes of plastic is made from fossil fuels
• More than 30% of this plastic is used for short-lived packaging products
• Over 50% of the light packaging materials from household collections consist of plastic

At the Hideout House Company, we believe that our position as one of the UK’s leading suppliers of high performance recycled plastic playground equipment products brings with it a certain responsibility to educate about the importance of recycling as our company ethos is, and always has been, to continue to develop new innovative and sustainable products using recycled materials. Our range also promotes renewable energy and includes outdoor classrooms which are powered by sun, wind and pedal power (children pedal special bikes which have an energy producing dynamo attached).

  • We are actively contributing to the protection of our environment and its finite resources by completing the recycling loop of turning household plastic waste into other products.
  • Recycling has proven to be especially eco-efficient and CO2 reductive as it is preventing this waste from going to landfill sites in the UK and around the world
  • Recycled plastic play equipment is just as the name suggests – it is made from 100% recycled plastic and they are also 100% recyclable.

These playground products  – which include trim trails, play towers, play boats, planters, mud kitchens, sandboxes and fencing – are extremely cost effective as their durability and long life expectancy eliminates any on-going maintenance or replacement costs, which further adds to the protection of our environment.

Any off-cuts produced during the manufacturing processes are also fed back into the system. They are re-shredded and then consequently turned into another product. No plastic waste is therefore created during this process and the material does not contain any substances that are harmful to the environment.

For our educational video on this subject matter, please visit:

Video

T: 01832 275902
E: info@hideouthouse.com

How Your School Can Demonstrate Good Environmental Practice

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So we have this whole big issue of plastic pollution which is wreaking all kinds of havoc on the environment adversely affecting wildlife, wildlife habitat and us, humans.
David Attenborough has told us all about it;

so has Greta Thunberg and even school children from around the world recently went on strike for a day to drive the message home.


And that is why we are now using recycled plastic for our play equipment. Rather than polluting our planet, plastic bottles and cartons can now be 100% recycled and made into recycled plastic which is a low maintenance and environmentally friendly alternative to timber.
Did you know for example that it takes about 2000 plastic bottles to make just one bench?

So rubbish can be transformed into a useful, high quality playground product.

But there is more. As well as its extremely eco friendly credentials, there are also lots of other benefits:-

• It will never rot or degrade as it can easily tolerate damp conditions
• It will never splinter or have cracks and shakes
• It is extremely low maintenance
• It is hard wearing and exceptionally durable lasting five times longer than timber and does not degrade with age
• It is UV, graffiti, algae and insect resistant

Some very good reasons therefore to make playground products out of this material and by doing so, this demonstrates a good environmental practice within your school.

Trim trail on wet pour

For more information on our range of recycled plastic playground products, please contact the Hideout House Company on 01832 275902 or email: info@hideouthouse.com