How do you build a town?

Home. It's different for everyone. But it's not always a straightforward path to finding one. Today, overcrowded cities and lack of affordable housing make owning a home seem like licking your elbow. Impossible. We need more houses. So how do we turn this into a home? And not just one. What about a whole new town? But these homes have to do a lot more than just put a roof over people's heads. Yeah, like what? What makes a home a home and a town a town? If you were designing a brand new town like Sherford, what would you want it to be like? Let's find out how the people who built this went about it. Could you do better? What goes into planning a town? A huge amount. So there's years and years and years of preparation work that goes into planning. They look at how the houses are laid out, how the environment is going to work, how the community is going to work together. And then when the residents start to move in, that's what really makes it a town. And how many homes are being built here? 5,500 in total. What do you think makes a house a home? It all starts to look like a home once we start to add the nice things like the tiling and the carpets and the kitchens. And then obviously people's own personal stamp when they move in. I'm here with Owen, the site manager, to find out a bit more about what's going on here at Sherford. What sort of opportunities are there for people wanting to work in construction? The opportunities are huge. We look at anybody and everybody when it comes to taking on people in construction. And what sort of qualities would you look for in people you were looking to employ? What we look for is people who are driven, focused, wanting to maybe learn something different, something they might not be able to learn. We want people to be informed better at school level that the construction industry is a good opportunity where they can earn really good money. Why did you want to be an apprentice? I've been a chef for 15 years, about time to give that up, so I decided to retrain as a carpenter. What's your favourite part of the apprenticeship and the training? Lunch break. No, it's the carpentry. It's definitely carpentry where I've come out of wood. I've had a great passion for it. What was your pathway into the job? I went down to the college to find out about apprenticeships and then they pointed me towards Sherford. What advice would you give to young people who might want to get into this industry? Definitely consider it because there's a lot of different options when you leave school and stuff, but you can't go wrong with a trade, really. It's guaranteed work pretty much for the rest of your life. What's it like being a woman in construction? It's no different, actually. I get treated the same as everybody else. I think that if you can prove that you can do the job, then you earn your respect that way, so being female doesn't really make any difference at all. And how do you think we can encourage more women to get into this industry? It's about getting children out to have a look for themselves to see that it's not such a scary environment to be in. Yeah, it's a massive job. You have to think about pretty much everything from the big things like the overall town plan to even door handles. And then you have to build it. Imagine designing something like this and then seeing it finished with people living in it. It's like your town. Not many people can say they created a town.