The U&C Away Day 2025

The U&C Away Day 2025

Earlier this summer, the Urban&Civic and Catesby Estates teams came together for our 2025 Away Day. 

This annual two day event is full of inspiration, collaboration and a bit of healthy competition. With this year’s content being focused around Milton Keynes, the internal changes due to the acquisition of L&Q and the creative theme being based around boardgames!

Setting the Scene

Unity Place provided the perfect venue this year for our annual gathering, just a stone’s throw from Central Milton Keynes station.

This year, we made a conscious effort to keep the event sustainable. With Unity Place, the hotel, and train station all within walking distance helping us embrace the opportunity to reduce our carbon footprint.

Day one kicked off by diving into a series of thought-provoking presentations and breakout sessions including a speed dating style sites update, where members of each delivery team had just 6 minutes to provide an overview of what’s been happening in the last 12 months before everyone moved tables.  The teams were encouraged to get creative with this and we had people taking inspiration from everything from board games to tv shows.

Our HR team then led with a culture session seeking feedback from employees on a range of identified key themes.

Exploring the Site

After lunch, a Milton Keynes focused discussion panel took place with Ron Henry from WSP, Julia Foster from David Lock Associates and Paul Thomas from Milton Keynes Council.

Then following a briefing from the Milton Keynes team, we then set off on a site tour of our local sites. 

Coaches transported us from Unity Place to explore the scale and ambition of our sites before dropping us off at our hotel to check in and freshen up ahead of the evening’s activities.

An Evening to Remember

The evening reception back at Unity Place was one to remember. The ground floor market area was transformed into a buzzing hub of music, street food and games. 

Colleagues mingled over drinks and local sourced food and a brilliant live band had many of us dancing well into the evening.

Bringing Our A-Game

Day 2 saw the return of our much-anticipated team-building sessions and presentation from Nigel Hugill and David Wood, who reflected on the journey so far and shared their vision for the future. It was a valuable reminder of how much we’ve achieved together, and the exciting challenges still to come.

We then got stuck into a mix of fun and fast-paced indoor games.  From quizzes to designing the latest fashions from newspaper, all designed to test our teamwork and quick thinking. The energy and enthusiasm were contagious, especially with a hot buffet lunch to keep us fuelled along the way.

A Huge Thank You

A massive thank you goes to the organising team including Catesby’s own Marketing & Communications Director, Katie Yates for helping to pull together such a seamless and enjoyable event for nearly 150 people.

The Away Day is always a highlight in the calendar, and 2025 delivered once again.

We’re already looking forward to next year!