We held our second meeting of the Expert Panel on Housing in the first week of March with the focus of the meeting being around Place.

Prior to the meeting many of the Panel had enjoyed a visit to South Thamesmead to see the large scale regeneration programme Peabody has underway.  Apart from having the opportunity to see the physical changes in the area the Panel wanted to understand more about the public ballot held just before the first Lockdown in 2020.

At the meeting 5 key recommendations were identified which included issues such as eligibility, engagement methods and the transparency of the ballot process. It was agreed that these key areas need to be further considered in readiness for a discussion with the GLA.  It was also suggested that the learnings from Thamesmead and other areas should be captured and used as the basis for a best practice guide for future residents’ ballots in London. 

The meeting then discussed how residential districts across London had been impacted by Covid and what this will mean for the future design of homes.  The headline message emerging from the debate was the need to focus on ‘quality of life’ issues and how this needs to be reflected in future design briefs and regeneration programmes.  The desire for greater access to quality public spaces, communal amenity space and dedicated work space within the home were demands the panel all recognised.  However there was also agreement that whilst the housing sector can see this shift in consumer demands in respect of what is desired from local neighbourhoods, there is no evidence of this within recently issued planning briefs for new developments.  So how will the industry seek to relook at design of place differently, and how will this be linked with planning policy?

It was also recognised that Lockdown had engendered a greater sense of community involvement at a local level.  Online engagement proved popular resulting in higher levels of community collaboration than experienced through the more traditional routes of face to face consultation and co design processes.  This was particularly noticed in regard to community involvement in the design of green spaces.  The panel noted that historically public spaces have failed due to lack of social stewardship and community involvement and when planning new spaces it has often been challenging to involve residents in the design of open spaces and public realm.  But now this maybe changing and the sector should grasp this opportunity to make collective design a ‘given’ in the planning of future schemes.  Other observations raised recommended that public spaces must be robust and easily maintained; are overtly available for public use with a particular emphasis on the welcoming of young people who are often stigmatised in respect of their use of public spaces; and green spaces must include well designed public amenities to make them useable and welcoming.  

 

This summary only captures the essence of the debate to give a sense of the emerging thinking and the sort of recommendations to follow once the third and final session has been held which will  examine the theme of Planet.