Last week's Westminster: On Location event gave us a chance to hear directly from the City of Westminster Council about the scale of opportunity in their borough and the challenges they face in pursuit of their vision for a Fairer Westminster—a vision that encompasses communities, housing, the economy, the environment, and even the council itself.

What we do matters to the long-term success and well-being of the communities that welcome us in. That’s part of why a lot of us do what we do.  Westminster is a diverse borough rich with history, architecture, cultural institutions, and long-established communities. Home to the most listed buildings of any borough and an eighth of London's jobs, it is full of opportunities – but these opportunities are not equitably distributed.

Debbie Jackson, Westminster's Executive Director of Regeneration, Economy and Planning, shared some sobering stats to this effect. Within the borough, there's an 18-year life expectancy gap between the most and least deprived areas. On average, 1 in 8 Westminster residents has no formal education qualification. This doubles to 1 in 4 in the north of the borough.

On the day, the council's ambition and drive to ensure Westminster's built environment is a force for positive change was palpable. The council is in the thick of this work, as illustrated by James Green, Director of Development and Regeneration, and Setareh Neshati, Head of Development, in their presentation on the regeneration of Ebury Bridge.

We loved hearing about this, as it informs our role to play: at the start of this year, Westminster appointed Mount Anvil as its joint venture partner for the first phase of the Church Street estate transformation, the major regeneration scheme in the borough. The newly formed partnership will see delivery of 430 new homes, a new library, and commercial space on Church Street.

One of the reasons we’re in partnership is our shared commitment to delivering social value, building trust and helping communities flourish. We’ve committed £1m to doing just that, and take the task of investing it well to contribute to a Fairer Westminster very seriously. 

Church Street is in the north of the borough, where the picture is starkest, and the opportunity for meaningful, community-led intervention is the largest. So, the question for our joint venture is: How do we deliver for this community?

At one end of Church Street lies one of London's traditional 6-day markets, with a clear identity and proud heritage of serving the local community. At the other end are boutique antique dealerships and traders that are destinations for the design-conscious. Around it, a confluence of local communities who, in our conversations so far, are highly engaged, care deeply and understandably wear some impatience for the project to get moving and deliver.

As a specialist London estate transformation developer, our business is only sustainable if the communities we work in would welcome us back. That's why we've spent our first 100 days in partnership with the council listening, learning and acting. Mount Anvil is the newbie in an already established relationship between the council and a community that has been aware of transformation plans since 2004. Therefore, the first tranche of our social value activity as a joint venture had one simple objective - building trust. And we’re in the final throws of completing the delivery of our "100 in 100 days" sprint of introductory activities and interactions that have helped us foster connections, learn and create new opportunities in the local area.

Our team takes pride in hyperlocal engagement, investing time upfront with local organisations and schools. Our team is also an expert in using Mount Anvil's unique relationships—like our partnership with Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew—in a way that's attuned to the community's needs.

In this instance, the first tranche of local young people have had the chance to visit Kew and get a taste of the grounding and nourishment from nature that we know makes a difference to long-term outcomes. We also got our built environment-sector-wide Makers & Mentors programme up and running locally to help increase access to career opportunities in this field.  The TikTok that Westminster students made about their experience went viral and blasted through all sign-up records for the next instalment of our popular work experience programme – fostering their creativity, making memories and bringing more, deserving young Londoners into quality exposure to the industry.  

We believe this is how major impact begins – with an oversized time investment, from a wide range of people, not outsourced to one team or individuals. Conversation after conversation, day after day, getting real and avoiding the top-down decision-making, inconsistent effort and broken promises that are the hallmarks of well-meaning but failed initiatives across the world's cities.

We've made and kept some small promises, building trust that bigger ones will follow. We've started to build trust and relationships and kept listening and learning. Now, we're in a position to shape this landmark transformation and define the legacy that we want to leave from our multi-year social value delivery plan, in partnership not only with each other in the JV but with the community.

Westminster City Council is an ambitious organisation which prides itself on the pace and rigour of its development arm. We're proud to be stewarding this transformation alongside them. We bring complementary skillsets to the party and share a long-term commitment and a focus on building trust – and we're optimistic that good development, done in partnership, can start to bridge the opportunity gaps so clearly articulated at the event.