The Royal Docks are aiming to be an exemplar in regeneration that both celebrates its history and takes on board the visions, viewpoints, and expertise of its communities.

An NLA webinar last week, Community and identity: shaping the Royal Docks together, explored the extent to which the GLA, developers like Lendlease, and key companies like Tate & Lyle Sugars are working together to keep skills and money in the area, along with thousands of jobs and housing units.

Sarah Atkinson, community relations manager, Royal Docks, said the scale of the opportunity in the area was considerable amidst ‘an exciting regeneration journey that the whole of East London is going on’. Its Enterprise Zone status – unique in London - means that business rates income will be retained and reinvested in the area, towards an aspiration of delivering 35,000 jobs and 4,000 homes. Three main development sites – Silvertown Quays, Royal Albert Dock and Albert Island – will be focuses for activity, while the GLA itself, another ‘driver for change and growth’ will help it as a new ‘centre’ for the capital. But Atkinson said Newham’s own agenda is important too, in striving to improve levels of inequality using a community wealth agenda, refocusing the economy around resident wellbeing and health. 

‘The measures of success in Newham will be measured against how residents’ lives are improved, and that it quite a new thing when you think about non-traditional ways of measuring growth’.

It has undertaken a two-year review of its delivery plan, to be published later this year, which will include a community strategy to build local resilience and allow local people to shape the regeneration. It is also working with young people, building their skills with events to help them to feel involved. 

Other speakers included Lendlease’s Jessie Lenson, who spoke about the work it has done on Silvertown, a 27-ha site whose first phase includes 900 new homes and the restoration of the Millennium Mills Building, which will be delivered next year. But the developer is also working to contribute to long term benefits for the community, partnering with UCL on studying prosperity over 10 years to 2031, and training and employing ‘Citizen Scientists’ to interview people from local communities, along with a household door-to-door survey starting this October. Helen Fernandes of the West Silvertown Foundation detailed how her organisation had transformed the area’s provision of schools and community centres, reducing crime in the process by getting local young men to help on running a programme for 100 local children. ‘It meant that they were doing something really positive with their time and it also meant that by the evening they were a bit too exhausted to actually do anything towards the crime rate’, she said. 

And finally, Chris Abell of Tate & Lyle Sugars showed how the locally-based company had had a long history – since 1878 – in helping the community through giving space to local charities providing food banks, community centres, and events, which will be bolstered by a small grants programme, ‘buying local’ pledges and the creation of 100,000 sq ft of affordable workspace on some of its valuable land. Clarity of information is also important in order not to give local people false hope about projects. The ultimate lesson from the power of community wealth building, though, is a simple one, said Abell. ‘Just listening is really important’, he said. ‘Properly listening to people, even if the answer might be no, rather than just shutting them down. Just considering what they're asking for and genuinely giving them the chance to explain is so critically important’