The development industry needs to find a better way of communicating the benefits of the schemes they put forward to the community.

So said Waltham Forest Cllr Simon Miller at a special borough briefing that looked into the work done by the council on its key priority areas, jobs programme, cultural offer and ‘reset’ recovery plan.

Miller, the cabinet member for economic growth and housing development, said that ‘people are more concerned about where they live; they have real concerns about unfettered developments. They want to see development that benefits the community’. 

The borough aims to build 27,000 homes over the next 15 years and to ‘transform’ its town centres, as well as improving the lives of its residents, partially through an economic recovery plan, post-COVID, but also heeding climate change issues. But it was important to enable communities to have trust and faith in it as a council with ‘clear red lines’ about what will and won’t work Miller added.

Stewart Murray, Strategic Director for Economic Growth & Housing Delivery

praised the ambition of the authority’s programme and strong political leadership at the borough, emphasising that it was not afraid of good and inclusive growth or intensification ‘done to the highest quality’. ‘That will be very much part of building our way out of this recession’, Murray said. Of the 27,000 additional housing units, the council’s target is to deliver half as affordable homes, and 4,000 delivered through the local authority’s own ’60 Bricks’ house building company. It has also ‘put its money where its mouth is’ in terms of culture, opening a cultural hub at Fellowship Square and creating a comedy theatre in Walthamstow, opening next Autumn.

Masterplan project manager Sarah Custance took the webinar audience through an overview of the masterplanning work in the borough – much of which is on its plentiful industrial land – and Leyton development framework, part of a ‘holistic deliverable masterplan approach’ with high quality design, placemaking at its heart. ‘It’s really about people and place’, she said, with strong community participation and a strong sense of belonging’.

Other speakers at the event included Jonathan Martin, director of inward investment at Waltham Forest on its plans to promote inclusive growth and investments with a smooth path through planning and wider benefits for its people. ‘It becomes a much easier discussion when residents can see the benefits from growth’, he said, ‘and certainly from inclusive growth that impacts their neighbourhoods’. Such projects and investors include a new addition – a new vertical farm for London Harvest in the agritech sector in Lea Bridge, which the council has helped secure public and private support to the tune of a few million pounds and which supplies basil to pizzas in the UK, saving it from being flown in from Italy. ‘We’re right at the cutting edge of certain industries’, said Martin.