Empowering Communities: Sustainable Urban Planning Success

Urban planning should be about curating spaces and creating value for residents and businesses alike, ultimately tested by how liveable and enjoyable a place is. As urban planners, we have the skills to create places and spaces to empower our residents and improve their lives. In the last year, along with Stevenage, UK, we have secured various planning permissions for the benefit of our town, wholly supporting our vision for suitable inclusive growth for all. We are changing the heart of our town for our residents and businesses. Sustainability is a huge part of this, including a modern low-carbon station arrival office complex, a new 1,500+ home neighbourhood, a civic hub and two cell and gene therapy campuses, along with reserve matters for a new 800-home community and 38ha country park. We have extensively engaged our community as plans have developed to ensure continued support.

The planning teams I have led have developed coproduced policies, working together with extensive member, community and stakeholder engagement. We take every opportunity to shape a better, more sustainable and inclusive town.

Stevenage was the first town to be built after the Second World War. Our people lie at the heart of everything we do, and our planning teams champion this. We embrace the Town & Country Planning Association’s (TCPA) principles of good-quality spaces and places. 

We are a proud planning service that delivers quality planning permissions on time, which are sustainable and encourage inclusive growth for our town and residents. Working coherently with developers and communities, we embrace the new town principles that our town was planned on: homes, shops, open space, and local infrastructure, with a joined-up approach internally to connect it all together, reimagining the 15-minute town.

My approach, which I have used in a number of London boroughs, is to go beyond consulting, developing ongoing communication and discussions with our residents and businesses to support better understanding for all. Well-planned and designed spaces actively contribute to town investment and better outcomes for our residents and businesses. Highquality town center redevelopers, new jobs, homes in our neighborhoods, a cycle hire scheme, and low-carbon local invites are just some of the highlights of last year’s work.

We champion and share ideas across our local authority district and country network with other stakeholders in the built environment and cooperative council networks.

The planning service provides holistic support and guidance to help deliver investment and sustainable growth for our residents, businesses, and visitors. Developers and residents benefit from clear, consistent and timely advice, which genuinely triumphs collaboration to make schemes better and the developer and community more aligned. Post-pandemic people value their local area even more; with limited land, we must plan best for society. We help deliver a better place and climate for our communities, with new homes and opportunities for our residents and businesses.