Overview
A design-led town centre development framework that ensures that Staines-upon-Thames can successfully move into the future, making it more liveable, sustainable and responsive to the needs of local residents. The framework focuses on the viable delivery of thousands of new homes in one of the most pressured housing markets in the UK, alongside transformational changes to the movement network and public realm.
Project Highlights
Clients
Spelthorne Borough Council
Date
2020-2022
Scale
Up to 3,500 new homes, allocated in town centre
Staines-upon-Thames has been identified as a focus for substantial and sustainable growth. Our challenge was to prepare a framework for the town that could sensitively accommodate such growth, whilst protecting its historic character, enhancing access to and public realm along the River Thames and transforming the way people move around the town centre.
Helen Armes, Partner, David Lock Associates
The Project
Spelthorne Borough Council commissioned a development framework for Staines-upon-Thames to inform the emerging Local Plan which sought to allocate substantial growth within the centre of the primary town in the borough. The council is a major landowner and aims to play a positive role in development and growth.
The Development Framework sets out six big ideas to ensure that Staines-upon-Thames becomes more sustainable, sensitively accommodates growth and is capable of providing for the needs of the local community. The objectives centre around utilising the River Thames, integrating new higher density urban living into a valued townscape and context, creating healthy streets and environments, and securing design quality in new development.
The Process
The commission demanded a cohesive approach to design and planning, informed by our development economics and viability expertise. Through extensive collaboration with a councillor working group, our team resolved complex and politically contentious issues through a design-led approach and produced a framework that could be supported and implemented as part of the emerging Local Plan, to be adopted as a Supplementary Planning Document. We worked closely with the officers developing the Local Plan and actively engaged the community, gaining their views, through a borough wide consultation effort.
The process became complex due to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, necessitating innovative methods of engagement to challenge previous assumptions about the town centre. The final illustrated document includes a variety of plans, diagrams, visualisations and case studies to set out a clear, accessible and deliverable vision for the town’s future.