Sector: Garden village
Longcross is one of the Government’s fourteen designated Garden Village sites. The development is split into two phases, north and south, delivering over 1700 homes overall, with 1,500 in the south, together with new green open space, transport and highways infrastructure improvements and community facilities.
Longcross Garden Village
Crest Nicholson, Runnymede Borough Council - Status: Planning application approved
Our role: Chess Engage has been working with Crest Nicholson since 2015 providing consultation and community engagement services. We were commissioned to deliver the strategy for the Longcross Garden Village, building on the experience gained from our previous work on their strategic site in Arborfield, Berkshire which secured outline planning permission.
Our extensive local knowledge in Runnymede coupled with our approach and methods have proven invaluable as the project has changed over the years. We’ve maintained the consistency of contact and engagement as the project team changed and the strategy developed. We have guided the scheme through each stage to the point of determination.
The project has now been successfully granted planning permission, and Chess Engage were commended for our engagement work.
Our approach: Given its complexity and high-profile nature, we conducted a comprehensive audit to identify the multiple stakeholders we needed to engage with over a sustained period. We have kept that local knowledge up to date and focused. Our links and contacts are second to none and have enabled the project to traverse some complex ground over the years. It was understanding the wider community, bringing them together and facilitation of meaningful engagement which allowed the scheme to progress with little if any vocal opposition and actually a lot of support.
We developed a stakeholder and community engagement strategy to help shape the development proposals from a formative stage. In recognition of the different phases, our approach was to build lasting relationships with a wide range of local political and community stakeholders through a programme of meetings, forums, events, and newsletters. We established and have maintained a Stakeholder Liaison Group so that there is continued input into different aspects of the development proposals. Meeting at regular intervals, this group has discussed transport, housing, open space and environmental improvements. The detail considered has been helpful to the project team and allowed the proposals to develop iteratively and constructively.
We organised open days where stakeholders were taken to see Arborfield and we arranged for local advocates of that scheme to inform people of the way Crest had gone about its work and development. We held numerous exhibitions that at each stage allowed Crest to showcase the latest iteration of the proposals and so people had the opportunity to input and shape key themes such as the layout and housing designs. We sent out newsletters informing people of the changes and updating them as elements of the final scheme changed. We held councillor feedback sessions to ensure members where fully briefed on an ongoing basis.
Our role was to devise ways and means of ensuring meaningful consultation and engagement that was inclusive and constructive. The balancing of community and political priorities has been essential in ensuring continued engagement and input into what is a complex long-term project.
Results:
- Over the last decade Chess Engage has undertaken a programme of work that has resulted in positive local engagement and maintained Runnymede Borough Council support for the Local Plan allocation.
- The Longcross North development has been completed and the Longcross South outline application was submitted in late 2022.
- We helped support the Upper Longcross Residents’ Association and built an effective relationship with its membership in engaging over development proposals.
- The quality of engagement for Longcross South has been commended by both political and community stakeholders.
- Longcross South was unanimously approved by councillors at the Planning Committee held on April 24th.
