Cornovii Development Limited – Resident Consultation and Inclusion

Approach

Prior to the engagement, we carried out research into the local area to understand who the key stakeholders were and what amenities and transport links were available within the area.

We scoped the extent to which the invitations for resident engagement events should be distributed. We reviewed local press and social media content to understand the likely tensions surrounding the development and identified that a large ongoing development within a mile of the site was much disliked by local people. Upon this discovery, we sought to understand the reasons why there were complaints and address these with the new scheme.

We worked with the client and their architecture team, BM3, to identify the many positives relating to Cornvoii’s proposals. These included:

• Low energy traditional build housing
• A proportion of carbon neutral homes
• All homes offered a minimum 31% improvement over current building regulation standards for energy efficiency
• Building homes to the Nationally Described Space Standards (NDSS) and Future Home Standards
• Many homes built to M4(2) Standards; making the site easily accessible to those with limited mobility

We managed the resident engagement through a range of activities which included: a newsletter, online survey, local press, marketing brochure, posters and a microsite. We were very alert to the most immediate neighbours and offered these residents one-to-one meetings with our project lead and the Cornovii team.

We held two resident engagement events, one during the week and the other during the weekend, to encourage as many residents as possible to attend.

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Outcome

The engagement events were well attended, and we received positive comments from residents, especially those who were going to object to the planning application.

As a result of the engagement, we made some recommendations and Cornovii amended the details of the application to reduce the density, particularly to the homes that backed onto the London Road residents.

The planning application was approved and Cornovii are processing to build out the scheme. To see more on this progress click here.