HTA were appointed by Citywest Homes and Westminster City Council as masterplanners for the regeneration of the Ebury Bridge Estate project. An extensive period of community consultation and practical engagement whilst simultaneously focusing on broader design issues was undertaken to enable the culmination of a resident voting process.

Our brief was to investigate masterplan options that will bring about improvements to the estate responding to the Council’s Renewal Strategy principles, as well as residents’ concerns and aspirations. The design and option appraisal process was entirely integrated with the programme of activities engaging residents.

As an integral part of the design process, instead of progressing directly from ‘Issues’ to ‘Options’, we introduced an ‘Ideas’ stage, where we illustrated many different aspirations and interventions, some that generated value or revenue, and some that were a benefit that bore a cost.

The relationship between cost and benefit was clearly explained and residents were given feedback forms where they could say which ideas they liked, didn’t like, or had no strong opinion about. This then gave us further empirical evidence with which to formulate options that were viable, deliverable, and which were most likely to benefit from resident support. The lessons learned from this project were significant and we have now developed a toolkit of methods of engagement which go beyond the ‘tick box’ approach often associated with consultation activity.

We have visited and carried out energy assessments of typical apartments in discussion with residents to enable us to develop a convincing strategy for upgrading the buildings that will be retained in the masterplan.

The residents voted 'Yes' to the proposals in May 2013 following a final period of engagement and a Planning Application was submitted in March 2014.