Regeneration / Master Plan of the South Kilburn Estate for Brent Council

The Deputy Prime Minister congratulated us for "bringing together a consultation team that combines real experience with new ideas". He praised us for "understanding that real consultation involves listening as well as speaking".

We were commissioned by the London Borough of Brent to carry out consultation of residents and other stakeholders for the regeneration of South Kilburn housing estate.

For this consultation, which continued for a number of years, we began by identifying champions within the local community. Our champions helped us understand the area better, and identify the best ways to contact our consultees.

With the help of the local champions, our fieldworkers carried out rounds of door step surveys that reached every household on the estate. We fed the results back to our client and the design team and returned to consultees so that they could respond at each stage as the design of the scheme developed.

We left consultees with printed information that enabled them to better understand the proposals for regeneration and the timetables involved, and to answer any questions that they might have. Because information was distributed directly by our fieldworkers, we could be sure that it had been received by every household.

We set up a freephone line and freepost address, to make it easy for consultees to reach us if they thought of an issue they wanted to raise after our door step meetings. We also organised coffee mornings and drop-in days in order to provide opportunities for further conversations. 

To reach out to the rest of the local community we hosted a series of exhibition events.

Working with residents from such an early stage enabled us to engage them in the design process. Their views helped us to shape our plans and create better places.