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Creating new communities

New communities, whether stand-alone new settlements or significant sustainable urban extensions (SUEs), represent a unique opportunity for innovative and nationally-significant placemaking. They offer the chance to plan for the sustainable settlements of the future, with the behavioural change needed to achieve healthy living and a net zero economy designed in from the outset. Against a backdrop of economic uncertainty new settlements represent an opportunity to develop positive long-term partnerships and risk management strategies which help underpin investment portfolios.

New settlements and garden communities are recognised by Government as forming an essential part of tackling the UK’s housing crisis.

Cross party support is conditional on new communities being ‘self-sustaining’ and providing tangible benefits to the existing community. Creating these new places therefore requires a proactive approach in terms of collaboration with stakeholders, coordination of infrastructure provision, and making the case for ‘why here and why now’.

This often differs from the optimal approach to delivering smaller residential-led sites. Progressively planned and well-executed new settlements have the potential to not only deliver high volumes of new housing, but also the right types of new homes, employment space and social infrastructure. They offer the opportunity to embed sustainable principles and respond to future behavioural changes. Healthy living, wellbeing, quality of place and carbon neutrality are essential elements of placemaking which delivers the needs of communities now and in the future.

We have a demonstrable track record in assessing feasibility, promoting and delivering new communities across the UK. Our experience ranges from large garden cities (Otterpool Garden City) and greenfield new settlements of up to 10,000 homes centred around existing public transport infrastructure, to smaller stand-alone communities (Bourn Airfield) centred on brownfield sites.

Our market-leading experience of advising clients on opportunities for new settlements is driven by collaborative plan making, political advocacy, and community buy in.

Our strategic development experience across the UK provides our clients with insight into the housing, employment, and transport context that shapes new settlements. Our national coverage and multi-service offer enables us to add value to our clients’ new settlement project at every stage of their lifecycle. This expertise includes:

  • Sustainability, climate change and net zero strategies
  • Economic strategy
  • Political and community relationship building
  • Strategic planning advice, from promotion through to delivery 
  • Masterplanning
  • Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)
  • Business case and funding advice
  • Pre-application consultation
  • Social infrastructure assessments
  • Retail strategy
  • Geographical Information Systems (GIS)
  • Social value impact studies
  • Settlement identity and narrative creation
  • Landscape and heritage advice and assessments

We are passionate about creating vibrant new settlements where people want to live, work, and grow. We are committed to sustainable development which future generations will be proud of. This requires a commitment to engagement, innovation, and futurology alongside a commercial understanding of the delivery process. 

The value we bring to our clients and projects is defined by the following:

A collaborative working process which shapes our vision for new settlements

We understand that place making at the strategic scale of new settlements is a collaborative process involving a range of key stakeholders, disciplines and perspectives. From day one we work with the client and the wider consultant team to establish the context and opportunities of the new place, the primary economic and social drivers, key early deliverables and the stakeholder aspirations that inform the conceptual vision for a new settlement and define the ‘why here, why now’ case.

Political engagement

Understanding and influencing the political context for any new settlement is critical. Generating support from local influencers and decision makers can see new settlements delivered years before they would have been otherwise. Engaging across the stakeholder spectrum from the outset enables new settlements to work with rather than against existing communities that makes the whole lifecycle more efficient and productive.

Our multi-service offer

Our multi-service offer means Turley’s value add combines market-leading planning advice with equally expert economics, sustainability, landscape, heritage and communications advice, which can all be essential to the identification, promotion and successful allocation and delivery of new settlements.

Our geographical coverage

Our national, regional and local strategic planning experience and stakeholder relationships provides us with unique insight into the context that shapes the opportunities to bring forward new settlements across the UK.

Find out more about our track record below. For more information please get in touch with our team.

Key contacts

Our track record