CASE STUDY
Berkeley Homes were looking to deliver a comprehensive redevelopment of the South Quay Plaza site on the Isle of Dogs, which was previously occupied by a small retail complex and office units.
The proposals for the site sought to deliver almost 900 residential units, as well as a refurbished office block, crèche, restaurant, and retail uses on the ground floor. Over an acre of the site was reserved for public open space. The tallest building proposed for the site stood at 68-storeys.
Snapdragon was appointed to deliver a pre-application programme of community consultation that would help to shape the proposals in a clear, consistent, and widely communicated manner. The brief was to deliver a detailed public consultation process which took the development from the conceptual phase to the point of being ready for submission to the London Borough of Tower Hamlets Council.
In total, four public consultation events were held and over 15 meetings with different residents groups and local stakeholders were organised over an 18 month period. An initial public exhibition was held in June 2013 to introduce the concept of a residential-led mixed-use development. The exhibition was attended by over 70 local residents as well as local stakeholders and councillors.
A second exhibition outlining the initial proposals was held in July 2013, based on the feedback from the first exhibition. These two exhibitions were supplemented by another exhibition and a Community Forum in 2014, which helped the project team to shape the proposals that were finally submitted to the council.
A detailed stakeholder mapping exercise was also undertaken and a parallel programme of stakeholder meetings run in order to ensure that all parts of the local community were fully briefed on the proposals. The comprehensive community engagement programme was designed to inform an application with the highest level of community value.
The plans were approved by the London Borough of Tower Hamlets Strategic Development Committee in November 2014, and the site is now in the process of being developed.
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