Longcross Garden Village

Developer: Crest Nicholson

Planning Authority, Runnymede Borough Council

Our role

Chess Engage first began working with Crest Nicholson in 2015, providing consultation and community engagement services across the Longcross Garden Village project. Our initial commission built on experience gained from their strategic site at Arborfield, Berkshire, which secured outline planning permission.

Over the course of the project’s evolution, we have delivered engagement support across multiple stages, helping to maintain continuity and local insight. Our involvement supported the scheme through key phases up to determination, ensuring a consistent and informed approach to stakeholder and community engagement throughout its early and formative years.

Our approach:

Given its complexity and high-profile nature, we conducted a comprehensive audit to identify the multiple stakeholders we needed to engage with over a sustained period. We have kept that local knowledge up to date and focused. Our links and contacts are second to none and have enabled the project to traverse some complex ground over the years. It was understanding the wider community, bringing them together and facilitation of meaningful engagement which allowed the scheme to progress with little if any vocal opposition and actually a lot of support.

We developed a stakeholder and community engagement strategy to help shape the development proposals from a formative stage. In recognition of the different phases, our approach was to build lasting relationships with a wide range of local political and community stakeholders through a programme of meetings, forums, events, and newsletters. We established and have maintained a Stakeholder Liaison Group so that there is continued input into different aspects of the development proposals. Meeting at regular intervals, this group has discussed transport, housing, open space and environmental improvements. The detail considered has been helpful to the project team and allowed the proposals to develop iteratively and constructively.

We organised open days where stakeholders were taken to see Arborfield and we arranged for local advocates of that scheme to inform people of the way Crest had gone about its work and development. We held numerous exhibitions that at each stage allowed Crest to showcase the latest iteration of the proposals and so people had the opportunity to input and shape key themes such as the layout and housing designs. We sent out newsletters informing people of the changes and updating them as elements of the final scheme changed. We held councillor feedback sessions to ensure members where fully briefed on an ongoing basis.

Over the duration of our involvement, Chess Engage delivered a sustained programme of engagement that supported continued stakeholder dialogue and helped inform the evolution of the Longcross Garden Village proposals.

Engagement quality for Longcross South was recognised positively by both political and community stakeholders