Following the Grenfell Tower tragedy, the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea created the Lancaster West Neighbourhood Team to work on the refurbishment of 800 homes on Lancaster West Estate. The team has been working in partnership with residents to select the architects and co-design the refurbishment of the estate itself.

Who is on the project team? 

Lancaster West Neighbourhood Team [LWNT], Penoyre and Prasad, Arup, TACE with several multi-disciplinary Consultants.

Describe the context of the community engagement. Why did the engagement take place?

Following the Grenfell Tower Tragedy in June 2017, where 72 residents lost their lives, the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea created a new neighbourhood team that is responsible for the refurbishment of the 800 homes on Lancaster West Estate. 

LWNT - working in partnership with the residents of the estate, decided they would rebuild the community together through collaboration and partnership and through co-designing the refurbishment of the estate itself. The plan was to create a 21st century model estate. LWNT and residents began creating this vision by collaboratively choosing three architectural firms to oversee the design and development of the estate. It was to be a true resident-led refurbishment, which would have resident options, choice and mostly importantly residents’ needs at its heart. 

To deliver on this ambitious project, a three-phase engagement plan was created to help residents easily and effectively take part in the refurbishment (diagram attached). 

The refurbishment is entering Phase 3 of the co-design process and this approach has been extremely successful with 61% of 795 households haven taken part in the co-design process to date. 

Currently, 43% of properties on the estate have had a total internal refurbishment, 36% of properties have had new kitchens, and 35% have had new kitchens installed. 

This has been achieved through the hard-work and dedication of LWNT who have been warmly supported by the Lancaster West Residents Association (LWRA) and individual residents, known as “Block Reps” who act as liaisons between the residents and the team whenever required.

Tell us what you did, and how you did it. What was your approach in talking to the community?

LWNT’s goal was always to ensure the community felt heard and included in all aspects of the Lancaster West Estate Refurbishment. This began with the ambition of speaking one on one with every household on the estate to get their view on the neighbourhood and what they would like to see in its transformation. Then, through community days, webinars, and open house events amongst other examples, every resident was invited to come along and encouraged to give their thoughts and feedback, to meet with the team, the architects, the contractors, and each other, whilst having the opportunity to be part of this one-of-a-kind project. 

LWNT take an inclusive approach to engagement and used a variety of media communications to connect with our residents such as Instagram, e-newsletters, our app and our website. We also used more traditional means of engagement such as letters, posters, and leaflets to target the most digitally excluded residents on the estate, and for the 28% of residents for whom English is not their first language, each could be printed in different languages upon request. 19 languages can be spoken amongst our team which ensures the whole community can be involved in the co-design process. 

After each refurbishment co-design engagement, we act transparently and share the preferences made by our residents in ‘results reveals’, where reports are circulated to all the residents in the blocks where the changes will benefit them. The reports contain a statistical break down of all the choices made.

How were the results of the community engagement incorporated into decision making? Have you continued the conversation? Will the community stay involved?

LWE are committed to a true co-design of the Lancaster West Estate, with full transparency of the results which decide how the estate will look. We send the results with a breakdown of all the questions and choices made by the residents, highlighting the selected options. 

After each phase of the co-design process, residents are informed of the choices made for their blocks through the surveys they complete. We call this process ‘results reveals’, where we publicise the favoured results to the residents of the blocks involved in the engagement. 

The results are made public in a variety of formats to ensure all the residents are informed on the choices. This includes reports which are sent to all the properties in the block the choices impact, content posted on our social media channels with pictures of some of the choices made by residents, and headline results included in our resident e-newsletter, ensuring the active engagement of traditionally excluded and marginalised residents regarding the upgrades to their homes. 

As we approach the final stage of the co-design process, residents will remain at the centre of the decision making of the final detailed designs. LWNT will continue to engage more of the community as phase 3 begins for each block, ensuring that every resident can be a part of deciding the changes on their homes. To date, 61% of LWE households have taken part in the co-design process, and each of the blocks are above our target of 50% whole estate engagement.

Describe your environmental or social impacts and your sustainability approach. 

In our most recent resident engagement, 74% of residents told us they were either satisfied or very satisfied with our levels of engagement, a great result for a team dealing with traumatised and grieving individuals who had expressed a deep distrust and disillusionment in housing providers. 

Our engagements also influence environmental change on the estate. On the estate, only 10% of residents have access to private green space. LWNT’s Sustainability Strategy demonstrates our commitment to ‘improve and increase green spaces, making them more accessible and functional, and supporting local biodiversity’. In line with this commitment, we co-designed ‘The Secret Garden’ with residents, a communal growing space on the estate for residents to use and enjoy. 

In 2022, we sent a survey to residents to see how they would like to use the once unused space on the estate. Now, the co-designed Secret Garden contains: 

An edible hedge planted by residents, volunteers and LWNT staff, in collaboration with the Tree Council 

A polytunnel which grows a variety of mushrooms which residents can harvest. 

A pond with water plants, and a seating area to provide a relaxing, social area for those that use it. 

The Secret Garden has improved biodiversity by 42 different plant species and has contributed to the improvement of the Urban Greening Factor from 0.33 to 0.42, which now stands above the borough’s target for development. 

LWNT are committed to be a gas free neighbourhood by 2030; with every home to be EPC B.