The Neighbourhood Strategy 2024–2027 focuses on rebuilding trust and providing housing services for North Kensington residents after the 2017 Grenfell tragedy. Co-designed with feedback from 1,800 residents, it prioritises accessible services, home repairs, refurbishments, decarbonisation and community opportunities. Since 2018, resident engagement has been central. Success is measured through monthly reviews, programme boards and objective-setting at service, team and individual levels to ensure accountability and progress.

 

 

Who is on the project? 

 

Strategic Programmes and Innovation Team

Lancaster West Neighbourhood Team

 

Describe the context of the strategy, research or policy. What need does it serve? What questions does it answer? What is its social and environmental impact? 

 

The Neighbourhood Strategy 2024–2027 addresses the need to rebuild trust and provide housing services that meet the diverse needs of North Kensington residents following the 2017 Grenfell Tower tragedy. It aims to tackle critical issues such as overcrowding, rising living costs, and poor housing quality, while creating a sustainable, modern estate. Developed through feedback from over 1,800 residents, the strategy reflects the community’s priorities and outlines a comprehensive vision for the estate’s future. The strategy is built around three key themes: Listening and acting to deliver accessible services: By prioritising co-design and continuous feedback, the strategy ensures housing services are tailored to the community’s needs. This resident-first approach aims to build trust and deliver responsive, easy-to-navigate services, improving overall satisfaction. Repairing, refurbishing, and decarbonising homes: Through initiatives like the deep retrofit programme and the Notting Dale Heat Network, the strategy focuses on upgrading housing quality, enhancing energy efficiency, and reducing carbon emissions. These efforts create safer, modern, and environmentally friendly homes. Creating opportunities for a thriving community: Beyond infrastructure, the strategy supports community programmes that promote health, well-being, and sustainability, fostering long-term social and economic resilience. 

 

Did you consult key stakeholders or the community in the creation of this document or policy? How did you select participants? Was the final strategy shared with the community? Is this engagement ongoing?

 

Since the inception of the Neighbourhood Team in 2018, resident engagement has been central to our approach, with co-design at the heart of our housing services and refurbishment programmes. Given historically low engagement and a lack of trust in the council, we prioritised listening to residents early in developing our strategy. This led to the identification of three key priorities, and we set ambitious targets for engagement—aiming for 50% participation per block for specific co-design projects. The new strategy sets even higher targets of 70%. To achieve this, we use multiple engagement methods, including events, surveys (both in-person and online), door knocking, and estate pop-ups. We ensure accessibility by offering translations into seven local languages, and our website supports inclusivity with translation options. Our team is estate-based, which allows us to maintain an open door for residents to participate at their convenience. Feedback is gathered continuously through various channels, including our website, phone line, app, and in-person meetings. 

 

 

How will the research or strategy be taken forward or implemented? Please describe any accountability, metrics or enforcement built into the process to encourage meaningful change.

The themes and values underpinning the strategy are integrated into the top-level strategic objectives for each service area, with progress measured through: Monthly performance review meetings, Programme boards and Members’ oversight, Service area objectives, Team objectives and individual employee objectives. The common principles apply to the strategic focus of our workforce, reflecting the diversity of our community. These values are embedded into the staff induction process, training, and performance monitoring, ensuring clear objectives and an overriding focus on delivering excellent customer service, with residents at the heart of everything we do. The strategy ensures continuous, real-time refocusing of services on areas that matter most to residents, ensuring they are responsive and empathetic—ranging from cost-of-living support to our respite decant offer, mitigating the impacts of the refurbishment programme. We regularly review customer dissatisfaction to adjust our service improvement plans, ensuring all feedback drives productive change for residents. We are proactively improving the collection of residents’ equality data to design services reflecting the diversity of our community. This robust, regularly reviewed approach to data insight provides a clear understanding of resident needs, met by thoughtful, humanised responses. Improved accessibility of services through digital engagement channels reflects resident preferences while addressing digital and financial exclusion with initiatives like the Tech and Money MOT. We measure and publish progress to ensure transparency, accountability, and continuous improvement. It helps track how effectively we are meeting our objectives, provides residents and stakeholders with updates on our work, fostering trust by demonstrating the impact of our actions.