Building a team for a resilient future

In this Community Spotlight, Amy Wallace, Strategic Housing Officer and Alice Hardy, Senior Housing Strategy Officer from Cornwall Council, reflect on their work as part of the council’s Sustainable Growth, Housing Strategy and Supply team. Wallace and Hardy are Public Practice Alums who started their placements at Cornwall Council in Spring 2024.

Answering five questions posed by YAA Projects and focused on West Carclaze Garden Village, Wallace and Hardy explore how the Sustainable Growth, Housing Strategy and Supply team works to support the council’s goal of delivering affordable and sustainable housing.

West Carclaze Garden Village is a strategically important project for Cornwall Council to achieve its housing targets. Cornwall Council was actively involved in the initial strategic allocation, assessing site feasibility, followed by the outline planning application process and establishing a partnership with the developer EcoBos. A partnership board was set up and is still running now to oversee the project delivery and provide strategic steer as required. This partnership enabled government funding to be accessed to support the development of a planning application on a challenging site. A multi-disciplinary team was assembled by the partners to develop the planning application that included planners, architects, engineers and ecologists. Surveys and studies were undertaken as required to inform the planning application, which was subject to an environmental impact assessment.

Since grant of the outline planning permission in 2018, Cornwall Council worked with Homes England to access a Housing Infrastructure Fund to provide off-site key infrastructure, such as including road improvements, foul and potable water connections, to unlock the site . The EcoBos design team that included architects and engineers developed the design and technical information. Cornwall Council procured the contractors and managed the works based on that design information, continuing to work closely with EcoBos and Homes England to address any changes that arose during the construction process.

The outline planning permission granted in 2018 was accompanied by a design code detailing design quality and sustainability principles to be adhered to, as well as a set of parameter plans establishing key development principles. This forms the basis for more detailed information developed as part of each Reserved Matters application, detailing the scheme based on the outline consent principles and parameters. It includes topics such as housing types and quality, street scenes, sustainable transport, green infrastructure and ecological mitigation.

Cornwall Council’s Housing Strategy team is acquiring 130 homes across the site and the Capital Projects team (responsible for the delivery of schemes) is leading on the engagement with external consultants, Arcadis, who oversee the project management to secure delivery of these units. Cornwall Housing Limited (the council’s housing provider) are the landlords of the homes and therefore communication of the project progress with them has been essential to enable efficient handover from the Housing Strategy team. The scale and complexity of the site has required diligence and attention to detail across all of the personnel involved.

West Carclaze Garden Village is a key strategic project within the council and, due to its scale and scope, is phased over 15 years. The first key challenge, therefore, is strategically resourcing the project across this timeline effectively, with some colleagues full-time on the project and others having oversight as and when required. Another key challenge due to the timeline is staff continuity. Where there are changes to staff it is essential that information is clearly and extensively passed on to allow for seamless transitions. That said, Cornwall Council is one of the largest employers across the peninsula and therefore staff retention is high, meaning the project has enjoyed more consistency than a project of a similar scale elsewhere in the country might.

As explored in our West Carclaze Garden Village thought piece, collaboration and communication within the council is, and will continue to be, integral to the success of our projects. Alongside our formal engagement processes, we are in constant discussions with colleagues in Affordable Housing, Capital Projects, Legal, Finance and Property and we act as the glue to holistically deliver our housing projects from conception to occupation. In addition to daily communication with other teams in the council, we also have wider Strategic Housing team awaydays, which serve as an opportunity to come together and get to know one another away from our screens. These awaydays feature talks from colleagues as well as themed workshops to drive conversations about how to improve our services and bring more cohesion across the teams. The most recent awayday explored the theme of Cornwall’s housing crisis; why we have one and how to alleviate the pressure on housing within a restricted budget. Coming together allowed creative ideas to manifest and will drive our objectives and solutions for the months and years ahead.

The Housing Strategy team is a passionate team with a common goal: to increase and improve housing in Cornwall for all. Our backgrounds vary considerably but our aligned focus is to achieve our aims whilst adhering to the values established in our team charter. Varying professional backgrounds, including experience in registered housing provisions, wider housing services such as homelessness, architecture and planning help to bring a variety of skill sets to every working day. These skills complement one another and ultimately lead to a successful and hard-working team. Key skills that lead to this success are attention to detail, confident communication inside and outside the team, time management and awareness of evolving policies.

As established, collaboration has been fundamental to the development of West Carclaze. Taking the ambitious ideas for an entirely new village from a vision to a reality has equipped Cornwall Council with new knowledge and an understanding of priorities. A key example has been the importance of early stakeholder engagement with elected members and with other government bodies. Indeed, a new village not only requires new housing, but it also needs community facilities to support residents. These community facilities need guidance from authorities such as the NHS and the Department for Education—from conception all the way through to completion—to ensure the most suitable and compliant facilities are delivered. This understanding of early stakeholder engagement will ensure collaboration with such government bodies is prioritised from the outset on other village projects within the council, enabling effective delivery of strategic schemes and new resilient neighbourhoods to thrive.