Beyond Training
As experts in the built environment field with extensive experience working with local authorities we are able to provide consultancy services on select projects.
Providing workshops for the Green and Resilient Spaces Fund projects
We are working closely with the Green Infrastructure Team at the Greater London Authority to support local greening projects that deliver the Mayor’s ambition to create inclusive, climate resilient green space across the capital. This bespoke programme comprises a series of in-person workshops to discuss best practice in a range of topics including design, procurement, engagement and co-design as well as a platform for networking and knowledge exchange. We have paired up design experts from our new Environmental Design Review Panel to provide practical, friendly design support and have undertaken design reviews of the projects as they progress from concept to construction to help ensure funding is well spent.
Running Future Parks Accelerator training
The Future Parks Accelerator programme – funded by National Trust and Heritage Lottery – aims to introduce significant new green space in the public highway in the London boroughs of Camden and Islington. UDL was commissioned to devise and deliver a training programme for officers that focuses on skills relating to the delivery of green infrastructure such as sustainable urban drainage, street trees and urban canopy cover, planting specification, maintenance and placemaking, as well as policy relating to urban greening. Our aim is to help create a culture where urban greening is brought to the forefront of thinking in all highways projects. The training included online training sessions, site visits to exemplar greening projects and discussion on how each borough can adopt new ways of designing and maintaining green infrastructure across different teams to scale up the delivery of climate resilient public space. To ensure places have as positive an impact as possible, we want all buildings and spaces to be attractive for those using and experiencing them; practical, efficient, adaptable and fit for their purpose, they should also be easy to maintain to a high standard.
Helping Greater Cambridge update its design review systems
When the city of Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire District Council came together to provide a combined planning service, they realised they had two very different existing design review systems, neither of which had been updated for a long time. So they commissioned UDL to look at how the existing panels worked and make suggestions for how everything could be improved. We already had a lot of experience of design review best practice, having run a network for panels for many years and helped over 20 local authorities set up their panels. For Greater Cambridge, we observed panel sessions, interviewed those involved – those presenting, responding and managing the reviews and read past panel recommendations. As a result, we suggested a single new panel, with clear terms of reference and monitoring system, freshly procured and trained chairs and panel members and an independent advisory group to keep everything on track. The new panel has since met many times, offering a consistent and professional service across all parts of the Greater Cambridge area. We are happy to provide ad hoc advice and recommend improvements to design review practices elsewhere.
Supporting inclusive public space in London
The Culture team at the Greater London Authority came to us for help in understanding how to ensure public spaces are welcoming and inclusive to everyone, and that their use represented the communities they served. We held interviews with practitioners across the city who managed, designed and used public spaces, investigating barriers to inclusive use. In our resultant report we focused on three levels of inclusion, people finding it easy to physically get to and use public spaces, ensuring they felt welcomed and entitled to use the space and finally influencing how the space was managed and changed. Although the work linked to conversations about approaches to naming, statues and other features that could be seen as excluding certain groups or individuals, this was not the main focus of our work. Instead, we unearthed many excellent approaches to positively foster inclusion such as ensuring local businesses from under represented communities were helped to know about and respond to opportunities to run activities in parks. We are willing to take on a limited amount of similar research and advice work.
Showcasing London’s best
We were contacted by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to help host a delegation of politicians, planners and transportation experts from Utah, USA. We took the group to King’s Cross and led a lively tour around the stations and all the developments around them. We used what we saw to explain important urban design issues from how spaces were enclosed to the management of traffic. The group were fascinated and very impressed by what they saw, apparently it was the most interesting element of a two-week trip to France, Morocco and London! They requested follow-up meetings to explore further how planning, transport infrastructure provision and urban design work in the UK. We are willing to offer similar tours and advice sessions to others.
Assisting Design Code Pathfinders
From 2021 onwards UDL has been involved in the development of design code practice. We have run two dedicated schools on the topic and inputted to the monitoring and evaluation of government funded Code Pathfinders managed by the Design Council, including chairing some of their workshops and drafting insight documents. We are available to provide mentoring and advice to local authorities wishing to develop their own codes.
