Quod

Some of the Quod team are attending the Accessible Retail Annual Christmas lunch today, catching up with clients and industry friends alike. Quod has been a sponsor for 14 years running and the team look forward to the event each year. Accessible Retail, which Senior Director Tim Rainbird sits on the Board is: ‘One Voice for Out of Town Property – offering networking & educational opportunities for the out-of-town property sector.' #accessibleretail #sponsor #propertysector #development

A great charity who does amazing work throughout the Yorkshire region, which Quod have supported throughout the year, please help to support them this Christmas with there festive gift appeal. The post below and link has more details of how you can get involved. Yorkshire Children's Charity https://lnkd.in/e7fmxkUU

Another big one! Our 130,000 sqft, mixed-use repurposing of a redundant office building in Elephant & Castle received unanimous consent from London Borough Of Southwark last night - maintaining our 100% planning track-record. Our 283-bed Purpose-Built Student Accommodation-led (PBSA) scheme unlocks a site on the Walworth Road, that has laid derelict and largely empty for far too long, bringing forward a rich mix of uses that puts the area’s diverse communities at its heart. Demonstrating that student accommodation can meaningfully address and respond to the needs of local people. While also supporting students and other new residents to become active and productive community members. Our dramatic remodelling of the building will transform an unloved eyesore into a positive landmark on the high street – centred on community, food and nature. The ground plain will be given over to community – pretty much in its entirety: 🌳 A new community courtyard garden at the heart of the site provides green respite from the busy high street 🚶🏽♀️➡️ A new pedestrian route transforms its permeability, signposted with welcoming entrances lined in tactile glazed brick 🏬 New high street shops will drive footfall 👩🏽🍳 A new Community Kitchen, with local charity Pembroke House, will use the power of food to bridge existing communities and new residents, tackle social isolation, connect young and old, improve access to healthy, fairly-priced food and support emerging local food businesses. 🏡 And critically, we’re delivering 35% affordable housing on site – 23 new homes for Walworth, all of which will be for social-rent. Our plans prioritise the natural environment too. The all-electric scheme reuses the entire structure of the Walworth Road building. Air-source heat pumps and extensive rooftop PVs will significantly reduce energy demand. And nature is being reintroduced on a significant scale. 22 new trees and enough green and blue roofs to cover an Olympic swimming pool. We’ve got to this point through extensive input from the local community. What they’ve told us and the relationships we’ve built, have fed directly into our plans. And the scheme is all the better for it. Huge thanks to them all. And of course our incredible project team. Howells I Quod I Elliott Wood I Arup I Harris Bugg Studio I Gardiner & Theobald LLP I eb7 ltd I Citydesigner I Turner & Townsend alinea I Caneparo Associates I StudioFractal I Homes for Students #PBSA #Reuse #Repurpose #StudentAccommodation #ElephantAndCastle #Walworth #HighStreet #AffordableHomes #Community

🗣 The Art of Public Speaking 🗣 Following the success of running seven public speaking masterclasses and meeting over 100 professionals across the Built Environment sector this year, we are pleased to announce more dates for 2025. Having run sessions across London and Birmingham this year, we are now coming to Leeds on 22nd January 2025! Taking place at Quod's Leeds office, we welcome professionals from the city and neighbouring areas, to join us for this session. The masterclass will focus on understanding nerves, the art of storytelling and how to prepare for and deliver your best for panel discussions. We started offering these sessions after hearing from professionals how keen they were to speak at events but didn't quite have the confidence or right knowledge to put themselves forward. Let's change this. If you're ready to level up your public speaking game, please sign up for this session. Hosted by our founder, Priya Aggarwal-Shah, who has years of experience speaking on events, presenting, speaking in the media and more. More details in the link in the first comment. P.S. We're also running another session in London, on 12th March 2025, kindly hosted by Grayling. Tickets will go live soon for this, but if you're keen to join this one, please email hello@preachinclusion.com to register your early interest. Photo from our Birmingham session hosted at Turley in September.

The Quod Graduate Programme 2025 is now open. If you aspire to work for an employee owned consultancy at the cutting edge of its field, this could be your opportunity to start and grow your career with one of the UK’s leading planning, development and socio-economics consultancies, with over 120 people across our two offices in London and Leeds, delivering many of the UK’s biggest and most complex projects.   Please read our graduate programme brochure for more information, and submit your CV along with a personal statement of no more than a single side of A4 at the link below: https://lnkd.in/eC8C_Evq   The closing date for applications is 30th of November 2024. If you are shortlisted, you will be invited to an open day assessment in our London office in early December. #graduateprogramme #planning #development #economics #environmentalplanning

A new vision for Lewisham. LandsecU+I's hybrid planning application submission for the redevelopment of Lewisham Town Centre will transform the town centre. If consented the 17-acre masterplan will deliver - 1,700 new homes, including a minimum of 20% affordable housing, alongside 445 co-living residences and up to 660 student rooms, 300% increase in biodiversity thanks to hundreds of new trees and thousands of new plants and create thousands of new jobs and opportunities resulting in an estimated £160m boost to the local economy in Lewisham. This project has been about the community from the outset, and community engagement has been at the heart of the project, with over 2,500 community members visiting the engagement hub, over 500 pieces of feedback, and close collaboration with a group of 16 local Design Champions. Quod provides advice on a range of matters including, planning, retail, town centre regeneration, development economics, affordable housing, socio-economics, public benefits, equalities and CIL. Ben Ford, Matthew Sherwood, Matthew Small, Chris Wheaton, Tom Dobson, Barney Stringer, Sasha Gordon, Lucy Dean, Andrew Hunt, Adrian Fox, Ewan Grunwald, Arslan Iqbal, Zachary Bacon, Joshua Skyers and Lauren Clark. Details of the scheme can be found here https://lnkd.in/efSysz3n and https://lnkd.in/eS7PEC_k #MoreThanAPlace #Lewisham #CommunityEngagement #UrbanRegeneration #SustainableDevelopment #Planning

Field Trip! With planning powers being handed back from the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC) to the respective Boroughs at the end of November 2024, we treated ourselves to a walking tour of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park (QEOP) and Stratford City to see and hear about the projects Quod has been involved in, from our very own colleagues. Quod has been instrumental in delivering the transformational change in this part of London since the early 2000’s (admittedly including before Quod was Quod!). From the initial Olympic masterplan, to Stratford City, it was a timely opportunity to reflect on decades of hard work. We spoke about the transition of Olympic mode to Legacy mode; about how, what is now East Village, housed over 17,000 athletes and officials during the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games to then be transformed into the UK’s first major build to rent development accommodating 2,818 homes; reclaiming significant sites blighted by contamination (and who can forget the fridge mountain) to a wonderful biodiverse landscape; building new communities by delivering new schools and places to live, work and play. It would be amiss not to thank all of those that we have worked with over the years – from consultants; clients; statutory and local planning authorities; fellow planners; architects; LOCOG; ODA; LLDC and relevant Boroughs – to only name a few. Not only have we collaborated, but we have made career long friends that have been driven by a can-do attitude and camaraderie. When private and public sectors work together, this is what can be achieved. If the Government is serious about delivering on its ambitious goals, then it can learn a lot from Stratford in how to transform a heavily contaminated, former industrial rail land, to a new part of the city. It isn’t just about housing, it’s about creating a place. Thank you to Gregory Blaxland for organising another great Quod learning field trip and to Steffan Rees, Matthew Sharpe, Sean Bashforth, Anjuli Schiele, Matt Eyre and Rory Chambers for talking through some of the vast projects Quod have worked on. London Legacy Development Corporation, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Balfour Beatty plc, The Hill Group, Places for People, Westfield, Lendlease, LCR Property, Stratford Original, Delancey, Qatari Diar, Get Living, Telford Homes, London Square, ABBA Voyage, Riverside East, Hackney Bridge, Manhattan Loft Gardens, East Wick & Sweetwater.

A number of Quod’s young planners headed to Cambridge this year for the annual Royal Town Planning Institute, Young Planners Conference last week. Steeped in history, astounding architecture and shaped by its world-class University, it nonetheless wrestles with the challenge of realising its immense potential. This year the conference focused on ‘Connecting Town and Country’ and the complex intersection of balancing growth versus resources. A series of interactive panels, breakout sessions and study tours explored how we can balance heritage and sustainability; the challenges of growth within rural settings; Local Nature Recovery Strategies; connectivity and infrastructure and planning in the first 100 days of Labour. The study tours took to the streets to discover the cycle infrastructure connecting the city as well understanding how the University secures its future by planning for solar panels on Kings College Chapel and upgrading its many Grade II listed buildings. Highlights included Stephen Kelly, Director of Planning and Economic Development for Greater Cambridgeshire Shared Planning, setting out some of the challenges and opportunities the region faces, such as water scarcity and delivering the right development in the right place. It wouldn’t be a Young Planner Royal Town Planning Institute event without a great mixer and the Gala Dinner offered the chance to socialise with colleagues from across the spectrum of the industry enjoying a three-course meal, drinks and entertainment. A great event highlighting the importance of planning and the need for the next generation to take up the challenge. Many thanks to all the speakers, the event sponsors and the RTPI East of England Young Planners' Network for having us. Isabelle Leekam (MRTPI), Lucas Fallon, Matthew Taylor, Alex Hamlet and Joseph Stroud.

The Quod Graduate Programme 2025 is now open. If you aspire to work for an employee owned consultancy at the cutting edge of its field, this could be your opportunity to start and grow your career with one of the UK’s leading planning, development and socio-economics consultancies, with over 120 people across our two offices in London and Leeds, delivering many of the UK’s biggest and most complex projects.   Please read our graduate programme brochure for more information, and submit your CV along with a personal statement of no more than a single side of A4 at the link below: https://lnkd.in/eC8C_Evq   The closing date for applications is 30th of November 2024. If you are shortlisted, you will be invited to an open day assessment in our London office in early December. #graduateprogramme #planning #development #economics #environmentalplanning

With the Government making planning reform a day one priority, it was great to bring members and Joanna Averley of Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government together for discussion alongside our host Tom Dobson of Quod earlier today. Our wide-ranging conversation covered how changes resulting from the current consultation on the National Planning Policy Framework will interact with the London Plan, how more resourcing and expertise can be brought into local authority planning teams, what the future may hold for treatment of industrial land, and much else besides. Thank you for your contributions Angie Fenton Mike Kiely James Wickham Jeremy Castle.