Oakham Heights: A New Community

Developing our early community engagement model

It was at Oakham Heights, in 2013, that we first introduced our concept for Community Mobilisers. This proved so successful that our first Community Mobiliser is still in contact with several residents living on the development.

It was also at Oakham that we developed our template for our community websites and apps. We have since rolled this out to a number of our garden villages.

Growing a vision for a new community

And it was here where we had a vision for well maintained ‘Chelsea allotments’ in order to generate an income for the Residents Company. Whilst in the end the community decided to use a not for profit allotment model, it is still thriving and well utilised.

However, what we learned at Oakham we have been able to take to our other garden villages, striking a good balance between generating an income stream for the community whilst ensuring that the allotments are well used and thriving. See this example at Tadpole Garden Village.

Whilst we have been kept in the ‘wings’ at Oakham, we finally signed the managing agents contract in June 2019 and commence work in July.

Now here lies a great opportunity to apply our learning from our other garden villages and bring great maintained green spaces to the people of Oakham Heights.

If you are a developer, keen to learn more about a community-ownership model, growing community engagement, or green space management and placemaking initiatives, please give us a call or drop us an email.