The Your New Town Hall project works hand in hand with the cooperative council aims to open up resources and decision making to local people. Building the civic spaces people will use means designing the scheme with the people it’s being built for.
Since December 2012, we’ve been talking with local residents, community groups and businesses about what could be included in the development. As we enter the construction phase of the project we’ll continue to work with local people on the detailed designs for the public spaces, in particular the refurbished town hall.
In December 2012, we held an event for the community at Lambeth Town Hall. This event involved local people and businesses defining their ambitions for the new civic or community space within Your New Town Hall.
The key criteria for suggestions made were that they must be:
An exciting set of ideas and suggestions emerged. These ideas have been taken forward with developers and through further community involvement.
What people told us informed our discussions with potential developers in 2013 which saw the appointment of Muse Developments as our developer partner. You can find out more about how we chose the developer at the blog post ‘Your comments on Your New Town Hall’.
Local people and businesses have helped to generate ideas for the project, select the development partner and design the scheme. Here is an overview of this activity.
An open to all ideas event took place on Friday 7 December 2012. At the event local people, businesses and organisations came together to discuss how the Your New Town Hall can provide more flexible workspaces for social enterprises, small businesses and the community, as well as the council.
You can read the Town Hall for All Ideas Report here.
The ideas in the report have been driving our discussions with developers as we search for a development partner. We hope to select a preferred developer partner for the project in Autumn 2013.
You can also watch a video about the ‘Town Hall for All’ ideas event here:
On Tuesday 1 October 2013 the three developers shortlisted to redesign Your New Town Hall (Kajima, Muse and United House) presented their proposals to the public at the Ritzy. They gave short presentations about how they have progressed their proposals to improve the Town Hall and its surrounding area. You can view the presentations below.
Many thanks to everyone who commented via the survey or directly on this site.
Throughout July 2014 Muse and Lambeth Council held a number of community design events with the aim of improving the design of Your New Town Hall through local involvement. People were encouraged to share their ideas and thoughts, particularly about the civic spaces included in the project, such as the customer centre and the register office.
Events included meetings for residents living close to the sites that make up Your New Town Hall, workshops for community organisations and public exhibitions, including at the Lambeth Country Show. Young people told us what they thought in this film by Photofusion.
What people said helped to shape the final proposals for the scheme.
On 1 September 2015, the council’s planning committee approved the planning application that was submitted by Muse Developments in April 2015. You can read more details about the application on the blog or Muse’s Your New Town Hall site. Muse’s consultation statement can be found here.
Community involvement doesn’t end here. We will continue to talk with local residents, community groups and businesses as we work out the design details, particularly for the public spaces in the refurbished town hall. When it opens in late 2017, most council staff will work from the new office building, but the town hall will retain many of the public facing civic functions – council and committee meetings, councillor offices, mayor’s parlour, and, of course the register office.
The Impact Hub, which provides affordable desk space for small businesses and freelancers, will return with twice the amount of space it had previously. Meeting rooms will be available for public use and the re-vamped assembly rooms will be an easy to get to event space, able to cater for a range of private and public events (from wedding receptions to craft fayres or conferences).