- Client
- London Borough of Hackney
- Sector
- Planning & Development
- Location
- London
- How we helped
- Retail and Leisure Retail and Town Centres Planning Consultancy
Steve heads up the National Retail and Town Centre Consultancy team based in London’s West End, following the acquisition of Strategic Perspectives (which formed part of Planning Perspectives) in December 2014. Steve has over 20 years’ experience as a planning consultant advising local planning authorities, regeneration bodies, developers, operators, investors and landowners on all aspects of town centre, retail, leisure and economic development and planning. His expertise ranges from preparing site (sequential) appraisals, capacity/impact assessments and spatial strategies/visions for town centres to help inform plan-making and decision-taking; through to acting as expert witness at Appeal, Call-In, Local Plan and CPO inquiries.
His local authority clients include Nottingham City, Warwick District, Guildford Borough, Great Yarmouth, Basingstoke, Rugby, Harlow, Hull City, West Devon, Mid Sussex, Nuneaton & Bedworth and Kings Lynn Councils. He is also providing retail and economic planning advice for wide range of developers, investors and occupiers to help unlock the value of existing and new assets/sites in different locations, including for Hermes, Realm, Salmon Harvester, Land Securities, Threadneedle, Aviva, Benson Elliot, Quidnet and Wilson Bowden. Steve was one of a handful of consultants invited by the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) to advise upon the retail planning and town centre elements of the National Planning Policy Framework and National Planning Policy Guidance, having previously advised the Government on PPS4 Town Centre Good Practice Guidance on Need, Impact and the Sequential Approach. He is also an active member of the British Council of Shopping Centres (BCSC), where he sits on the Planning Working Group; a Board Member of the National Retail Planning Forum (NRPF); a member of the Association of Town Centre Management (ATCM); and chair of the annual RTPI Retail and Town Centre Conference.
Prior to this Steve’s PhD assessed the potential impact of Regional Shopping Centres on town centre vitality and viability.
Members of Carter Jonas’s Regeneration, Retail and Town Centre Consultancy team were commissioned by the London Borough of Hackney to assess and test the retail planning and commercial soundness of the emerging Area Action Plans (AAPs) for Dalston and Hackney Central.
We also advised on the appropriate scale and mix of retail and commercial leisure floorspace that should be provided in the two emerging smaller centres of Manor House and Hackney Wick, which formed part of the London 2012 Olympic and Legacy Masterplan Framework boundary.
The London Borough of Hackney had been preparing AAPs for its key centres for a number of years, and the Council instructed Carter Jonas to provide planning and commercial advice on whether the retail and mixed use opportunities that had been identified before the impact of the economic recession were still appropriate, viable and deliverable. As part of this work we also assessed the potential economic and commercial capacity for new retail and commercial leisure development focused on Dalston Junction and Hackney Central stations. One of the key outputs of the study included a town centre management ‘toolkit’ for Dalston and Hackney Central which provided ‘best practice’ advice on how to manage, market, fund and deliver new retail and leisure opportunities in the Borough’s main centres.