(Mis)Understanding Ladywood: Concerns about the feedback reports

In August, the Berkeley Homes team shared a report following their ‘Understanding Ladywood’ workshops held over the summer. These workshops were presented as providing an “opportunity for residents to meet the project team and help shape the early direction of the masterplan”.

The report raises significant questions about what lies ahead for Ladywood residents.

Displacement unaddressed

The most striking absence in the report is any serious acknowledgment of displacement.

Berkeley Homes and BCC have stated that 30% of homes across all tenures may be affected—amounting to nearly 600 houses and more than 1,500 people. These numbers could rise further due to viability clauses—which secure the developer’s 20% profit margin—and value engineering, which often results in reductions of affordable and social housing at completion compared to what was approved at the planning application stage.

In the report, displacement is treated primarily as a matter of “rehousing,” a technical and operational issue. This framing is misleading because, at present, there are no clear guarantees that all current residents will be offered a like-for-like replacement at no additional cost in the new development, or spared from demolition and displacement.

Residents’ demands reframed

Equally concerning is how residents’ demands are reframed. Calls to remain in Ladywood were not treated as binding. Instead, they were softened into something that people merely ‘value,’ making them appear optional.

This tendency is compounded by the arbitrary distinction the report draws between expectations and “non-negotiable components”. Affordability and housing quality are labelled “non-negotiable,” while the core issue of avoiding displacement is relegated to the status of a mere expectation.

The distinction between “expectations” and “non-negotiable components” was not, for instance, elicited in the form shared with residents in the workshops, which focused on priorities, community needs, and suggestions for improvements. This is an interpretation introduced by the reports’ authors, which worryingly deprioritises matters that are central to current residents of Ladywood.

Quality of participation

The report also mobilises numbers — registrations, website hits, letters sent — as evidence of comprehensive engagement. Yet actual participation was limited, attendance was low, and key groups (young people, older residents, non-English speakers) were underrepresented.

In its 2023 Equality Assessment of the Ladywood regeneration, BCC had committed to ensuring all age groups could shape the plans, including targeted activities for young and elderly people, and to provide accessible consultation materials, including translations where needed.

These commitments should have been fulfilled from the very beginning, but were instead deferred to a later stage

Community life ignored

The narrative is further shaped by selective emphasis. Churches, local restaurants, the Vine Inn pub and other centres of community life were mentioned in workshops but omitted in the report. Instead reports mention cafés along the canal and market stalls are foregrounded as desirable additions.

This selective framing risks aligning with a vision of Ladywood imagined for future residents and external investors, rather than the needs of current communities.

Diversity is celebrated in the abstract, but the institutions and relationships that currently sustain it are left unacknowledged and possibly silenced.

A need for change

A change in approach is needed to ensure resident participation is meaningful, enabling them to play a genuine decision-making role in shaping their neighbourhood.

A first step is to publish all consultation data that informed the August report and the drafting of the Residents’ Charter. Both documents raise serious concerns about the selective use of community input and the ways in which resident involvement has been interpreted and presented.

A second step is to give substance to consultation commitments. As noted in the video shared on Common Place, the next stage will involve consultation on the draft masterplan.

Any such process, including pre-application consultation, should adhere to the principles set out in BCC’s 2020 Statement of Community Involvement, which include:

• Have a purpose and be proportionate, asking relevant questions on the issues that are to be decided on.
• Be open, transparent and responsive, allowing the opportunity for all to take part and showing how comments and views have been considered.
• Be targeted towards the most affected people, but also promote consultation as widely as possible.
• Promote equality through ensuring vulnerable people or disadvantaged groups are involved in the planning process and ensuring that the potential equality impact of planning policies and decisions are fully assessed.

Failure to fulfil these commitments would also be an infringement of BCC’s Powered by People policy.