Peterborough is a fast-growing city with strong fundamentals but deep structural challenges. Commissioned by the Peterborough City Council, PRD undertook a strategic review of development opportunities across Peterborough to reposition the city as a more dynamic regional centre.

We built a comprehensive evidence base exploring market dynamics, spatial opportunity, and delivery barriers. While the city benefits from high connectivity, housing affordability, and significant development potential, it is marked by fragmented land ownership and viability challenges. Our analysis identified over 68 hectares of developable land with capacity for 4,350 homes and 26,000 sqm of commercial space.

In synthesising the ‘so what?’, we set out a clear strategic pathway for delivery: a city centre-wide supplementary planning document to provide planning clarity and design ambition; a recalibrated approach to site prioritisation; and a delivery strategy aligned with governance and infrastructure plans. We identified that the redevelopment of land at the train station and the Anglia Ruskin University expansion are prime catalysts for growth in the city.

The work provides a credible, market-facing framework for regeneration, giving the council and Homes England the tools to bring forward a new era of city centre growth, resilience and public value.

PRD has supported Norwich City Council across a series of commissions that are shaping a more inclusive, resilient and purpose-led economy for the city. Together, this work is building the strategic foundations for renewal, spanning governance reform, economic strategy and delivery planning for major regeneration.

We led the development of the Norwich 2040 Inclusive Economy Vision, a 15-year strategy to help Norwich become the happiest, healthiest and most liveable city in the UK. Underpinned by a detailed evidence base and wide-ranging stakeholder engagement, the Vision identifies five long-term outcomes for prosperity, planet, potential, place and promotion. It now acts as the city’s investment prospectus and informs new economic development strategies.

In parallel, we were commissioned to define the economic purpose of East Norwich – the East of England’s largest brownfield regeneration area, set to deliver over 3,000 homes and 4,000 jobs. Our work was underpinned by a focus on deliverability, shaping a market-facing vision for East Norwich as a hub for growth, innovation and liveability. We tested delivery routes, assessed viability challenges, and mapped the role East Norwich can play in supporting both the city and region’s evolving journey.

Alongside this, we recommended local government organisation. In doing so, we highlighted evidence to show the urban area’s growth potential, articulating how a unitary authority focused on the needs of the Norwich urban area would be best placed to tackle long-standing barriers to resident prosperity.

Together, these commissions reflect PRD’s ability to integrate evidence, strategy and delivery thinking. Our work in Norwich has brought these three tenets together, allowing the council to define a credible and market-facing approach to inclusive growth, while also making the case for investment, empowering local leadership, and aligning major development with broader outcomes for people and place.

PRD is working within a multidisciplinary team of architects and civil engineers to deliver a strategic framework to support onward delivery of regeneration in Colchester city centre. Jointly commissioned by Colchester City Council and Essex County Council, the work is focused on unlocking a coordinated programme of high-quality development and public realm upgrades across a portfolio of council-owned sites.

PRD’s role spans viability analysis, governance advice and delivery strategy. We have provided development appraisals for a range of potential development options across council-owned sites, from car parks to unused brownfield land. This exercise offered a market-facing view on phasing, risk and public value. Our appraisals revealed opportunities for both early delivery and cross-subsidy to ensure the right scale and mix of development is achieved for the long-term vitality of Colchester.

Beyond viability, PRD is advising on partnership structures and delivery vehicles that reflect the willingness and capacity of Colchester City and Essex County Councils. This includes supporting the evolution of regeneration partnership agreements and preparing a business plan for future targeted investment. Our work ensures that site delivery is grounded in market reality without foregoing ambitious placemaking and long-term value creation.

The Delivery Framework and associated support will guide future decision making and align public resources behind shared priorities. The programme plays a pivotal role in reshaping Colchester’s urban form, delivering homes, new public spaces and a reimagined transport interchange, supporting the city’s wider growth story across North Essex.

Sheffield City Council, with support from the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (SYMCA), commissioned PRD in early 2024 to assess social and economic benefits of proposed extensions to its Supertram network for Sheffield city centre and city-region. The first extension would involve repurposing underused and disused railway infrastructure to connect Stocksbridge and Chesterfield to Sheffield city centre, covering a distance of 40 km and incorporating 17 stops. The other extensions would involve new track to extend existing tram infrastructure in the city centre, connecting Royal Hallamshire Hospital and the southern edge of the city centre through six new stops.

We started by developing a tram extension atlas which reviewed data relating to the communities and land uses falling within an 800m radius of each proposed stop. Data included house sale and rent prices, employment and income deprivation, risk of food poverty, land use, site allocations, local amenities, population density, and population characteristics. The atlas allowed us to identify development opportunities along the proposed routes and estimate what the tram extensions could bring in terms of new businesses, jobs, housing, and amenities. We also developed an individual one-page ‘spotlight’ report for each proposed tram stop to highlight local development opportunities and outcomes.

SYMCA then commissioned PRD to apply the same methodology to a potential tram extension from Rotherham to Killamarsh, which would pass through the region’s important Advanced Manufacturing Park.

In late 2024, SYMCA recommissioned PRD, our frequent collaborators Volterra, and transport consultancy Steer to review high-level feasibility of 13 potential extensions across the region. Steer then created a shortlist of the most feasible routes based on weighting considerations such as opportunities for housing and employment growth and existing public transport connectivity. Finally, our consortium performed more detailed assessments of housing and employment outcomes and overall financial sustainability of the shortlisted routes.

Excerpt from South Yorkshire tram extension atlas

PRD is working with the London Borough of Waltham Forest to support the findings of an independent Affordable Housing Commission. The council wanted external expert scrutiny to understand what it can do to accelerate the delivery of more genuinely affordable homes. PRD provided a wealth of contemporary evidence tracking the impact of development over the last decade to support the recommendations of the Commission. This combined a mix of granular data, which was then tested and validated through resident engagement.

Waltham Forest is one of the most rapidly changing boroughs in London, having the fastest house price growth since 2012. Using the London Planning Datahub, PRD identified the neighbourhoods within the borough that had seen the highest housing development over the last ten years. From this, we used the 2021 Census to compare differences between 2011 and 2021, showing how the borough’s demographics have changed and the contribution of new housing development towards these changes. The granularity of the Census enabled a detailed understanding of changes at development level in areas of highest housing growth. This provided deep insight into who had moved into new homes and the role that tenure (affordable vs market housing) played in these changes.

We supplemented this with a programme of in-depth engagement through focus groups in the areas that had seen the highest development, which helped to test the quantitative data and understand how local people were experiencing area change. Marrying good data with rich qualitative evidence provided a deep understanding of the role of development in the borough’s growth story over the last ten years combined with communities’ experience of rapid change.

Listen to a podcast about this project featuring PRD’s Will Temple on Spotify.

The GLA’s high streets data service brings together dynamic datasets to build a detailed picture of activity across the city’s 600+ high streets, 300+ designated town centres, and 60 Business Improvement Districts. It is intended to help people understand how activity on high streets is changing, initially in light of Covid-19 but also throughout ongoing recovery and the current cost of living and doing business crisis.

In 2020, PRD advised the GLA on relevant data to consider for the service and developed an outline structure for a London-wide, multi-stakeholder Data Partnership to guide the new data service. The GLA commissioned PRD for ongoing work with the data service. Throughout 2021 and 2022, this involved training new users, running group sessions for users on new data and analysis techniques, and promoting the data service. We also added capacity to the GLA for data analysis and insight. For example, we analysed and visualised seven years of vacancy data and trends for high street/town centre premises across London; performed cluster analysis on spending trendlines to identify different typologies of Covid-19 recovery and how those typologies link to high street characteristics; and provided fortnightly reports with maps and graphs showing Central London footfall and spending to support the Let’s Do London marketing campaign throughout 2021/2022.

In 2023, we are using the high streets data to research the foundational economy across London’s high streets and town centres to identify places where the foundational economy is or is not meeting the needs of local residents.

PRD supported London borough of Croydon to develop Unlocking Croydon’s Potential, an inward investment plan for the borough and the first Local Authority Growth Plan launched in response to the new London Growth Plan.

These plans set out a clear and confident case for why Croydon is primed for investment, partnership and growth and what these must deliver.

Boasting connectivity, a growing population and a resilient business base, Croydon is well-suited for sustainable investment. It also faces acute challenges, namely rising living costs, uneven opportunity and a weakening traditional retail core. These issues have begun to test market confidence and have limited the borough’s ability to shape an inclusive economy.

In pursuit of reframing the narrative and illuminating Croydon’s potential, PRD updated the borough’s economic baseline. This revealed critical trends such as a sharp rise in town centre residents and economic strengths in health, construction, the foundational economy, and logistics. This informed a clear-eyed assessment of Croydon’s strengths, as well as barriers to investment.

For the inward investment plan, Unlocking Croydon’s Potential, we led a programme of engagement, working closely with officers, members, businesses, community groups and developers. Alongside our evidence base, engagement helped define a set of inward investment principles and priority outcomes that are needed to deliver, both in terms of specific places or neighbourhoods and wider economic considerations such as upskilling and enterprise opportunities.

Croydon’s new Growth Plan sets out key sites and investment narratives, showcasing the borough’s ambitious plans and abundant benefits. It is designed to raise confidence and encourage partnership working in the market. It embraces a collaborative model for delivery of regeneration that works for its community.