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.