Latimer by Clarion Housing Group – Written Evidence (YPB0002)
Contributors: Elanor Warwick – Head of Strategy, Policy, Evidence & Research, Clarion Housing Group
Michele King – Community & Social Impact Manager Major Projects, Latimer
Russ Edwards – Project Director Major Projects, Latimer
To note: Unless noted to the contrary, the below responses generally relate to Clarion Housing Group and Latimer’s experiences with the following specific initiatives:
1. Young Person Engagement on the Tendring Colchester Borders Garden Community (TCBGC) project, during the period 2022-2026.
2. Young Residents Peer Research project, undertaken in collaboration with Hyde and MTVH Housing Associations and Partnership for Young London, during the period 2024-2025 (Impact Report can be accessed here: Young Researchers Programme | PYL)
Ref Question Response
1 How would you describe the current attitudes an interest of children and young people towards both built environment sector, and issues surrounding the topic? We have found young people to be both curious and interested in the built environment when directly engaged on the subject, and moreover where their insights and opinions are directly sought (as opposed to assumed). There is a genuine appetite to influence their built environment for good, and they have an inherent optimistic view on matters of sustainability.
Importantly, young people recognise that their views differ from the demographic groups that are more typically represented in discussions around the built environment and see this as a strength given the naturally longer horizons that shape their views.
The following quote is a useful indicator of this position:
‘We shed light on how children and young people go about their lives, and how this may be very different to the way that adults
working on the project do. I feel very proud and listened to knowing that I am helping to shape this community, and that we will have the resources we need for now and the future
of a modern society’
Frankie, 16, member of the Essex Young Designers, TCB Garden Community Young Person Engagement Strategy.
This view is further reinforced by the experiences of the Peer Research Group. This group of young people, with current lived experience of the social housing sector, were established precisely to answer the following over-arching question:
How do young people take leadership roles in influencing strategy and decision-making in Housing Associations and impact local housing services.
The following quote from Peer Reviewer Kara provides further reinforcement:
Young residents are the ones who will inherit the results of today’s housing policies, and it’s crucial they have a say in shaping their futures.
The Young Residents in Partnership Impact Report (2024-2025) establishes the following 6 recommendations for young person representation in housing association decision making, and which we believe are equally relevant to the broader built environment:
1. Separate Stakeholder: Define young people as a separate stakeholder in housing policy.
2. Youth Voice Representation: Create a youth voice representation structure with inclusive spaces for young people, implementing clear goals and ambitions.
3. Youth-specific Communications: Improve communications designed with and for young people including an age-specific communications strategy.
4. Training Colleagues: Train colleagues across the organisation to be more inclusive of young people.
5. Housing Assocations advocating for Youth Voice: Housing Associations should use their influence and platforms (not social media) within the wider housing sector to embed youth voice in policy and practice.
6. Housing Education: Working with other organisations to educate young people on housing options and rights.
2 Does the national curriculum include sufficient references to topics related to the built environment? If not, how could the built environment be better incorporated? Clarion Housing Group/Latimer have little/no engagement with the national curriculum, however through our Tendring Colchester Borders Garden Community Young Person Engagement Strategy, we were able to align one of our key engagement activities – in-school model making workshops, with the curriculum of local schools to ensure appropriate uptake and enthusiasm from the schools.
During 2023, nine in-school workshops were undertaken to ensure wide reach with a diversity of young people. School children from across North Essex were invited to share ideas for the scheme through an open call, ‘Land Sky Water’. The challenge gave all primary and secondary school students in the area the opportunity to design and model innovative ideas for TCBGC. The physical models generated were collated and curated by the MATT+FIONA team (Latimer’s young person engagement consultant) as a temporary exhibition of ideas that were exhibited in both the Colchester and Tendring regions.
Our conclusion from this would be that there are few/no curriculum-based barriers to teaching young people about the built environment, and that one successful strategy for school age children is to engage through practical, physical model-based activities.
3 How can children and young people learn about the broad range of careers in the built environment sector and be encouraged to pursue them? Young people are most likely to understand and feel excited about careers in the built environment when they can see them happening around them - in a positive context.
For the Tendring and Colchester Garden Community project, learning about careers has worked best when it has been rooted in the place where young people live, study, and socialise.
Through the Young Essex Designers, school engagement, careers fairs, work experience and the Essex Skills Bootcamp, Latimer has been able to introduce young people to the full range of roles involved in creating a new community, not just construction and engineering, but also planning, design, sustainability, ecology, community engagement, digital mapping, housing management and long-term place stewardship.
Meeting real people who work on the project and hearing their personal routes into the sector helps simplify the industry and shows that there is no single career pathway, making it feel more achievable and relatable.
Encouragement is strongest when learning is hands-on and sustained over time. Activities such as interactive workshops, model-making, master planning exercises and work experience placements allow young people to explore different skills and understand how their interests, whether creative, technical or people-focused can link to jobs in the built environment.
For the Garden Community project, partnering with local schools, colleges and training providers has helped connect curriculum learning to real employment opportunities, including apprenticeships and early careers roles with contractors and consultants. This local, place-based approach helps young people picture a future for themselves within their own community, and shows them that they can play an active role in shaping the places they will one day live and work in.
4 How can the perspectives of children and young people be better included in the planning process, and what is the value of doing so?
a. Should there be a statutory duty for children to be involved in local planning? Young people’s perspectives on issues associated with the built environment are invaluable and should certainly be better included in planning processes. Currently, young person representation is a planning context is often woeful.
Young people should be more effectively incentivised and supported to engage with local planning activity. Potential incentives could include ‘agency’ in processes and decision making over design matters, but in many cases – meaningful and long-term engagement requires additional incentivisation including remuneration.
Improved engagement can be facilitated through the establishment of young person forums, summer schools and holiday clubs, digital engagement and gamification of planning matters, alongside better articulation of the vocational opportunities that existing within the industry.
Clarion Housing Group/Latimer would support a statutory duty for young people to be involved in local planning, as outlined in the Clarion Futures submission on Children and Play from 2023:
There is a general absence of youth voices in the planning and policy discourse. Initiatives such as Clarion's Youth Advisory Board and youth consultation frameworks demonstrate the steps we are taking toward involving young people in shaping their built environment, and the UNICEF Child-Friendly Cities show positive efforts, emphasising the importance of involving children in the planning process. But more is needed in terms of national support, consistency, and awareness.
5 Does current government policy about the built environment effectively capture the needs of children and young people? If not, what specific policy areas could be improved?
a. Is there a need for specific guidance from the Government? Specific guidance from Government would be helpful to ensure that young person engagement moves from a nice-to-have to a must-have element of every significant built environment project. One strategy would be adoption of a similar approach to that advocated by the New Towns taskforce: “Each new town should adopt a youth engagement strategy, for every stage of development.”
There is no national guidance on child-friendly design and planning and children and their participatory rights are mentioned infrequently. Current proposed revised NPPF mainly mentions children / as a category of user ie children and other vulnerable groups with YPs only mentioned once relating to fast food outlets. Even with community facilities children and their families should be engaged “where appropriate”, not as a matter of course.
There is additional industry guidance relating to how engagement with young people and children can be harnessed to benefit the built environment as follows:
1. The RTPI have highlighted the extent that children are overlooked in planning “A quick examination of national planning policies reveals that children are currently most visible through their absence” https://www.rtpi.org.uk/media/1568/childfriendlyplanningintheukareview2019.pdf, p. 6.
2. CABE How Places Work project offered over 1000 young people the opportunity to discover the excitement of new buildings and spaces for themselves, guided by some of the UK’s most knowledgeable and passionate advocates for good design.
https://www.inspirationindesign.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Teachers-Guide-How-Places-Work.pdf
3. CABE Engaging Places
Engaging Places_Craft Brief_v3.0_CP_07-10-2014
Engaging Places research summary
6 What are the barriers the enabling children and young people to take an interest in the built environment outside of the classroom? Opportunity appears to be the biggest barrier. Young people are seldom engaged meaningfully – and even less frequently given a measure of agency to influence the built environment that they are to inherit.
Lack of appropriate incentive can also be a barrier to engagement.
7 How can digital tools, including video games and social media, be used to develop children and young people’s interest in the built environment? Clarion Housing Group/Latimer have limited direct experience of utilising digital tools in young person engagement activities; however, this would appear to be an obvious toolset to implement.
The Peer Research Group utilised ‘digital collages’ as a communication tool to articulate the differences between outcomes where young people’s voices are and are not listened to, which may be useful to refer to:
Young Researchers Programme | PYL
8 What benefits could a greater interest in the built environment have for children and young people, as well as wider society? Young people benefits are likely to include:
- Vocational opportunities
- Opportunities to influence and improve their built environment
- Opportunities to counter the narrow perspectives of other consultee groups and ensure that their interests are appropriately recognised
- Development of spatial skills
- An improved appreciation of their existing built environment
- Access to professionals and existing built-environment experts
Wider society benefits are likely to include:
- A more balanced and equitable feedback cycle on emerging project proposals
- New ideas that are not inhibited by ‘business as usual’ perspectives
- Greater urgency on addressing the environmental crisis
- Greater literacy amongst the general public on built environment matters.
28 April 2026