Cirencester Town Council appointed Feria Urbanism to support the preparation of its neighbourhood plan. The plan will guide the town’s development over the next decade and beyond, addressing a wide range of built environment issues — including heritage protection, the public realm, and opportunities for employment and training.

Our work has involved providing the client group with a better understanding of what a neighbourhood plan can and cannot do in terms of regulating the built environment and the statutory processes that need to be adhered to. We have also provided skills support as the client began to assemble its steering group, as well as providing mapping assistance as they undertook a strategic place audit.

Due to Covid-19, much of this early phase of work at the start of 2021 was successfully shifted to online platforms and video calls.

Using outputs produced by the steering group, we successfully shaped a Pre-Submission (Reg 14) Draft Plan that was subject to formal consultation in early 2024. Public responses indicated widespread support for the proposed planning policies in contained.

A critical role for Feria Urbanism was to provide a link between Cotswold District Council’s town centre strategy for Cirencester and the relevant town centre chapter of the neighbourhood plan.

We also involved 16-18 year old students at Cirencester College in the plan making process, to ensure their voices were heard. As part of this, we organised and ran hands-on public realm design tasks outdoors on Cricklade Street — using our set of foam building blocks — and produced bespoke workshop tasks for young people.