Eastleigh Borough Council appointed Feria Urbanism to join its dedicated team for a major housing development in Horton Heath, Hampshire — a project that will double the size of the existing village.

To ensure meaningful local involvement, the council established a Development Forum for community representatives. Feria Urbanism was brought in to reinvigorate the forum and lead a fresh round of engagement.

As newcomers to the project, known as One Horton Heath, we introduced a series of focused, time-efficient workshops — each lasting no more than 90 minutes and held monthly in the evening — with a clear theme and defined outcomes feeding directly into the design process. At the start of each session, we presented back the results from the previous workshop, showing how local input was shaping design decisions.

When Covid-19 restrictions prevented public gatherings, we successfully moved the engagement online via Microsoft Teams, continuing to run interactive and well-attended sessions.

The response from the client team was highly positive — one local authority officer commented: “we are light years forward from where we have come from.”