The Berkeley Group

For The Berkeley Group, a FTSE100 property development group, and the UK’s fourth largest house builder, we developed bespoke sustainability and community development plans for three of their UK developments.

The brief consisted of identifying bespoke opportunities to embed sustainability and community engagement into the fabric of the development. Through bespoke models of partnership with local charities and social enterprises, we utilised metrics that tied into the local community’s aims, the individual development’s goals and the Berkeley Group’s overall 2030 Vision Plan.

Results

We developed strategies to integrate social and environmental impact into the three developments, while simultaneously satisfying our client’s Section 106 planning obligations to the local authority and enhancing the development’s attraction to future homebuyers.

For each organisation, we created a bespoke partnership model for Berkeley Homes to drive lasting impact and enhance the group’s relationship with community inhabitants and stakeholders. The partnerships took into account the stage of each development and how they could most efficiently have a positive impact on the organisation and the community. We engaged with over 15 local organisations to present a shortlist of three partnership models per development.

The initiatives and partnerships ranged from an on-site renewable energy generation project run by a local co-operative energy company (at no cost to the client) to a community centre run by a grassroots homeless charity. The community energy model incentivised homebuyers by offering cheaper energy to Berkeley Homes residents (and the surrounding community), while integrating renewable energy generation into the development. The second partnership model centred around building long-term move-on pathways for a homelessness charity, taking advantage of empty building space during the long lead times inherent in a development project of this scale (4,000 homes).