IQL North
Stratford, London | Major Residential Redevelopment The Project IQL North is a major mixed-use development in Stratford that will deliver 960 new homes alongside 900 student homes, creating a new neighbourhood within the wider International Quarter London. Origin Consult has supported Hadley Property Group from the procurement stage through planning and into delivery, helping to shape the project’s communications, community engagement and social impact approach. Our role has centred on ensuring that local communities don’t have to wait until the development is complete to experience its benefits; creating opportunities, partnerships and spaces that generate value throughout the development journey. Building relationships from the outset Origin supported Hadley in developing relationships with local community organisations, helping to understand local priorities and shape the community elements of the emerging development. Alongside communications and engagement through the planning process, we worked with local partners to identify opportunities for social impact that responded directly to the area and the people who live and work there. This approach helped establish the foundations for a programme of meanwhile uses, bringing a vacant development site into community use long before construction of the permanent scheme. Turning a vacant site into a community asset Rather than allowing the site to remain unused while the development progressed, Origin supported Hadley in developing a phased meanwhile strategy that created space for local organisations, businesses and community activity. The first phase introduced The Lighthouse and Gardens, a community wellbeing centre, alongside a nomadic community garden. These spaces brought health, wellbeing, nature and community activity onto the site and began establishing IQL North as a place for the surrounding community rather than simply a future development. The next phase expanded the programme with a broader mix of community and commercial uses, including: From meanwhile to permanent The meanwhile programme was never intended to be a temporary activity that disappeared when construction began. Origin supported Hadley in developing a meanwhile-to-permanent approach, identifying successful uses and partnerships that could form part of the completed development. Elements of the community garden are planned to be incorporated into the permanent scheme, while The Lighthouse and Gardens will continue its work as part of the new Good Growth Hub provision within the completed development. This creates a direct line between the relationships and activities established during planning and the long-term social infrastructure of the new neighbourhood. “Meanwhile wasn’t treated as the space between planning and development. It became a testing ground for the future community.” Measuring the impact Alongside delivery, Origin produced a comprehensive Social Value Report capturing the impact generated during the planning phase. Using the Thrive social value measurement tool, we combined quantitative measurement with qualitative evidence to demonstrate both the value created and the experiences behind the numbers. Rather than relying solely on financial proxies and outputs, the report brought together data, stories and lived experiences to provide a fuller picture of the project’s impact to date and establish a baseline for future delivery. Download the IQL North Social Value Report The Impact IQL North demonstrates how social impact can begin years before a development is completed. Through early engagement, local partnerships and purposeful meanwhile use, a vacant site has supported community wellbeing, local enterprise, employment and skills, and new community spaces while simultaneously informing what will become part of the permanent neighbourhood. For Origin, the project demonstrates what can happen when social impact is embedded across the entire development lifecycle – from procurement and planning through to delivery and legacy.
Lessons from a Week Long Challenge
Asking a seasoned property professional to develop a proposal, run the viability test, create a marketing strategy and then produce the material, inside 4 days from a standing start, would be a challenge of significant proportions for even the experienced. To ask a class of 16 year olds studying IT, Business and Carpentry (and so property novices), to do the same thing…could have been seen as way too ambitious and quickly been shelved as a step too far. However not the West London College cohort who may have been new to this world but by day 4, were able to prove they had travelled incredibly far in understanding how the development world works out opportunity and viability for its schemes. Though the idea was to teach them, the reality is they taught us that application and concentration on the task at hand can result in creative solutions being backed up by research and logic to deliver new opportunities. There is a different perspective from this group in how we might approach what we do daily and that is a lesson for us all in this business, in not getting to set in our ways. We certainly felt that the group learnt a great deal more than they thought possible in such short time and that the week was about teamwork and leadership, as well as stretching expectation whilst managing time and output. These qualities are applicable in so many other ways we live our lives. Michael Clark, Design Director, Hadley Property Group
Delivering Social Value That Communities Actually Feel: UKREiiF 2026
At UKREiiF 2026, we brought together industry leaders from development, local government, sustainability, education, and community engagement to ask one honest question: is social value actually reaching the people it’s meant to serve? The result is a report full of candid, thoughtful insight, including perspectives from young people in our own Future Makers programme.
Creating Careers for Young People at Risk of Becoming NEET
We placed Teddy, excluded from mainstream education and at real risk of falling out of education, employment, and training altogether, into a six-month internship at Bellway Barking Riverside. The placement was split deliberately between site and office. On site, he learned skills you can’t get from a classroom: snagging, making good, and the confidence to instruct labourers on what needed doing and when, a marker of trust he hadn’t held before. In the office, he picked up spreadsheets, Word, and research skills for the first time, the kind of grounding that quietly determines whether someone can function in a workplace at all. By the end of the six months, he was a different presence on site. “I hope to get some kind of job in a trade, as I am a lot more confident on a site now than I was a few months ago.” For our team, hosting him was just as rewarding as it was for him. He was engaged, polite, and eager to learn throughout, and the progress in his confidence and independence over six months was steady and visible, exactly the kind of growth that keeps a young person moving toward employment rather than away from it.
Seeing Brentford Through Young People’s Eyes
How can development truly reflect the communities it sits within? At Origin Consult, we believe one answer lies in inviting local people to directly shape how projects are represented and experienced. This summer, we were commissioned by Hadley Property Group to design and deliver a creative engagement programme with young people in Brentford. The brief was simple but powerful: capture how local perspectives could inform the hoarding design for one of Hadley’s upcoming developments. We partnered with eight young people, aged 13–16, and gave each of them a film camera with one guiding question: What does Brentford mean to you? Over the course of a week, they photographed the people, places, and everyday details that make their neighbourhood unique; from green spaces and favourite hangouts to hidden corners and community landmarks. The results were diverse, personal, and reflective of the many ways Brentford is experienced by its youth. We then brought the group together for a creative workshop to share their images, exchange ideas, and reflect collectively. With plenty of pizza to fuel the discussion, the session sparked conversations about what they love most about Brentford, what feels important to represent, and the stories they want others to see. These insights and images have now been shared with the hoarding design team, who will translate them into the visual identity of the site. In this way, the hoardings won’t just act as a boundary, but as a community-rooted narrative-seen and shaped through the eyes of Brentford’s young people. We’re proud to have delivered this project in partnership with Hadley and look forward to seeing the finished hoardings unveiled in the coming months.
Building Something That Lasts: Local School’s Work Experience Week
A week of work experience can go one of two ways: a week spent shadowing adults at desks, or a week that leaves something behind. We wanted the second for the ten students from a local school who spent a week with Bellway Barking Riverside, split deliberately between office and on-site learning. In the first half of the week, students were based in the office, introduced to how a housebuilder actually works. They rotated through the land, design and technical, commercial and sales, and construction teams, took part in a property project judged by a panel of Bellway graduates and apprentices, and went on site to explore the Phase 5 building, seeing a live development up close rather than just hearing about one. The second half moved from planning to making. Working alongside carpenters from PGM Carpentry, the students built three planters from scratch, then handed them over to Thames View Lodge, a local retirement home, where residents still use them today for a weekly gardening club. That shift, from a week spent observing a business to a week that ended with something the students had made in the hands of people who’d use it, is what made the placement land. It gave ten students a sense of what a career in the built environment could look like from the inside, and gave a local community somewhere real to put that experience to use.
Rick Roberts Way
Stratford, London | Residential-led Development Procurement Bid & Delivery The Project Origin Consult supported the successful bid for the redevelopment of Rick Roberts Way, a residential development opportunity on publicly owned land in Stratford. Our role was to develop a compelling and deliverable social value and community engagement proposition, rooted in the priorities of the surrounding communities and demonstrating how social impact could be embedded from the earliest stages of the project. Our Approach We combined local insight with practical commitments around employment and skills, community partnerships and meaningful resident involvement. Following the successful bid, we moved directly into delivery during the initial planning phase. This included providing paid opportunities for residents within the project team for residents of the Growth Boroughs to support on community development, developing partnership projects with local community organisations and working with Newham Works to provide training and job preparation. As well as ongoing engagement with local partnering organisations and students of all ages to assist with both designing public spaces, and delivering internships, graduate roles and training in preparation for construction. We also facilitated co-design with neighbouring residents, giving communities a direct role in shaping green spaces, commercial and community uses, access routes and elements of the building design. The Impact The project demonstrated how social value commitments made through procurement can move quickly into meaningful action. By carrying the strategy from bid through to early delivery, Origin helped ensure that local people weren’t simply beneficiaries of proposed social value commitments; they’ll be given opportunities to work on, contribute to and help shape the development itself.
980 Great West Road
Brentford, London | Hadley Property Group The Project Origin Consult is supporting Hadley Property Group on the redevelopment of 980 Great West Road in Brentford, helping to embed social impact throughout the development lifecycle. Our role spans social impact strategy, community and stakeholder engagement, employment and skills, co-design and local partnerships, helping to ensure that local people can both influence and benefit from the development. Our Approach Engagement began early, with Origin helping to build relationships with residents, community organisations and young people and understand what local people wanted from the future development. More than 300 people registered to participate in our co-design programme, which explored everything from green and blue spaces and accessibility to facilities for young people, women and girls. Feedback was then taken directly into the design process, with the project team and architects considering how community priorities could influence the evolving proposals. Alongside this, our work has included creative hoarding design workshops with local young people, careers and skills activity with West Thames College, and working with Brentford Boating Club to deliver youth canoeing sessions on the water. The Impact The programme is helping to create stronger connections between the development and the surrounding community, while creating opportunities for local people to participate in and benefit from the investment taking place in the area. As the development progresses, we continue to support Hadley in turning its social impact commitments into practical programmes, partnerships and long-term local value.
Barking Riverside
Barking, London | Bellway Homes The Project Origin Consult supports Bellway at Barking Riverside to deliver the development’s Section 106 Employment & Skills commitments, helping ensure that a major programme of housing investment creates meaningful opportunities for local people. Our role spans employment and skills delivery, local recruitment, apprenticeships, work experience, education engagement and monitoring and reporting against agreed targets. Creating pathways into opportunity Our approach is focused on turning Section 106 commitments into opportunities that local people can genuinely access. We work closely with Bellway, its supply chain, schools, colleges and local partners to create pathways into the development and the wider built environment sector. This has included local employment and apprenticeship opportunities, structured work experience programmes, internships, school and college engagement, careers activities and training, alongside ongoing engagement with the project team and contractors to identify new opportunities. The Impact The programme has created a growing pipeline of opportunities for local people, including jobs, apprenticeships, work experience and careers engagement. In 2024/25 alone, delivery included 52 local jobs, 9 apprenticeships, 83 work experience opportunities and 22 school visits, alongside internships, graduate opportunities and training. Our ongoing role is to help turn Bellway’s Section 106 commitments into opportunities that local people can genuinely access and benefit from. “Behind every target is an individual opportunity. Our role goes beyond monitoring outputs to creating experiences that help local people understand the industry, build confidence and take meaningful steps towards employment.” Measuring the impact Origin monitors delivery against Bellway’s Section 106 Employment & Skills commitments, providing a clear picture of progress while helping the project team identify where further intervention or opportunity is needed. Our 2024/25 Impact Report brings together the programme’s outputs, activities and stories, demonstrating how employment and skills commitments have translated into tangible opportunities for local people. Download the 2024/25 Impact Report