Over the last few months, Redwood has supported its clients at Fareham Borough Council and RivingtonHark to deliver an engagement strategy for Fareham Town Centre’s regeneration strategy and action plan. Since November 2024, over 1,100 people have participated and shared views around many issues including the ever-important role Fareham Town Centre could play in supporting family leisure and play time as a new destination, with the appropriate multi-generational facilities and infrastructure.
Analysis showed that almost 300 hours had been spent providing feedback on wide-ranging themes such as the town centre’s usefulness as a place to shop or spend leisure time, the changing retail environment, how people travel in and around the town centre, being proud of the town centre, and the roles housing and design will play in any future regeneration of the town centre.
A series of consultation events ran specifically over half-term, to ensure young people and their parents or carers could get involved and discuss how to make Fareham more family friendly. During this period, 158 local people took time to fill out a questionnaire. Activities included a ‘Make Fareham Fun – Design your dream play’ colouring-in competition which 34 local children participated in and a pop-up information display at various locations in the shopping centre.
The ideas received will now influence the optioneering phase which is underway to develop an evolving list of interventions. These will be presented back to the public with further opportunities to share opinions and discuss ideas.