Specialist Team Appointed To Support Westborough and Park Barn Regeneration

Published on: 28 Aug, 2026
Updated on: 28 Aug, 2026

Boarded up and unoccupied – a council house in Westborough. Taken in December 2025.

Guildford Borough Council has appointed specialist architecture and community engagement consultancy Levitt Bernstein to lead a team to support the first phase of the Westborough and Park Barn Better Homes Programme.

The appointment marks an important next step in the programme, which aims to improve homes and neighbourhoods while ensuring residents play a central role in shaping future proposals.

Levitt Bernstein, WR-AP, ZCD Architects and Kanda Consulting are a team of award-winning architects, landscape architects, urban designers and engagement specialists with recognised expertise in community-led estate regeneration projects.

Over the coming months, the council and this team will work with residents, community groups and stakeholders to better understand the area’s priorities, challenges and aspirations. This work will help inform an improvement strategy for Westborough and Park Barn. No decisions have yet been made about longer-term proposals for the area.

Cllr Julia McShane

Cllr Julia McShane (Lib Dem, Westborough), leader of the council and Lead Councillor for Housing, said: “We know people want to see positive changes in their neighbourhood. The demolition work is the first visible step in the Better Homes Programme, and we’re excited to work with residents to create a new green community space on the Roundhill Way site while we continue to develop longer-term plans together.

“We’re committed to keeping people informed through regular updates, engagement events and opportunities to get involved. If you’re a resident and you would like to help shape the future of your community, join our engagement group to share your views, ideas and knowledge as the programme progresses.”

Cllr Howard Smith

But Westborough’s Labour councillor Howard Smith, while happy to see some progress, said: “It’s hard to escape the feeling that none of this would have been done without the campaign I have been leading in the three years since I was elected for the ward.

“It’s good that a few of the unsafe homes have been demolished and also that attention is at last being focussed. But engaging teams of advisors and consultants’ shows how little confidence and imagination the Liberal Democrat administration possess and ultimately how slow progress will be.

“The Park Barn and Westborough area of Guildford is one of the most deprived in Surrey and I fear will remain so for years to come despite the government allocating large sums of money to the council for its benefit.”

Cllr Vanessa King

Explaining the choice of consultants, Cllr Vanessa King (Lib Dem, Stoke), deputy leader of the council and Lead Councillor for Economy and Place, said: “Appointing the right team to support this important programme was a priority for us. The consultant was selected through a robust two-stage competitive procurement process, with residents directly involved in the assessment stages.

“We wanted to appoint a partner with the right skills and experience to work collaboratively with our communities. Tenders were assessed on quality, approach and value for money, alongside their commitment to meaningful resident engagement.

“Levitt Bernstein, in collaboration with WR-AP, ZCD Architects and Kanda Consulting, will work with the council and residents on phase one of the Better Homes Programme, helping us understand community priorities and develop an improvement strategy for the area. By involving residents in the procurement process, we’ve already started to embed community voices at the heart of this project.”

Demolition work is also progressing on several council-owned empty homes across Westborough and Park Barn as part of the Better Homes Programme. Two properties on Southway in Westborough and four on Roundhill Way, also in Westborough, have been demolished. The properties were no longer structurally safe to live in.

Their removal addresses safety concerns and the cleared Roundhill Way site will be transformed into a temporary green community space. The council will work closely with residents to understand how they would like the space to be used, helping to create a welcoming and attractive environment while longer-term plans for the area are developed.

A further 11 structurally unsafe properties are scheduled for demolition in the coming months.

Alongside this work, the council is bringing other empty homes in Westborough and Park Barn back into use to help meet local housing need. Four previously vacant properties have already been refurbished and let to local people, with work on a further six homes due to be completed soon.

A council spokesperson said: “Residents can find out more about the Better Homes Programme, register their interest in joining the Community Engagement Group and keep up to date with the latest news at www.guildford.gov.uk/westboroughandparkbarn, email wpb-betterhomes@guildford.gov.uk or call 01483 505050.”

Responses to Specialist Team Appointed To Support Westborough and Park Barn Regeneration

Neil O’Brien Reply

August 29, 2026 at 11:11 am

The appointment of consultants for the Westborough and Park Barn Better Homes Programme risks falling into a familiar trap.

The Liberal Democrat administration presents the appointment as evidence of progress. Labour argues over who deserves the credit and suggests that employing consultants demonstrates a lack of confidence or imagination.

Residents deserve a more useful test: will this programme produce safe homes, bring empty properties back into use and provide value for public money?

First, the figures need to be properly understood.

Guildford Borough Council has approved £275,000 for the first phase. The contract awarded to the Levitt Bernstein team is £226,771 including VAT. This pays for resident engagement, surveys, options, design work and an Outline Business Case. It is not the cost of rebuilding homes, and the council has not yet published a total capital cost for the eventual regeneration programme.

Professional advice is not inherently wasteful. Given the structural, planning, engineering and financial complexity of this estate, the right expertise could prevent a much more expensive mistake. But appointing advisers cannot itself be presented as delivery. The value of that appointment will depend entirely on whether it produces a costed, deliverable plan within a firm timetable.

The need for action is beyond dispute. The council previously identified 85 homes in poor structural condition, another 95 showing signs of subsidence and approximately 60 properties standing empty because of structural problems. It estimated the annual cost of managing those voids and paying council tax at around £450,000.

More recent council reporting records 41 development voids, principally in Westborough. The council should reconcile these figures and publish the current annual cost.

It is welcome that six unsafe properties have been demolished, another 11 are scheduled for demolition, four empty homes have been refurbished and occupied, and another six are being returned to use. Those are tangible outcomes. The question is how quickly that progress can be extended across the wider estate.

There is, however, a legitimate reason to scrutinise future costs. The council’s separate Small Sites housing programme now has a total project cost of £12.795 million for 27 homes, being approximately £474,000 per home. Individual site budgets range from approximately £363,000 to £572,000 per home, despite the council already owning the land. The original programme budget was £9.4 million.

That is not the cost of the Park Barn programme, and the two should not be conflated. Nevertheless, it is a warning that the council must demonstrate tight financial control from the beginning.

Before further capital expenditure is approved, residents and councillors should be shown:

1. The total forecast cost and delivery timetable for each phase.
2. The cost per completed home, per additional home and per square metre.
3. A comparison of repair, underpinning, refurbishment, rebuilding and purchasing existing homes.
4. A complete breakdown of demolition, abnormal ground works, acquisitions, professional fees, inflation and contingency.
5. The number of homes that will be returned to use or newly provided, with monthly progress reporting.
6. The decisions that must be taken before Guildford Borough Council’s responsibilities pass to the new West Surrey authority in April 2027.

The principle should be simple: consultation should improve a decision, not postpone one.

Park Barn regeneration deserves support, but it does not deserve a blank cheque and residents certainly don’t want to retroactively hear about another “fire door debacle”. By April 2027, West Surrey should inherit functioning assets and an implementation-ready plan, not another unfinished strategy.
Peta Malthouse Reply

August 29, 2026 at 1:44 pm

When I left Guildford Borough Council in 1984 the then Thatcher government had introduced right to buy and refused to let councils use the receipts from sales to build new homes. They also controlled overall budgets and GBC was unable to repair these homes.

I left and joined Hart Brown, the solicitors, who represented tenants whose homes were subsiding and in poor repair. I retrained as a lawyer having been senior housing advisor responsible for housing the homeless.

Under Tory governments councils have not been seen as meeting housing needs for families who could never afford to buy homes in somewhere like Guildford eg our bin men railway workers nurses etc, the people who continued to work through COVID because they are essential workers on low pay.

Instead they preferred a universal rent rebate scheme. Then they cut that. We are where we are. These homes could and should have been dealt with properly in 1984.

There is no point in arguing about budgets now. Professional housing managers and other professionals are no longer employed by local councils in the numbers they were in my day. The Borough has no choice but to contract this out.

The council has made a good choice of contractor it seems, a great alternative to the penny-pinching approach taken by the Tories at Woking. The money is not just an investment for now. Some council houses were built after WW1 as “homes fit for heroes”. A decent home is an essential building block for a secure family life. We are building for our future.