Placemaking

It is vital to the council that the health, safety and quality of its places is very high and that they serve the many different communities that live in or visit the borough.

Placemaking and South West Maidenhead

South West Maidenhead Development Framework Supplementary Planning Document

Policy QP1b of the adopted Borough Local Plan (BLP) commits the Council to preparing an SPD to ensure that development in the South West Maidenhead Strategic Placemaking Area (SWMSPA) as a whole comes forward in a strategic and comprehensive manner. The SPD provides a planning, design, and delivery framework for the SWMSPA, setting out the Council’s vision for future development within the area establishing broad design principles  and an approach to infrastructure delivery to ensure a high quality, sustainable and coherent development.

January 2023 update

Following early community and stakeholder feedback and consultation on the draft South West Maidenhead Development Framework Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) (see below for details) the Council adopted the SPD on Thursday 15 December 2022.

You can view the adopted SPD via the following link: South West Maidenhead Development Framework SPD.

You can also view the supporting documents on the South West Maidenhead Development Framework SPD web page.

Consultation on the Draft SPD and Finalising the SPD

Consultation on the draft SPD ran for six weeks from Wednesday 6th July until Wednesday 17 August 2022. The consultation is now closed. Thank you to everyone who submitted comments on the draft SPD. These are available to view via the Consultation Portal.

The comments were carefully considered and a report was taken to the Council’s Cabinet meeting on Thursday 15 December 2022 regarding the adoption of the SPD. See Item 11 on the agenda.

As part of finalising the SPD the Council undertook an update to the 

 for the AL13 housing allocation in the South West Maidenhead area that was originally prepared as part of the evidence base for the Borough Local Plan.

Consultation Documents

Within the Draft SPD consultation document there is an Illustrative Framework Plan which illustrates how key design principles may come together across the Placemaking area. This Plan and its key is reproduced separately below for ease of reference:

Illustrative Framework Plan and key

Documents can be viewed at Maidenhead Library, St. Ives Road, Maidenhead SL6 1QU.

In person and online engagement events were held during the following dates and times:

  • Thursday 14 July 2022 Maidenhead Library (2pm to 6.30pm).
  • Wednesday 20 July 2022 Maidenhead Library (12.30pm to 5pm).
  • Tuesday 26 July 2022 Braywick Leisure Centre (2pm to 7pm).
  • Wednesday 27 July 2022 Online presentation/chat event (7pm to 9pm). 

A copy of the display boards available at the drop in sessions that summarise the main content of the draft SPD can be viewed via the link below:

South West Maidenhead SPD Exhibition Boards

The presentation from the online event is available below:

For further information, please email planning.consultation@rbwm.gov.uk.

Earlier stages

Preparing plans for South West Maidenhead development area

South West Maidenhead placmaking area map

The council is inviting the community to help inform plans for a major development area, known as South West Maidenhead, which will bring forward new homes, community facilities, infrastructure, employment space and improved public access to green space.

The map on the right shows the South West Maidenhead Strategic Placemaking Area. A large area of land to the south-west of Maidenhead railway station, extending from the railway line southwards to the M4. It includes the following sites allocated in the Borough Local Plan: AL13 Housing Site, AL14 Employment site (the Triangle site), and AL15 Braywick Park, as well as including Ockwells Park.

South West Maidenhead will meet, in a managed way, a significant proportion of the borough’s future housing needs, delivering a sustainable new urban extension as part of Maidenhead’s regeneration and guarding against speculative Green Belt development across the borough. 

With the Borough Local Plan adopted at Full Council in February 2022, the next step for South West Maidenhead is producing a site-specific Supplementary Planning Document (SPD), covering the area outlined in red on the map, building upon the vision and policy already set out in the Borough Local Plan, to provide more detailed advice to guide the determination of future planning applications. 

Once finalised, the SPD will help ensure developers bring forward applications for high quality, coordinated and comprehensive development that is supported by the required infrastructure, and meets community needs and aspirations around housing, community facilities, connectivity, sustainability and the environment.

This initial stage of preparing the SPD involved exploring with the community key considerations and sharing some early thinking on different elements of what might be included in the document. Feedback was assessed, along with the thoughts of technical and statutory stakeholders, to inform a draft document scheduled for public consultation in the summer. 

For more information please see our FAQ section.

Three themed online events took place, live questions were submitted:

The links for joining the live sessions via Microsoft Teams were added to this webpage 90 minutes before each event. People made comments by completing the feedback form available on the RBWM Together website between Wednesday 30 March 2022 and Wednesday 27 April 2022. At the live meetings it was not possible to answer every question on the night. We have set out answers to those questions from all of the online events.

Background documents:

Earlier information on placemaking in South West Maidenhead can be downloaded below: