Barnsley West: The Six-Year Journey

From the outset, we have led the masterplan and authored the framework that will guide Barnsley West’s growth—ensuring coherence, quality, and a focus on real, felt impact. This approval marks the culmination of years spent understanding the site’s history, engaging stakeholders, and balancing priorities to establish a vision that can be realised over a generation

Barnsley West is more than a plan — it’s the product of a collective commitment to shaping a place that will bring lasting benefit to its community.

This achievement reflects a long and deliberate process: over six years of listening, researching, and refining a vision with partners to ensure Barnsley West will be a thriving, resilient neighbourhood. Our role has been to steer that journey—helping shape a plan that honours the area’s heritage, serves its present needs, and delivers a connected, healthy, and vibrant future.

From the very beginning, it was clear that this wasn’t just any plot of land. Formerly part of the mining belt that shaped South Yorkshire’s identity, the Barnsley West site carries a deep legacy. But that legacy also brought challenges: difficult topography, filled-in quarries, and complex ground conditions made early masterplanning far from straightforward.

Instead of treating these as limitations, we used them as a starting point to identify areas for unique solutions. Through extensive land investigations and historical research, we grounded our design thinking in the character of the area—its needs, its gaps, and its potential. This early work formed the foundation of understanding necessary to develop an effective design.

A strong development doesn’t start with house types or road layouts, it starts with a vision. Early in the process, we led a series of exercises to define what Barnsley West could become, not just for its future residents but for the region as a whole.

How could it support Barnsley’s long-term resilience? How might it encourage active lifestyles, better health, and environmental stewardship? What infrastructure would help people feel rooted and connected within the neighborhood, and to the broader area?

By workshopping these questions with stakeholders – including landowners, planners, housebuilders, community groups, and local authorities – we shaped a set of priorities that balanced immediate needs with long-term ambitions. These were translated into the ‘healthspace principles’: a unifying set of outcomes that linked wellbeing, connectivity, and sustainability, and acted as the compass for every decision in developing the masterplan and design code.

Turning this vision into a codified framework was a major undertaking – one that required long-term collaboration and complex coordination.

We worked closely with stakeholders — facilitating workshops, attending public consultation events, and building trust and rapport with local authorities. By aligning collective interests, and learning from and responding to local community voices, the process ensured that the resulting Design Code was a robust planning tool prepared to safeguard the project’s ambitions, and uphold high standards of development quality.

The Code gives clear, enforceable design rules that allow flexibility while protecting the integrity of the vision. It ensures each phase of delivery contributes to a connected, high-quality neighbourhood.

A Design Code is more than a document. It’s a framework that protects long-term value. By clearly setting out design principles for streets, open spaces, buildings, and infrastructure, it ensures future development moves in the right direction-even when delivered by multiple developers over many years.

At Barnsley West, the Code ensures:

• Streets are walkable, sociable, and designed for people.
• Greenspaces are connected, usable, and accessible to all.
• The townscape has rhythm, variety, and identity-not repetition.
• Climate resilience is embedded from day one.

You can read more about the specifics of the design code, and the kind of community it will support, here.

Our role doesn’t end with planning approval. We’re now working alongside several developers, helping to ensure that their schemes align with the shared vision.

As the first homes begin to emerge, we continue to act as custodians of the Design Code-providing guidance, reviewing proposals, and maintaining coherence across development parcels.

Barnsley West stands as a testament to what strategic, collaborative design can achieve. It’s a development rooted in place, grounded in community need, and shaped by a clear, future-facing vision.

Over the past six years, we’ve seen how patient, thoughtful design-supported by open dialogue and rigorous planning-can unlock long-term value for communities. As Barnsley West begins to take shape, we remain committed to guiding its evolution and helping it grow into a place that delivers on its promise.