About
How the ambitions came to life
The Penderi Regeneration Ambitions have been designed following hundreds of conversations with people who live locally, organisations that work in the area, and understanding publicly held information about the community. For example, the census and health information. Pobl Group facilitated these conversations and worked with Masterplanners at The Urbanists to bring all of this information together and create a document that reflected what local people value about their community, where they would like to see enhancements, and how these fit with current and future opportunities.
How Penderi became a regeneration area
Effects of the economic downturn (2015-2017), saw many valued services leave Penderi due to loss of funding. The community repeatedly discussed the impact of this loss with the team at Pobl. Community leaders also started to speak of frustration that services had often appeared in the Penderi community without involving local people in the design or delivery, and without considering what the community was already doing. The loss of these services between 2015-2017 showed that these services had, unintentionally, created a sense of dependency, and left with little warning. Pobl heard local people talk of grief, a sense of abandonment and frustration at the amount of money spent with little long-term impact for local people.
In response to the loss of multiple services, individuals in the community rose up to work with neighbours and fill the gaps left by this loss of funding. For example, a group of parents from Waldhof Court (Time2Play) ran a weekly youth club, to compensate for the loss of Sparks playscheme.
Being witness to this strength of collective action, and wanting to assist the community with sustainability of their efforts, Pobl began to see bigger opportunities that could have great impact for local people living in Penderi. But unless all of these opportunities were looked together, the full effects of these opportunities may be missed. For example, the large development of over 1400 homes on farmland to the North of Penderi, and the possibilities of retrofitting green energy technology on existing homes.
In support of community action, Pobl contacted the large organisations in the area and all were keen to work together, listen to local people and develop a shared vision for the future.
It is very likely that the detailed work towards the ambitions will take between 15 and 20 years to complete, so early community conversations were wide and captured the community’s experiences, passions and hopes for the future, including primary school aged children.
All of this fed into the creation of a Regeneration Masterplan – a document that can now hold organisations to account in their decision making for Penderi, and from which clear and detailed plans will be developed by local people and organisations, to make sure that this time we get things right, together.
You will be able to see how things are progressing on the blog.
Making it work
Managing this Programme
It is important that such a comprehensive and ambitious programme has a consistent lead, to keep plans on track and make sure communication is clear and effective. Due to its local connections, trusted relationships and links with local and national bodies, such as City and County of Swansea, Natural Resource Wales, and Public Health Wales, Pobl Group took the responsibility or pulling everything together, and ensuring local people were influential in the process.
As a landlord, Pobl have worked alongside individuals and community groups for over 30 years, in Penderi. Pobl is passionate about the community and the people who make it such a tight-nit and caring place to live.
Founding partners are:
Welsh Government funded a company called The Urbanists to create an ambitious and sound Masterplan – which outlined the shared vision.
Get in touch
Momentum and collaboration has built during the past 5 years to get the programme to this point. Now we need an even bigger push with more people standing alongside us to make this all a reality.
We would love to hear from you, if you are a local resident finding out about this all for the first time, an Investor with a passion for community action, have a question or passion for any of the ambitions for Penderi, please get in touch.
The team at Pobl will make sure you get to speak to the right people from the community or representing an organisation, as soon as possible.
Contact us on:
Email us: [email protected]
Call, text or Whatsapp: 07810592019