The Chief Officer Delegated Decisions meeting on Monday 11 March 2024 was scheduled to discuss two key masterplans for the regeneration of Hounslow town centre and Brentford town centre. These documents outline strategic frameworks for future development, aiming to improve town centres, support economic recovery, and guide future proposals.

Hounslow Town Centre Masterplan

The meeting was scheduled to consider the final Hounslow Town Centre Masterplan¹. This strategic document aims to guide future development in Hounslow town centre over the next decade. It identifies potential development opportunities and strategies for improving the town centre, supporting its economic and social recovery, and setting out site-specific guidance. The masterplan has been developed in accordance with the Hounslow Town Centre Vision and borough-wide priorities, building on previous work from 2013.

Key themes within the masterplan include:

• Development Framework: Focusing on returning to a finer urban grain, making the High Street centre stage, shaping a distinct character, and ensuring active and welcoming frontages.
• Uses and Activity: Strengthening retail on the High Street, fostering a 24-hour centre with leisure and cultural uses, establishing Brentford as a civic and community destination, and creating a focused cluster of employment.
• Character and Townscape: Maintaining the human scale of the High Street, enhancing the existing townscape with new markers, valuing everyday heritage, and improving fringe and backland areas.
• Movement: Improving east-west walk and cycle links, enhancing connections along Hanworth Road and Grove Road, reviewing the High Street's western profile, improving bus service access, and reviewing parking supply.
• Public Realm: Shifting from grey to green, creating an inclusive stage for activity, developing new and existing destinations, improving routes, and enhancing yards and alleyways.

The masterplan also includes detailed site-specific guidance for various locations within Hounslow town centre, such as the Treaty Centre, Bell Square, 34 Staines Road, Home Bargains, Hounslow Bus Garage, Lampton Road, and others. These provide detailed objectives and frameworks for potential redevelopment.

A Tall Buildings Strategy² was also prepared to guide future developments, providing granular guidance on building heights for specific sites across Hounslow town centre. This strategy aims to enhance the local townscape and strengthen the town centre by coordinating planning applications.

Brentford Town Centre Masterplan

The meeting was also scheduled to consider the final Brentford Town Centre Masterplan³. This document aims to provide a strategic framework for improving Brentford town centre, supporting its economic and social recovery, and guiding future development proposals. It builds upon the Brentford Town Centre Vision and borough-wide priorities.

Key themes within the Brentford masterplan include:

• Development Framework: Focusing on defining fronts, backs, and edges, returning to a town centre grain, conserving and enhancing through retrofit, mediating scale, and ensuring riverfront views, access, and setting.
• Uses and Activity: Creating a vibrant town centre core, spreading active ground floors eastwards, providing a choice of workspaces, and fostering a mix of cultural, leisure, and commercial uses.
• Character and Townscape: Emphasising a retrofit-first approach, responsive typologies, reinforcing local character areas, celebrating local landmarks, and creating a more coherent townscape. The masterplan also highlights the potential for a Brentford Heritage Harbour .
• Public Realm: Reinforcing the town centre core as a place for people, establishing a navigable street hierarchy, celebrating Brentford's characteristic yards, and creating a distinctive natural landscape.
• Movement: Prioritising people and vehicular movements on the High Street, improving connectivity and wayfinding between neighbourhoods and destinations, establishing a continuous, publicly accessible riverside walk, and promoting electric vehicle charging. The plan also addresses the accommodation of Cycleway 9.

The masterplan includes detailed site-specific guidance for areas such as High Street Parade and Lion Way, Brentford Police Station, Brentford County Court, Infill site on Albany Road, Brentford Medical Centre, 2-10 London Road, The Ham, and McDonalds and Green Edge.

Both masterplans were developed following extensive public consultation and engagement with stakeholders, including residents, businesses, landowners, and community groups. The documents are intended to steer and guide change in line with council ambitions and will be used as reference tools in pre-application discussions with developers.