St Pauls Way - Making an Integrated Approach Work on a Single Street

Challenge:  St. Paul’s Way is one of the most deprived areas in Tower Hamlets but lies in the midst of Europe’s largest regeneration area, encompassing the Royal Docks, Canning Town, Canary Wharf, Poplar, Stratford City, the Westfield Shopping Centre, and the site of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

Along St Paul’s Way, within a few hundred yards of each other, are two housing estates, a secondary school, a GP practice, two primary schools, a retail parade and several community facilities. Yet far from bringing communities together, St Paul’s Way acted as a car-dominated boundary between the disparate communities on either side of it; one local resident described the road as “the Berlin Wall”.

A series of significant developments were planned along the street, but the thinking was not ‘joined-up’ – the school, the health centre, and the housing were going to be built in isolation to each other.

Solutions:  AMP brought the partners of the Transformation Project together and initiated the project by setting out a road map for the future. Set up in 2006, the St Paul’s Way Transformation Project is a partnership between Tower Hamlets Council, Poplar Housing and Regeneration Community Association (HARCA), The Diocese of London, NHS Tower Hamlets, Leaside Regeneration Ltd, London Thames Gateway Development Corporation, and Andrew Mawson Partnerships. It is tasked with bringing together, in a joined-up project, the physical improvements along St Paul’s Way, creating new networks and relationships between the parties and local residents, and pursuing a coordinated vision for the future of the area. With Phase One of the work now completed, Phase Two has now begun. This has involved incorporating a new social enterprise, St Paul’s Way CIC, which was founded in March 2012.

Results so far:

• £40 million rebuild of St Paul’s Way Trust school with its own Project Faraday Centre: a radical way to improve the teaching of science. AMP introduced Professor Brian Cox and Professor John Wass as Patrons to the school and has helped create the St Paul’s Way Summer Science School.

• Poplar HARCA is investing £40 million into the regeneration of the Leopold Estate, replacing the old Bison blocks with 470 new private sale and affordable homes and carrying out a major refurbishment of the remaining red brick blocks. They are also creating a new £2.5 million community centre and transforming the landscape of the whole estate to provide quality green spaces where residents can relax and enjoy their new surroundings.

• Across the road from St Paul’s Way Trust School is the new £14 million Health Centre. This facility, given a CQC overall rating of Outstanding in 2018, operates across three stories with a Pharmacy and complementary healthcare on the ground floor, a GP surgery on the first floor, and with space above for Queen Mary’s Dentistry Department and DNA research. This provides an integrated model of healthcare with a much more holistic approach to tackling the health challenges of the community.

Results so far:

We have identified key buildings and we are starting to build relationships with architects, development companies and social enterprises to create vibrant and attractive spaces.

We are already working with churches in London, Southern England, East Midlands and the North East of England. The projects include properties owned by the United Reformed Church, the Church of England, Baptist and Methodist denominations.

One Church, 100 Uses anticipates working intensively with approximately 50 churches over the next five years to attract major funding and redevelopment for their buildings. We also expect to provide advice and consultancy to an estimated 30-60 additional churches, facilitating strategic entrepreneurial thinking.