Wandsworth Town Property Partnership

Pilot Partnerships for London’s High Streets: Demonstrator 2

Image credit: Sarah Furniss Photography

“Partnerships between developers and community leaders thrive on trust and mutual accountability”

Meet local residents Brendan Conway (surveyor, deal maker and community leader) and Shiza Naveed (researcher, artist, systems thinker and facilitator).

They lead the Wandsworth Town Property Partnership (WTPP), a collaborative local initiative unlocking multiple buildings for impactful community uses, ideas and businesses. WTPP brings together the local community, Wandsworth Council and private asset owners alongside an expert steering group – supported by local strategic design consultancy, Transformation by Design.

Motivation & challenge

An award winning social enterprise was forced to close when the landlord increased the rents by 70%.

Faced with pressing local community needs - cost-of-living, climate emergency and growing social isolation - Shiza and Brendan convened a cross-sector group of partners in 2023 to address:

1) Local socially-trading organisations struggle to find affordable workspace on long leases, despite delivering services the area depends on such as youth provision, community hubs, affordable food, skills and employment training, and arts and culture.

2) A 20% vacancy rate of town centre retail units.

3) Opportunities to align mission-led uses of property with local policy (the Wandsworth Growth Plan , and the 2025 Borough of Culture status) to create a resilient local economy based on people first placemaking and inclusive growth

Vision

WTPP’s vision is for a future in Wandsworth Town where sustainable, long-term, and equitable property partnerships secure spaces for community use and benefit, strengthening the area’s social and civic life.

To get there, what does good partnership look like?

“Good partnerships are relational and not transactional and have equality, respect and mutuality built into their social contract. They challenge traditional hierarchies and embedded power asymmetries.

“Our research shows that 95% of Wandsworth Town’s commercial units are privately owned by 89 different entities.

This traditional ownership model allows for speculative land banking, unaffordable rents, and prolonged vacancies. These are barriers to inclusive growth and sustainable communities. 

Whereas partnership models founded on mutuality, trust and relationships and a clear understanding of the value exchange can re-calibrate these structural imbalances.”– Brendan Conway

• Who’s at the table? Steering group and partners at the table include architects, council officers, BID members, asset owners, impact investors, academic partners, thought leaders, design thinkers and community leaders.

• How are we hosting? “Our Mission Labs combined clear structure with creative, design-led methods – well briefed, but always a space where everyone could explore, learn, and contribute around a shared mission.” - Shiza

• What kind of funding-based partnerships have been built?The pilot phase was seed funded in part from the local council, Legal & General Investment Managers, and then the main programme from the National Lottery Community Fund (as part of a £2.5 million Local Property Partnerships programme) enabled WTPP to map who owns Wandsworth Town, carefully convene cross-sector partners through a steering group, deliver workshops and 'mission labs' to design impact investment models, negotiate on a pipeline of vacant / underused assets, lead community arts programme, and completed three murals.

“We’re designing capital and entity structures, for impact investment backed funds and the entities through which they can flow to communities. We have secured funding in principle from Resonance for our first freehold acquisition”

So far, that’s enabled…

Traction on 3 properties:

(1) 9 Ram Street

WTPP secured a 10-year social value lease through pre planning support with local developer ARC LRE Ltd, as part of the proposed development of the former Salvation Army building at 9 Ram Street. 

The planning permission for this building was granted in July 2025 and the ground floor will be transformed for a social enterprise bakery and a cafe supporting skills training for young people locally through a local youth charity Regenerate. 

The renovation is set to be completed in 2029, with an ongoing community arts programme on the site including a pop-up community mural run by WTPP with young artists from Regenerate to celebrate local identity.

“This is a significant step in regenerating the Ram Street area in Wandsworth Town. The development will provide much-needed hotel accommodation and employment opportunities for young people, whilst creating a modern, sustainable and fit-for-purpose commercial/community space on the ground floor. Working with WTPP and socially-trading partners like Regenerate has been fantastic, and demonstrates a practical approach that enables the development to really deliver social value and regeneration of an underutilised site.”

– Ben Leek, Director at ARC LRE Ltd

(2) 134 Wandsworth High Street

WTPP has agreed heads of terms with TfL to secure and transform a former pub, a key corner site on Wandsworth High Street, into a cultural hub and community kitchen. WTPP has secured funding in principle from Resonance for the acquisition of the building.

They are currently working with our community partners to design the operational model for the ground floor.

(3) Wandsworth Exchange

WTPP is partnering with South Thames College on Wandsworth Exchange, a building neighbouring the Town Hall, library and public spaces that’s been vacant for 8 years. Our partnership goal is to open a much-needed green skills innovation hub for young people in Wandsworth. We have delivered workshops with the college and will soon be working with students to codesign the space.

WTPP is also in ongoing dialogue with key developers on future developments in the pipeline.

What we’re learning so far

Key enablers

• Strong foundation and resources: 

  • 3-year revenue funding from National Lottery Community Fund has allowed WTPP to design and test an inclusive partnership model, a skilled steering group, Mission Labs methodology with domain expertise, and robust research methods. 

  • WTPP has deal-making property expertise and deep local knowledge and are trusted, This is fundamental to their work.

• Pre-planning negotiations:

  • WTPP has evaluated the development pipeline for the next 5-10 years in Wandsworth Town. It is looking upstream at partnership opportunities with asset owners, mapping every building in the local area to understand its context within the Wandsworth Growth Plan.

• Strategic relationships and buy-in: 

  • Developers are interested in an arm’s-length partnership approach while advocacy from the key council officers and our local MP has enabled conditions for progress. 

  • WTPP is now recognised as a key stakeholder in the future development of Wandsworth Town.

• Mutual accountability has made partnerships effective in getting things done.

Key blockers

• Funding and market constraints: 

  • The current model is not aligned to capital investment with finite revenue funding (12 months left). There is no access to capital funding in place to acquire assets. Our revenue costs are spread very thin and we may have to scale back our output.

• Partnership and delivery barriers: 

  • A persistent say–do gap among partners, limited statutory requirements on developers to deliver community infrastructure, procurement processes favouring large agencies over local partners, and lack of social value considerations all constrain progress.

• System and capacity challenges: 

  • Political uncertainty due to change in administration and change in policy priorities are likely.  Capability gaps around social infrastructure delivery and test-and-learn approaches limit effective implementation.

• Persisting power asymmetries

  • WTPP supported award-winning meanwhile activations (NeX at New Acres)  that have not been granted long-term access to space despite their success. It is clear that power asymmetries persist and long-term commitment is still lacking.

We hope to see …

A key focus will be supporting the delivery of the Wandsworth Growth Plan, particularly strategic insight, opportunity identification, and coordination and delivery, including:

• Designing and finding aligned capital investment to secure and activate multiple assets 

• Conducting qualitative research into capital and entity design with experts from the impact economy

• Working with Wandsworth Borough Council’s Wandsworth Town Project Team providing strategic insight, opportunity identification and coordination that can support the Council’s public realm and highways initiatives. We will release our report on this in October 2026.

• Sharing this approach for other projects to replicate outside Wandsworth Town, with WTPP’s support. Our recent success in a new lease in Tooting shows how this can work.

Want to know more about the Pilot Partnerships for London’s High Streets three live high street demonstrator projects?