This is Legacy in Practice, a podcast series from E.C.F. - Engage, Communicate, Facilitate.

In this episode, Oliver Deed travels to North Cambridge — to a quiet residential street called Marmalade Lane — where forty-two homes were designed alongside the people who now live in them.

It's a small project. But it carries a big idea.

Because just up the road sits the proposed Hartree masterplan — five thousand six hundred homes, alongside workplaces, schools and community facilities. And when the team behind that scheme began thinking about how to engage communities at scale, they looked here first.

Oliver is joined by Frances Wright, Head of Community Partnering at TOWN, and Tom Lord from the Sortition Foundation — whose work in deliberative recruitment helped shape the Ideas Exchange, a process designed to bring together residents who genuinely reflected the wider community, not just the most vocal voices.

The conversation moves from co-design and gentle density to the realities of sustaining participation across a long and uncertain planning timeline. What happens when engagement works — but the project stalls anyway? And what does meaningful participation actually leave behind?

This episode is about the difference between consultation as a stage in planning, and engagement as part of the design of a place itself.

A study in patience, process, and what communities can teach us — if we give them the time.

Legacy in Practice is a podcast series from E.C.F., documenting the projects, decisions, and relationships shaping places across the UK.

To learn more, visit engagecf.co.uk or follow E.C.F. on LinkedIn.

This episode is part of the E.C.F. podcast series, exploring how community engagement shapes real places.

To learn more about our work, visit engagecf.co.uk or follow E.C.F. on LinkedIn for updates, insights, and future episodes.

In this episode of Legacy in Practice, Oliver Deed is joined by Eugene Prinsloo, Development Director at Community Health Partnerships, to reflect on a project where early engagement was tested by organised opposition.

Recorded on location, the conversation moves from the foundations of stakeholder mapping and relationship-building to the realities of navigating community resistance. Together, they explore how structured engagement, sequencing conversations correctly, and maintaining discipline under pressure can shift the tone of a project.

This is a candid discussion about conflict, trust, and what it actually takes to move from objection to progress, without compromising integrity.

A practical case study in engagement under scrutiny.

This episode is part of the E.C.F. podcast series, exploring how community engagement shapes real places.

To learn more about our work, visit engagecf.co.uk or follow E.C.F. on LinkedIn for updates, insights, and future episodes.

Recorded on foot through Enfield Town, this episode follows a candid walk-and-talk with Liz Rhodes from Enfield Council as she reflects on the Let’s Talk Enfield Town project. From historic markets to newly created public spaces, the conversation explores how early, meaningful community engagement shaped a major town-centre regeneration- what worked, what was challenging, and why involving people from the start changed the outcome. Honest, practical, and grounded in real places, this is a behind-the-scenes look at how towns evolve when communities are genuinely part of the process.

This episode is part of the E.C.F. podcast series, exploring how community engagement shapes real places.

To learn more about our work, visit engagecf.co.uk or follow E.C.F. on LinkedIn for updates, insights, and future episodes.