Finchley Lakeside, Squires Lane, London Borough of Barnet for Pentland Group with JTP and 2-3 Degrees

Finchley Lakeside, Squires Lane, London Borough of Barnet for Pentland Group with JTP and 2-3 Degrees

 

In 2024, Pentland Group relocated their lakeside campus at Squires Lane, Finchley, after nearly forty years on the site and wanted the site’s future to be shaped by the local community. Having been a closed campus for over 150 years, JTP were appointed to lead an exploratory co-design process through site tours, workshops and interactive activities tailored for all ages, engaging local residents and potential partners to inform the Pentland Group’s legacy.

 

 

Describe the context of the community engagement. Why did the engagement take place?

 

In 2024, Pentland Group relocated from their lakeside campus at Squires Lane, Finchley, after nearly forty years on the site. Over this time, the company had become deeply embedded in the local community. Directors lived locally, and the company’s ethos placed people at the heart of everything they did. This was reflected in extensive facilities at their former headquarters and a long-standing commitment to nurturing local young talent in creative industries. When the decision to leave was made, Pentland was keen that the future of the site should be helped shaped by local people.
 
JTP are appointed to lead an exploratory co-design process, engaging local residents and potential partners to inform the Pentland Group’s legacy. The process allowed the community to experience the site for the first time, having been a walled compound for more than 150 years and shape a vision for the site. This, along with a series of engagement exercises, helped them understand the opportunities for the site to become part of the Finchley Church End neighbourhood and gave Pentland an insight of what was important to the local community and how they could continue to contribute to life in the neighbourhood after their departure.
 
By involving local voices at the earliest stage, Pentland Group can now make informed decisions about the site’s future while reflecting the values that had defined their presence. The co-design process exemplified a commitment to people and place, ensuring the site’s next chapter would be informed, inclusive and rooted in the community.

 

Who did you engage with and how?

 

Using a bespoke AI tool we logged and grouped every comment from the workshops, discussions and online contributions to capture the breadth of views and ideas. This process allowed for a quantifiable ‘league table’ of issues that could be reported back to the local people and the local authority through the pre-application process and helped prioritise the design teams efforts and Pentland’s emerging ideas for legacy. Three key themes emerged: Local residents described the lake as “the soul of the site”, valued for its tranquillity, ecology and rarity in an urban area. In response, the masterplan places nature and wellbeing at its heart: retaining and enhancing its ecological edges, forming a new calming Lakeside Trail and considering ground level uses that promote wellbeing. Residents stressed the importance of walking in Finchley and called for “a new route to the station.” The masterplan therefore opens a site closed to the public, creating safe, direct walking and cycling links between Squires Lane and Finchley Central underground station saving 7-8 minutes on existing routes. Finally local people highlighted the lack of welcoming community space locally and the desire for places to “come together”. This feedback directly shaped the introduction of The Hub – a community café with flexible space to support events and everyday use adjacent to a lakeside sundeck. These important insights have directly shaped the designs and prompted the Pentland Group to appoint a stewardship consultant to realise the dreams of local people.

 

Have you continued the conversation? Will the community stay involved? 

 

Two important processes continued following the series of public events and the community report back session. As was expected from our initial data analysis, entrepreneurs came forward during the engagement process to express their interest in taking a longer-term role on the site. This enthusiasm and their desire for a lasting placemaking-based legacy prompted Pentland Group to appoint Community Stewardship Solutions, to continue discussions with selected local businesses, exploring how their ideas and business models could potentially be incorporated into the site’s evolution. These conversations have further influenced the design looking at options for a wellbeing centre, community hub and creative workshop space and if taken forward, these relationships will be formally reflected in agreements with future development partners, meaning that many of the eventual ground-floor uses are likely to be directly shaped by conversations from the engagement process. Alongside these discussions, JTP extended the co-design conversation to ensure that local voices continued to shape thinking. Our interactive map was updated to include the masterplan allowing for location specific commentary to continue and further younger people were approached for their thoughts and ideas. A key part of this next phase was an engagement workshop with two nearby primary schools – Manorside Primary School and Tudor Primary School. Sixty Year 5 pupils took part in a guided site tour, followed by a creative workshop exploring their ideas for its future. Their imaginative responses highlighted a desire for a welcoming, lively and nature-rich place that felt meaningfully connected to the surrounding community.