Prior + Partners are part of the Stantec-led team appointed to develop the Tees Valley Combined Authority's (TVCA) Spatial Development Strategy (SDS), which is one of the first commissions of its kind in England.
Spatial development strategies are high-level plans that look at least 20 years ahead, setting the framework for local plans and helping regions meet housing needs, coordinate infrastructure, grow their economies, and build climate resilience.
Under Stantec’s leadership, Prior + Partners will lead the digital plan-making approach, making sure a strategy of this scale and timeframe is easy to navigate, interrogate, and engage with.
We’re working alongside Stantec, a global leader in sustainable design, engineering, and environmental consulting, and fellow specialists including Camargue (stakeholder engagement), Montagu Evans (commercial property), and Richard Wood Associates (chartered town planning).
This appointment builds on Prior + Partners’ wider work in Strategic Planning and advancing the SDS agenda across the UK. Through the Prior + Partners founded Strategic Planning Group (SPG), our report Planning Positively for the Future sets out seventeen recommendations for embedding SDSs at the heart of a reformed, plan-led system. We also support authorities directly as they shape their long-term spatial direction which helps establish the right evidence, governance, and ambition through our Place Futures workshops and our collaboration with the Strategic Planning Partnership.
Tees Valley is also an opportunity to apply thinking from our recently launched Place+ platform, which brings digital tools to spatial planning to make data more open, accessible, and usable for planners, stakeholders, and the public alike – putting that approach into practice at a genuinely strategic scale.
