Recent weeks have brought two significant milestones for Prior + Partners’ work in economic-led placemaking: the formal endorsement of the South Denes Masterplan by Great Yarmouth Borough Council, and Southampton Renaissance winning the Royal Town Planning Institute’s Award for Planning for Economic Growth.
Both reflect a wider challenge facing towns, cities and regions across the UK: how places can respond to economic opportunity in ways that create long-term benefits for local communities. That is particularly important in places such as Great Yarmouth and Southampton, where significant economic assets and future opportunities sit alongside persistent social and economic challenges.
Shaping the future of South Denes
The recent formal endorsement of the South Denes Masterplan marks an important milestone for an area with a long history at the heart of the UK’s energy sector.
South Denes already plays a significant role in supporting offshore energy and marine industries. The masterplan sets out a framework for how the area can respond to emerging opportunities in offshore wind, clean energy and advanced industry, while creating more than 3,000 jobs and strengthening Great Yarmouth’s position within the UK’s evolving energy economy.
The opportunity is significant, but so too is the context. Despite its strategic importance within the UK’s energy sector, Great Yarmouth continues to face significant socio-economic challenges, with some communities among the most deprived in the country. Connecting future investment with local jobs, skills and prosperity will be critical to ensuring growth delivers lasting benefits.
Developed by our integrated team of economists, planners and masterplanners at Prior + Partners, alongside Ramboll as engineers and Cushman & Wakefield as property advisors, the masterplan considers how economic opportunity, infrastructure, employment growth and placemaking can come together to shape the long-term future of South Denes.
The vision is structured around four complementary districts, each reflecting a different aspect of South Denes’ future role. Nelson Energy Park is intended to strengthen the area’s position as a centre for offshore energy, while the Yare Maritime Corridor builds on the concentration of marine businesses along the River Yare. Elsewhere, the Herring Maker District proposes a new future for former industrial sites, creating space for small businesses, creative industries and community uses. Together, these areas establish a framework that balances industrial growth with broader economic diversification across the peninsula.
Planning for long-term change
South Denes is a strong example of a wider challenge facing towns, cities and regions across the UK. As economies evolve, industries change and new investment opportunities emerge, places are increasingly required to make long-term decisions in conditions of uncertainty.
Understanding where future opportunity lies, and how it can be supported through infrastructure, investment and planning, is becoming a critical part of placemaking. Just as important is understanding how growth can be translated into broader prosperity, particularly in places where significant economic assets sit alongside persistent social and economic challenges.
Southampton Renaissance, which recently won the Royal Town Planning Institute’s Award for Planning for Economic Growth, points to a similar set of questions. Developed by Prior + Partners for Southampton City Council, the programme sought to reposition Southampton as a vibrant, inclusive and investable city of opportunity through a city-wide vision, six Renaissance Area Frameworks, a Delivery Strategy and an Investment Prospectus.
Grounded in economic evidence and spatial analysis, the work addressed challenges including deprivation, housing pressures, fragmented public spaces and stalled development sites, while identifying opportunities to strengthen Southampton’s role as a centre for innovation, culture, enterprise and investment. In doing so, it aligned economic ambition, spatial planning and investment priorities within a coherent framework for change.
At Prior + Partners, this approach underpins a growing body of work across the practice. Through the expertise of our Place Economics team, we combine economic evidence, strategic planning, masterplanning and digital innovation to help clients understand future opportunity, establish priorities and create a clearer route to investment and delivery. This is not about producing economic forecasts in isolation, but about understanding how economic, social and spatial factors come together to shape places over time.
For Luton Rising, our work explored how the expansion of London Luton Airport could act as a catalyst for wider economic transformation, helping to connect major infrastructure investment with regeneration, employment growth and long-term investment opportunities. Rather than focusing solely on airport growth, the work considered how investment could support broader economic ambitions and create lasting benefits for local communities.
At a regional scale, the UK Innovation Corridor Investment Prospectus combined economic and spatial analysis to articulate a compelling case for investment across the Oxford-Cambridge Corridor, one of the UK’s most significant knowledge economies. Within that same corridor, our work on East West Rail has explored how strategic infrastructure investment can support housing delivery, employment growth and environmental enhancement, helping to unlock opportunities that extend far beyond the railway itself. Together, the two projects show how economic evidence, investment priorities and strategic infrastructure can be aligned to support growth across the wider Oxford-Cambridge economic geography.
A similar approach informed the A11 Corridor and Mildenhall Economic Narrative Study, where economic analysis and stakeholder engagement helped identify strategic priorities, quantify opportunity and develop investable propositions capable of supporting future growth across the area.
While these projects vary significantly in scale and context, they share a common objective: helping clients understand opportunity, make informed decisions and create a stronger basis for long-term investment and growth.
