Kingswood Place Plan
On the eastern fringes of Bristol, traffic and pedestrian movement must be carefully rebalanced to provide the public space that residents and businesses need.
Just outside the city limits of Bristol in South Gloucestershire, Kingswood’s town centre comprises a historic high street along a busy A-road and a 20th century shopping centre. It is the commercial and civic focal point for a wide peri-urban catchment which is increasingly popular with young people priced out of the city centre.
In 2021, South Gloucestershire Council secured major funding from the West of England Combined Authority and the Future High Street Fund for Kingswood. The Council developed a Masterplan to strategically target this investment, including ambitious proposals for the pedestrianisation of Regent Street, the town’s main high street. As the Council moved forward to realise the Masterplan, detailed technical work uncovered challenges which caused community support for full pedestrianisation to break away.
During the autumn of 2023, the Council went back to their constituents in a renewed public exercise to learn how their priorities had evolved. Respondents were clear in their desire to see a greener town centre, with improved public spaces to support events and outdoor activities. And many people wanted to see high street building frontages improved. To respond to this new priorities, the Council needed to strategically re-allocate their funding, for which they would in turn need approval from their funders. They needed a plan, quickly.
In January 2024, the Council commissioned JKA and transport consultant Phil Jones Associates (PJA) to prepare a Place Plan that would unlock public realm opportunities within a feasible movement framework, and a more detailed Shop Front Strategy to target investment in high street frontages.
We began by evaluating the progress and impact of other ongoing improvement works, policy objectives, urban character and community priorities. We moved on to identify four key nodes in the town centre corresponding with principal points of arrival and key public spaces. Around each node, public realm improvements, planting, wayfinding and artwork are proposed in the Place Plan. The nodes are then framed by clusters of improved retail frontages identified in the Shop Front Strategy, to create inviting points for pedestrians to arrive and spend time in the town centre within the available funding.
At the east and west of the town centre, we imagine gateways to a distinct, welcoming local high street. Through Kingswood’s historic core, new street planting and seating frame an intimate, human-scaled street and its unique heritage assets. At the heart of the Place Plan, a new Town Square creates a new focal point for public life.
Particular to pedestrian movement in Kingswood is a network of narrow back alleys and side streets which connect the high street to historic assets, parking and surrounding residential neighbourhoods. High level strategies for artwork, feature lighting, and activation of vacant frontages and historic properties provide a palette of actions to complement the major public realm interventions set out by the Place Plan.
The Kingswood Place Plan and Shop Front Strategy were completed in the summer of 2024, allowing South Gloucestershire Council to secure approvals with enough time to realise capital works before the funding deadline. We also presented the proposals to local businesses and stakeholders to keep them updated on both highways works, a significant source of anxiety for many shopkeepers, and proposals to invest selectively in their frontages.
The Place Plan and the Shop Front Strategy make most of a finite budget, concentrating investment where it has the greatest impact. The complementary documents were used to build consensus amongst stakeholders for an alternative approach, to justify the re-allocation of grant funding from WECA and to serve as briefing documents for consultant teams to be appointed for the implementation of the project.
The Place Plan also outlines a robust delivery strategy, with complementary workstreams for the Council to take forward to implementation. Meanwhile, the Shop Front Strategy identifies 61 businesses as a priority for improvement works. We set out a clear rationale and scoring mechanism targeting specific buildings and terraces for improvement. Our methodology makes the selection process transparent and accountable.
The Council went on to commission JKA and PJA to work on the detailed design and delivery of highways, place-making and shop front improvement works. Together, we exhibited detailed public realm proposals in the shopping centre in summer 2025, where stakeholders expressed broad support for our approach, but encouraged us to go further in accommodating young people in the town centre.
In parallel, we have worked closely with business owners along the high street to develop bespoke designs for their frontages. We are building local capacity by supporting three local architectural practices to design their first shop front improvements as part of the scheme.
While works are due to complete in 2026, our careful strategic work aims to set a clear framework for the Council to build on in Kingswood, as well as a precedent for evaluating and realising impactful town centre improvements elsewhere in South Gloucestershire.
