LDA Design and a healthy vision for Leamington Spa

Image: Parade, Royal Leamington Spa credit Keenstock / Alamy 

The Warwickshire town of Royal Leamington Spa is asking its residents what they would like to see included in a vison to strengthen its future.

LDA Design is helping the town explore options for the main shopping street, Parade, which features some of the spa town’s finest Regency architecture. It is also the main traffic route crossing the river.

Norman Rourke Pryme, part of the LDA Design team, is helping to examine how the town could become more welcoming for those on foot and cyclists. The principles behind a new masterplan for Parade and for other important streets will be agreed with the community and stakeholders.

LDA Design Director Bernie Foulkes says the aim is to find out what a town like Royal Leamington Spa, built primarily around health and wellbeing more than 250 years ago, can tell us about how we should be living in the 21st century:

'Like many towns, Leamington Spa is experiencing changing patterns in shopping, working and living, cost of living and housing need, climate breakdown, and nature loss. But the town has timeless qualities that continue to make it special and those can be harnessed to drive investment.'

Leamington Spa has already shown itself to be adaptable. Intriguing recent developments include a growing gaming and digital community, the biggest outside London. A creative quarter is also growing in the Old Town.

The project to revisit and revise a pre-pandemic vision is led by the District Council, County Council, Town Council, BID and Transformation Board.