How Romford Responded to the Masterplan

A masterplan is a document about buildings, and consultations on them usually produce a familiar shape of response: broad agreement in principle, sharp disagreement about height. Romford's did that too. But it also produced something less common — a proposal that people actively wanted, repeatedly, without being asked to choose it.

That proposal was opening up the River Rom.

This page is about the response rather than the plan. For the plan itself — the housing numbers, the ring road, Brewery Gardens — see the Romford Town Centre Masterplan.

How the consultation ran#

The council's own engagement summary reports reaching 724 people and collecting 665 pieces of feedback over those four weeks, through five pop-ups, five workshops with children and young people, a stakeholder workshop and an online survey.

The widely reported "73 per cent" is the top two bands of a five-point scale:

So 73 per cent either strongly or somewhat agreed with the ideas in the masterplan, and 13 per cent disagreed. Enthusiasm and acquiescence are not separated by that question, and the largest single band is the soft one.

Online and in person gave different answers#

The summary splits the sentiment by how it was collected, and the gap is large:

Agreement runs at 56 per cent online against 81.5 per cent in person, and outright disagreement at 26 per cent against 7. The council's reading is that "when the Masterplan was talked through and explained to people there was increased understanding and support".

That is a fair reading, and it is not the only one. People who seek out an online planning survey are a self-selecting group and often the ones with a grievance; people approached at a pop-up are a softer audience being guided through the material by its authors. Both effects are real, and neither number is the true one on its own.

What people actually liked#

The engagement summary counts how often each idea came up. The four that dominated:

A second tier followed well behind: Ring Road improvement (71), night-time activity (69), a wider mix of uses (61), walking and cycling (57) and the station (55).

Two things are worth drawing out of that table. The fourth item — antisocial behaviour — is not a masterplan proposal at all; the summary notes it is "not directly referenced or addressed within the Masterplan" and that people raised it anyway. And the third is a river.

Residents asked to respond to a document about 10,900 to 12,000 new homes raised digging up a buried river 176 times, more often than the ring road, the station, the night-time economy and cycling combined. The summary records it as "highlighting the River Rom as a unique feature for the town centre and creating active green space around it".

What they actually wrote:

Unculverting the river Rom is visionary and will do so much to improve the town centre.

There is little green space in St Alban's ward generally so opening up this section of the river Rom as a park would be a very welcome improvement.

The River Rom spaces look enticing, safer green spaces and restaurant spill out.

One further thread connects the river to the town's worst pinch point: several respondents saw a new station entrance "connected to the opening up of the Rom" as a way to relieve pressure on an already overcrowded station.

Why the Rom, and why it matters here#

Romford is named after the river. The town began as a ford on the road out of London where it crossed the Rom, and the heritage assessment prepared as evidence for this masterplan opens with exactly that: the crossing, the gravel terrace, and a river that was "broader before it was controlled and water extracted" (p. 6).

Over the twentieth century most of that river disappeared under the town. Sections were culverted to free up surface for retail, parking and the brewery; one length now runs beneath the Brewery shopping centre. A town named for a river crossing ended up with no river you can see.

The heritage assessment gives the proposal its own section — 5.9 Revealing the River Rom — and states the case plainly:

Open up the River Rom has been a long-standing local ambition and would re-establish the centrality of the river to Romford's history. It could also be part of a new blue-green infrastructure and perhaps relate to a SUDS strategy so that the initiative is purposeful rather than simply decorative (p. 98).

Two things in that are worth pulling out. "Long-standing local ambition" means the enthusiasm in the 2024 consultation was not created by the consultation — the council's own heritage consultant recorded it as pre-existing in 2020. And "purposeful rather than simply decorative" is the report pre-emptively arguing against a version of the scheme that is only a water feature.

What the report says it would take#

The same section is notably unromantic about delivery (p. 99). It notes that daylighting has been done elsewhere — the River Roch in Rochdale town centre is the worked example — and then lists what Romford would need to establish first:

• How much flow is left. A century of water extraction has reduced it, and the report calls for a dedicated study of a sufficient length of the river.
• Flood management. An open channel through a town centre changes how water behaves in a storm.
• Sewage connections, authorised and otherwise. This is the detail that makes the scale concrete: in north London, where there is a comparable ambition to daylight part of the Moselle, unauthorised connections on the upstream stretch have been reduced "from around 100 to a handful — and soon to be zero".

The report also sketches the route that has since become the scheme: a riverside path from Bridge Close, under the viaduct and across the brewery site to the High Street, while noting it is "unlikely that this could be achieved without demolitions", which should not damage the town centre's surviving heritage assets.

The same daylighting logic turns up elsewhere in the report, which suggests one of the covered market arcades "could be unroofed — akin to the 'daylighting' of the River Rom" (p. 86).

What people objected to#

The support was not uniform, and the objections were concentrated rather than diffuse. From the refresh consultation onward the recurring concerns were building heights, heritage loss, parking, and a want of short-term improvements — things that would change the town before 2041.

The height objections became specific and local. Residents around Como Street and Linden Way objected to the scale of blocks approved near them, several reporting a loss of privacy in back gardens now overlooked. The broader complaint, repeated in local reporting, was that Romford had already lost its historic character and that more towers would finish the job. Havering Conservatives publicly urged residents to reject the plan.

The Cabinet adopted it anyway, on 12 March 2025.

Not everyone wanted the river opened#

The Rom was the most popular proposal, not a unanimous one, and the objections to it in the formal consultation are more interesting than a simple count suggests. They are not about cost. They are about what an open watercourse in a town centre attracts:

Do the proposers not remember the fountain in the centre of the shopping centre and how youths eventually necessitated its removal? My concern is that the River Rom might be a target for anti-social behaviour once again if more of it is exposed.

Objectives 7 and 9 are a concern as I believe deculverting the River Rom might increase anti-social behaviour and might become a risk to young children.

Another respondent raised maintenance: "parks need looking after and is this a cost the Council can afford?"

Those are the same residents who put antisocial behaviour fourth on the list of things they wanted addressed. The enthusiasm for the river and the anxiety about the river come from one population, not two.

The objection that matters most#

The response that could actually stop the river being opened did not come from a resident. It came from a landowner interest in the formal consultation, and it argues that the masterplan's own controls make the river undeliverable.

The masterplan's key move is unambiguous — the Rom "will be deculverted and partially renaturalised through the town centre to create an ecological linear park" — and its Brewery site guidance requires that development "take full advantage of the Rom by creating a lush green landscape that celebrates the water course, opens it up for public access and improves biodiversity", with every plot providing public open space along it.

The objection accepts the aspiration and attacks the arithmetic:

The deculverting of the River Rom through the Brewery site is only achievable if it is viable to deliver… However, the current approach — which inhibits heights and assumes the demolition of existing retail — is unlikely to make the deculverting financially viable. It is clear that the Council have not undertaken the necessary technical work to identify whether or not this is a viable option.

Read that alongside the height objections above and the two halves of this page stop being separate stories. Residents want the river and object to the towers. The landowner's position is that the towers are how the river gets paid for, and that capping them without doing the viability work leaves the council with a policy it cannot fund.

The masterplan's own infrastructure schedule does not contradict this. It lists deculverting sections of the Rom, with a fluvial flood mitigation strategy, as a pipeline project needing further development in terms of scope and routes to delivery, with funding not confirmed and delivery timescales to be confirmed.

"Where feasible"#

The other landowner tactic in the responses is quieter and, for a document whose force depends on its wording, more consequential. Where the draft said development should do something for the river, the suggested rewording adds a condition. Proposed changes include inserting "where feasible" into the commitments on naturalised greenspace, on new bridge links across the Rom, and on cycling and walking routes along it — alongside the observation that there are "complexities relating to land ownership, riparian rights and responsibilities and viability".

Each edit is individually reasonable. Together they convert a requirement into an aspiration, which is the difference between a river that gets opened and one that stays in the pipeline.

What has to happen for the river to appear#

The Rom's daylighting is not a standalone project with its own budget. It arrives, if it arrives, on the back of two redevelopments:

• Bridge Close — a joint venture between Havering Council, First Base and Savills Investment Management, bringing homes, a primary school, health and community facilities, with the revival of the river written into the scheme.
• The Brewery site — proposed for redevelopment including a new Romford station entrance and a riverside park, over the length of culvert that runs beneath the shopping centre.

That is the honest status. The river is a popular idea attached to two large commercial schemes, and it surfaces when they do. The masterplan identifies it; it does not fund it.

What this page does not claim#

No page numbers are given for the consultation documents. Both are published in more than one rendering — the consultation responses exist as an A4 portrait version, a print version and an Excel version of identical content — and a page number from one does not point at the same text in another. Quotations here are therefore located by the document's own section numbering where it has any, and by document otherwise. The heritage assessment is different: it has one published rendering, so its page citations are exact and preview on hover.

Respondents are not named. The consultation responses are published with attributions, and the quotations above are reproduced without them. Residents answering a planning consultation are not writing for a property website, and the argument each one makes stands without a name attached. The objection about viability is quoted as coming from a landowner interest because that is the material fact about it — an argument about development economics from a party with a stake in the outcome reads differently from the same words from a resident.

No claim is made here about what any of this does to house prices. A daylighted river a mile from Cotleigh Road would be a material change to the surroundings; whether it moves values on this street is untested, and the estimates pages are where that question would have to be answered with figures rather than adjectives.

Sources#

Two of these are the council's own consultation documents, and every figure and quotation about what people said is taken from them rather than from reporting of them.

• Havering Council, Romford Masterplan: 2024 refresh engagement summary — the 724 people and 665 pieces of feedback, the five-point sentiment breakdown, the online and in-person split, and the counts behind the ranked themes.
• Havering Council, Consultation Statement Appendix 1: consultation responses, September–November 2024 — the formal consultation responses, including the resident comments quoted above, the viability objection and the proposed "where feasible" rewordings.
• Romford Recorder, Romford Town Centre Masterplan gets support from residents — contemporary reporting of the refresh consultation.
• Romford Recorder, Havering Council opens consultation on Romford Masterplan — the statutory consultation dates and scope.
• Romford Recorder, Romford Masterplan including Brewery redevelopment gets approval — the brewery site, the station entrance and the culvert beneath it.
• The Havering Daily, Romford Masterplan adopted by Cabinet — the adoption and the height objections at Como Street and Linden Way.
• Havering Council, Romford Masterplan consultation — the consultation itself.
• Authentic Futures for Havering Council, History & Heritage Assessment, October 2020 — section 5.9 and the pages cited above. Every page reference on this page links to the council's copy and previews the page itself on hover.

Related on this site#

• The Romford Town Centre Masterplan — the plan itself, its housing numbers and the Blue Strategy
• The history of Romford town centre — the same heritage assessment, read in full
• The Waterloo Estate regeneration — the part of this masterplan already building, on Cotleigh Road's boundary