We believe that the world’s first Garden City should be a Great Place for children and young people to Grow Up.
This important strategic aim focuses on key deliverables in important areas, including mental health in schools and child and family poverty, and addresses issues around fair access to sports, leisure and cultural facilities.
As we currently look forward to Letchworth Garden City celebrating its 125th anniversary in 2028, we also keep the long-term future in view and aim to make Letchworth Garden City a place where today’s young people will choose to live, work and thrive for years to come.
2024 Highlights
We collaborated with over 40 local and regional partners—including councils, schools, the NHS, and community groups—to create a shared Great Place to Grow Up vision. This work is supported by regular updates, networking opportunities, and joint progress on key focus areas.
Young people played a vital role in shaping this vision, with Youth Voice engagement led by The Mighty Creatives. Their insights are helping guide our strategy.
To support clear and consistent messaging, we developed Great Place to Grow Up branding in collaboration with Stratos, aligning it with the town-wide Breathe In... Letchworth Garden City campaign. We're equipping partners with tools to enhance communication and collaboration.
At Standalone Farm, we continued to prioritise education, nature and play—welcoming school groups for free visits and enhancing our family offer.
2025 Priorities
- We are committed to creating and delivering a Great Place to Grow Up social campaign programme and action plan. Through extensive community and young people consultation, we have created six robust pillars and a set of guiding principles which will inform this campaigning and planning as it continues into 2025.
- Create a youth forum and work with them to develop spaces and places for them to meet and access opportunities to benefit their personal development, wellbeing and lifestyle.
- We will focus on pulling together partners to find out how we can use green assets in the town to support young people’s wellbeing.
- With the wellbeing of young people in mind, we will prioritise working with the NHS and GPs to assess need in the town and explore how we can support other services to meet that need.
- Play! Discover! Share! will once again be the focus of our summer events programme, offering low-cost and free activities to families and young people around Letchworth Garden City.