Stop Waiting for Perfect: Meanwhile Use is a Local Authority Superpower
Author: Rob Prescott, Head of Sports, Leisure & Wellbeing, DB3 Group
About the Author
Rob Prescott leads DB3 Group’s Sports, Leisure and Wellbeing offer, working with local authorities, developers and operators to unlock leisure assets and turn them into places that people actually use. He is part of the Active Meanwhile working group, helping to shape more realistic and people first approaches to leisure facilities.
Local authorities across the UK are sitting on an untapped asset: underutilised space.
Vacant plots awaiting funding. Half empty car parks. Stalled regeneration sites. Residual land around civic buildings. Empty high street units waiting for a business case that may never quite stack up.
We tend to treat these as holding positions.
They’re not. They’re opportunities.
At a time when public health budgets are stretched, leisure facilities are ageing, and communities are demanding visible change, Meanwhile Use is one of the most underleveraged tools in local government.
Active Wellbeing, Meanwhile Use and Active Design principles can dovetail together to generate community placemaking.
The Real Cost of Waiting
The Real Cost of Waiting
Traditional delivery models are built around certainty. Fully funded masterplans, locked in viability and long procurement cycles. The result? Years of inactivity behind hoardings, while confidence drains from the very places regeneration is meant to uplift.
But inactivity has a cost – socially, economically and politically.
Meanwhile Use turns that on its head. It swaps “wait and see” for “test and learn”.
Active Wellbeing Doesn’t Always Need a Building
Active Wellbeing Doesn’t Always Need a Building
If we’re serious about tackling inactivity, loneliness and health inequality, we need to stop equating impact with permanence.
Pop-up padel courts. Outdoor gyms. Walking loops. Multi-use games areas. Community wellness spaces. Green social prescribing environments.
These are low cost, high visibility interventions that meet people where they are, close to home and free at the point of use. They create movement, connection and visible momentum long before capital projects break ground.
Planning: The Handbrake We Don’t Talk About
Planning: The Handbrake We Don’t Talk About
More often than not, the biggest barrier isn’t funding. It’s red tape.
There’s a strange irony in that we can put up hoardings in weeks, but trying to use land for something as simple as community sport or wellbeing can set off a long, complicated planning process. For estates and regeneration teams who are already risk averse, that friction is often enough to stop things before they start.
If government is serious about prevention, health and levelling up, we should be asking a bigger question: Why isn’t meanwhile active wellbeing use treated more clearly within permitted development?
Community, sport and recreation already sit within Class F2 of the Use Classes Order. There’s a strong case that temporary, reversible, meanwhile wellbeing interventions should benefit from clearer permitted development rights under this classification, reducing uncertainty and empowering councils to act quickly.
Because at the moment, the system subtly incentivises doing nothing.
The time it takes to get through the red tape can often mean a business case for meanwhile use is thwarted before it gets started.
Meanwhile Use as Live Evidence
Meanwhile Use as Live Evidence
Beyond activation, meanwhile use provides something feasibility studies cannot, proof.
Instead of modelling demand, you demonstrate it.
That evidence is powerful when long term leisure and community uses are competing with commercial pressure in regeneration schemes.
Equity Starts Early
Equity Starts Early
Too often, communities are asked to endure disruption for years before seeing benefit. Meanwhile Use reverses the sequence. It delivers visible value at the beginning of regeneration, not the end. It builds trust. It tests ideas. It signals intent. And it ensures that wellbeing is treated as core infrastructure from day one. It ensures placemaking and communities are prioritised.
A Leadership Choice
A Leadership Choice
Embedding Meanwhile Use is not about tactical pop-ups. It’s about mindset.
It requires local authorities to:
The question is whether you activate it, or keep waiting for perfect.
In a world of constrained capital and rising expectations, perfection is a luxury most councils can’t afford. Progress is not.
We’ll be in touch shortly.
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