What is Vision 2050?
Vision 2050 provides a long-term strategic vision for the organisation. This is not a traditional community strategy. It is a way to think about the future and will serve as our organisational and partnership ‘North Star’.
This is uncommon work. Not all councils do it. It shows a commitment to work beyond news cycles, quarterly reports, year ends, and political administrations. It demonstrates a corporate desire to address deep rooted challenges. It is true place leadership.
The process for the development of Vision 2050 has been as important as the product. We’ve gathered stories and views from over 2,000 residents to shape this vision, alongside data and performance metrics. This collaborative process has helped us explore different possible futures for Hounslow, bringing together councillors, staff, residents, businesses, and partners to imagine what lies ahead.
Why do we need a Vision 2050?
The demands of today - whether temporary accommodation, adult social care, inspection regimes or election cycles - rightly call for our attention. In so doing, these here and now problems distract us from longer-term thinking.
This matters because the current problems and pressures we seek to address need long-term solutions. We know flooding, excess heat, and extreme weather is rooted in climate change and our public service pressures are exacerbated by demographic growth and change, intergenerational poverty and an ageing population.
We also have a moral and planetary duty to think long term. A key feature of good government is the ability to consider our impact on future generations. Our descendants will live with our choices and, as such, it behoves us to consider not just the present but also the future.
When the future seems vague and unclear, and when our world is built for immediacy, Vision 2050 is an opportunity to think for the long-term and take care of future tomorrows. Vision 2050 does not attempt to forecast the future. Instead, it encourages us to think about possible futures and to adopt an approach to the next 25 years that recognises inherent uncertainty.
Vision 2050 encourages those with a stake in the borough to imagine the future together. This has meant bringing together foresight, intelligence gathering of plausible alternatives, new and emerging challenges and opportunities with the collective action of visioning or dreaming together.
How was it developed?
The work has been undertaken to provide a collective roadmap for what we want our community to look like by the middle of this century. We have worked with over 2000 people, imagining, co-designing, and then building a vision for a borough that every resident could be proud to live in, and every Council colleague proud to work for.
Throughout, we have asked people to consider both what they think Hounslow will be like in 2050 and what they can do for future generations – both by looking at what our ancestors might have done better for us and what our descendants might wish we had done better for them. This process – itself a key element of the vision, and as important as the Vision 2050 document – speaks to legacy and place leadership.
We have supplemented this engagement with data and research using horizon scanning, trend analysis, and scenario planning to discuss potential futures for Hounslow.
This repository or ‘time capsule’ contains the outputs from the engagements detailing what residents, businesses, councillors, officers, and partners think the future holds and what legacy they hope to leave.
If you have any questions on Vision 2050 or the process to develop it, email HounslowTogether@hounslow.gov.uk