Originally established to help drive the regeneration of Salford, it quickly became apparent that Urban Vision had a wider role to play in delivering its services to other communities and businesses. Although the company continues to cater for the residents, public bodies and businesses of Salford, we also carry out extensive work for other local authorities and organisations across the UK.

The concept of Urban Vision was developed in 2003 when Salford City Council recognised a need to create an organisation that would be integral in overseeing, implementing and delivering the work involved in regenerating Salford. As a result, a tender application for partner organisations was issued and in July 2004, Capita Symonds and Morrison Highways Maintenance were appointed preferred bidders. The partnership was formally established in February 2005, with Salford City Council becoming Urban Vision’s first client.

Since then, Urban Vision has grown steadily and has helped to deliver significant improvements on Salford City Council’s already high performance indicators, in addition to establishing its credentials with other public and private sector clients throughout the North West and beyond.

Its early successes include:

• The establishment of a unique Development Control service (more) providing outsourced capacity and management support to local authority clients in the planning and regulatory services sector and planning advice to private developers
• The best ever recorded planning application processing performance for Salford City Council, despite a 20% increase in planning applications
• The ‘Public Project of the Year’ award from the Builder & Engineer for its work on Cadishead Way Phase 2, with completion £1million below target cost and nine months early  
• A central role in bringing the Building Schools for the Future initiative to Lancashire and Kirklees