Ad description

Two web pages about urban redevelopment in Elephant and Castle:

a. A page headed "Construction starts on first new homes in elephant" on www.onetheelephant.com featured text that stated "a 235-unit development on the site of the former Heygate Estate ...  During the next 15 years the regeneration will provide ...  outstanding landscaped areas including Central London's largest new park for 70 years".

b. A page headed "Elephant Park" on www.elephantandcastle-lendlease.com featured text that stated "Elephant Park sits on the site of the former Heygate Estate and will provide almost 2,500 new homes in a green parkland neighbourhood ...  will be complete in 2025 ...  Central London's largest new park for 70 years".

Issue

The People's Republic of Southwark, who understood that the current park on the site was less than 70 years old and that the new park would be smaller, challenged whether the claim "Central London's largest new park for 70 years" was misleading.

Response

Lend Lease Development Ltd stated that the claim "Central London's largest new park in 70 years" was established to define a specific condition which they considered the forthcoming park at the Elephant Park regeneration site would meet, in contrast to other publicly accessible spaces within Central London.  They firstly explained that by "Central London" they were referring to the boundary of TfL's (Transport for London) 'Zone 1', and explained that during talks with TfL they developed a working assumption of a 400-metre walking distance radius outside of the boundary formed by Zone 1 stations.  Although they acknowledged that other ways of defining "Central London" existed, such as postcodes and the radius from Trafalgar Square, they considered that the familiarity of the underground network and the widespread understanding of this in the public domain meant that 'Zone 1' best represented a common understanding of "Central London".

Lend Lease Development explained that in order to support ”largest” they referred to the area of a park defined by the physical barriers surrounding it, such as railings or buildings.  They stated that the 'Heygate Illustrative Masterplan' planning permission included consent to a minimum of 0.8 hectare (ha) of "Core" park area, as well as capacity for further space up to a total of approximately 2 ha, and that the current theoretical locations and plot sizes on the plan − which they had used for comparison with other parks − would deliver a park size of 1.45 ha.  They reiterated that although the current plan was for a 1.45 ha site, there was potential for the park to be larger. They had used the Illustrative Masterplan as the basis for comparison because it was being widely used throughout the description of the proposals to provide a benchmark of likely development works and that, although the designs of the buildings and the park were not fixed, the plan was a good basis for what was to be provided.

With regard to describing the park as 'new', Lend Lease Development stated that their intention was to refer to the formation of a new park on a site where there had previously not been a landscaped environment or significant publicly accessible space, and considered that this would be a common reading of the marketing claim. They noted that many current parks within Central London became publicly accessible through a process of evolution, having previously been garden squares, historical common land or churchyard spaces.  They stated their understanding that this evolutionary process did not constitute the formation of a new park, but the transformation of an existing landscape or public space into a publicly accessible park.  Lend Lease Development noted that during the 1960s and 1970s private amenity spaces within residential estates, designed for the use of residents, were established.  They understood that the space on the Heygate Estate was an example of this type of development and provided an extract from the original tenants' handbook that confirmed that this amenity was intended to be used and maintained by the residents. Lend Lease Development did not consider that this type of amenity constituted a new park, and expected that this would be a widely held view amongst the public.  They stated that the regeneration proposed the creation of a new park on a site that, since 1974, had been a residential estate with a series of smaller amenity spaces for the residents.  They said it would be reasonable to suggest that the formation of a new, landscaped public amenity on the site represented the creation of a new park on a site that had not previously provided equivalent facilities.

In terms of using the word 'park', Lend Lease Development stated that their proposed park would be a significant new public space that would ensure the sustainable growth of the district and create a destination public amenity for the region.  They stated that the park would be developed in accordance with the principles set out in Boris Johnson's 2009 Mayor's Manifesto for Public Space, which outlined the criteria for defining good quality public spaces, and would provide publicly accessible space that is predominantly soft landscaped.  They stated that their Design Strategy Document defined 'park' as "The central open space of the development including both green space and adjacent public realm", and referred to it throughout as a "community space," "significant public open space" and having a "key public realm structuring element".  Lend Lease Development stated their belief that these principles would be widely understood as an expectation of the use of the term 'park'.

Lend Lease Development then explained that they had intended "70 years" to refer to a comparative cut-off period.  They had established this period in relation to the current forecast opening date of 2022, by when a fully completed and publicly accessible park would be open.  Therefore, their comparison related to all new public spaces since 1951.  They provided age and size data for public open spaces in Central London, demonstrating that those with original spaces newer than 1951 were either outside Zone 1, were not of a park environment or were smaller than the proposed park in the development.

Assessment

Not upheld

The ASA acknowledged that there had been areas of green space on the Heygate Estate, and that these were less than 70 years old.  However, we considered that consumers were likely to understand a park to constitute publicly accessible green space that had either been expressly created for public use or had later been converted to that use, rather than spaces on estates intended for the use of tenants. We considered that the new space planned by the advertiser was likely to be broadly recognised by consumers as constituting a public park, as it was a landscaped green space with public access which was intended for use by the general public rather than just the tenants of the site.  With regard to the advertiser's assertion that the definition of a 'new' park would not include those spaces that were historically publicly accessible and, in time, been  redesignated as parks, we considered that consumers were likely to consider a 'new park' to be an area of green space to which the public had not previously been allowed access and that the advertiser's definition was therefore reasonable, in that it differentiated their planned space from land to which the public had historically had access for some time for various purposes before being categorised as a public park for recreational use.

We understood that 'Central London' had no official definition, but considered that, although it was not a publicly-stated boundary definition and had been arrived at by the advertiser during discussions with TfL, the advertiser's interpretation of TfL's Zone 1 boundary was likely to be regarded as a reasonable use of the term for the purposes of this ad.  We also considered that it was reasonable for Lend Lease Development to use the current Illustrative Masterplan as the basis for calculating the anticipated size of the new park, as this represented their current best understanding of its dimensions.  Finally, we noted that Lend Lease Development had calculated '70 years' from the planned opening date of the park in 2022, not from the date of the ad's publication.  Although we acknowledged that this was not made explicit in the ads, we noted that both ads referred to the development being completed in 15 years and by 2025 respectively, and were phrased in the future tense.  We considered that consumers would appreciate that the development was under construction and that the marketing claims in the ad should be understood in light of this.  Taking these elements into account, we considered that the advertiser's rationale for the use of the claim was reasonable.  We noted that the data provided by Lend Lease Development supported the claim as it was likely to be understood and therefore concluded that the ads were not misleading.

We investigated the ads under CAP Code (Edition 12) rules  3.1 3.1 Marketing communications must not materially mislead or be likely to do so.  and  3.3 3.3 Marketing communications must not mislead the consumer by omitting material information. They must not mislead by hiding material information or presenting it in an unclear, unintelligible, ambiguous or untimely manner.
Material information is information that the consumer needs to make informed decisions in relation to a product. Whether the omission or presentation of material information is likely to mislead the consumer depends on the context, the medium and, if the medium of the marketing communication is constrained by time or space, the measures that the marketer takes to make that information available to the consumer by other means.
 (Misleading Advertising) and  3.7 3.7 Before distributing or submitting a marketing communication for publication, marketers must hold documentary evidence to prove claims that consumers are likely to regard as objective and that are capable of objective substantiation. The ASA may regard claims as misleading in the absence of adequate substantiation.  (Substantiation), but did not find them in breach.

Action

No further action required.

CAP Code (Edition 12)

3.1     3.3     3.7    


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