Sarah McLeary

Sarah is an architect and urban designer, passionate about improving the health and wellbeing of communities through placemaking. 

Before joining the Autumn Cohort 2024, Sarah was a Senior Architect at Smith Scott Mullan, focussing on strategic landscape-led developments across the UK. Sarah has extensive experience working on challenging low-value brownfield sites, balancing the technical constraints and collaborating closely with consultants to resolve the best design solution for the place and community. Sarah has facilitated workshops, visioning exercises and community consultations at all scales.

Recently, Sarah worked with the local community to write the East Lammermuir Local Place Plan, the first to be validated by the local authority in East Lothian. Sarah is working on a feasibility study to retrofit rural homes at scale, initially as a demonstrator funded by community benefits.

Gateshead Council

During her placement, Sarah worked as an Urban Design Specialist within the Built and Natural Environment team, collaborating with transport planners, ecologists, and other professionals to shape sustainable development. She acted as a consultee on major planning applications, providing strategic urban design input and ensuring proposals aligned with local priorities.

Sarah co-led the Newcastle/Gateshead Building Heights Supplementary Planning Document and prepared capacity studies and urban design advice for council-owned sites. She also helped develop design criteria for assessing housing bids on council land. In addition, she led stakeholder engagement workshops that contributed to the evidence base for the Gateshead Design Code, supporting its alignment with the emerging Local Plan.