Property over politics: How real estate is key to delivering a levelled-up UK
W h ile UK politics remains in a state of flux, the need to spread opportunity more evenly and equally across the UK remains steadfastly vital. Real estate has a very real, powerful, unique and multi-pronged role to play in levelling-up the country, but how does it do it?
EG gathered a host of experts from across the built environment to answer that question. The solution was clear – collaboration, communication and a clear shared goal for every region.
“In four decades, one thing I have learnt is that any town or city that’s seeking to regenerate itself, reposition itself or hold itself open for the wall of domestic and international money that could come in has to do two things,” said Urban Strategy’s Jackie Sadek. “It has to have a proper civic leader, somebody who can bang the table for that location, and it has got to have one plan. And everyone in the location has got to buy into the one leader and the one plan. If they are fighting like rats in a sack, you might as well go home.”
While UK politics remains in a state of flux, the need to spread opportunity more evenly and equally across the UK remains steadfastly vital. Real estate has a very real, powerful, unique and multi-pronged role to play in levelling-up the country, but how does it do it?
EG gathered a host of experts from across the built environment to answer that question. The solution was clear – collaboration, communication and a clear shared goal for every region.
“In four decades, one thing I have learnt is that any town or city that’s seeking to regenerate itself, reposition itself or hold itself open for the wall of domestic and international money that could come in has to do two things,” said Urban Strategy’s Jackie Sadek. “It has to have a proper civic leader, somebody who can bang the table for that location, and it has got to have one plan. And everyone in the location has got to buy into the one leader and the one plan. If they are fighting like rats in a sack, you might as well go home.”
Leading from the top
It sounds simple: fill the UK with Andy Burnhams, Andy Streets and Ben Houchens et al and we will all be OK. It’s not, of course. Finding those leaders, devolving power away from central government, finding the stories of towns and cities around the UK and developing their plans is hard. It requires communication, collaboration and direction.
And this is where Sadek believes the real estate industry has a huge role to play. Stop trying to speak with central government, she said, and instead open up dialogue with local authorities and local communities.
“I think if we could get civic leaders to sit down with their local real estate industry an awful lot more would happen,” she said. “I don’t know why the leaders of local authorities have to keep the private sector at arm’s length. I think they should be having a cup of tea every Friday or Tuesday morning or some systematic way of gleaning stuff, because information is power. Intelligence is what you need to lead your city.”
Deborah Gordon Brown, a partner at Shoosmiths, agreed. “It’s really critical actually,” she said. “Local authorities have a really big part to play to open up the real estate industry to the local communities. Having a dialogue between the real estate industry and the communities that are in need of levelling up is a really critical part of this.”
Open conversations
For Savills’ director and head of ESG research Kat Martindale, key to unlocking levelling up sits firmly with communities.
“If you are not talking to the communities, it gets their backs up,” she said. “It needs to be a roundtable discussion with everybody. Colleagues of mine in Manchester have worked with Bolton to deliver a new strategy for a marketplace and brought together existing traders, potential new traders and set up an entire strategy for supporting new businesses that would like to start into retail at a low price point. That garnered them £32m from central government funds. That’s not insubstantial for Bolton or for any city. So it has to be about having that strategy and working with the existing community and community leaders and local politicians that help to deliver that project.”
For Scarborough Group International, those open conversations with local authorities and communities have been vital in enabling it to deliver its portfolio and its purpose.
“As property developers and investors, our relationships with our local authorities is key to what we do, whether that’s in the planning department, whether that’s in the regeneration departments. And I 1,000,000% agree with Jackie that it’s all about the local authorities and the real estate sector,” said chief executive Simon McCabe. “It’s all about building those relationships with the local authorities because together you can make things happen. If we want to go it alone, we can’t make it. We can’t do things in Sheffield and Leeds and Manchester and Salford without the local authority’s support on a number of different levels. But we have thankfully achieved a lot because of that relationship with them.”
Shout it out loud
But having strong relationships between Scarborough and local authorities in Sheffield, Leeds, Manchester and Salford, for example, isn’t enough. For UK-wide levelling up, those collaborations and concerted efforts need to happen everywhere. And for that to happen, both public and private sector need to shout more about the positive outcomes of collaboration.
“As a business we are seeing levelling up happening,” said McCabe. “We are speaking to a number of local authorities, whether it’s via the new Towns Fund or the levelling-up funds that have been available to the local authorities and all local NHS trusts. We are seeing it happen as a business but maybe sometimes the government doesn’t shout about it enough, maybe certain areas get a little bit more grace and favour than others.”
McCabe believes that without private sector investors like Scarborough, local authorities and central government working in harmony, the battle to bring big business and big investment to all our towns and cities will only get harder.
“To be fair to the real estate industry, we have to know where the government is going with this,” added Shoosmiths’ Gordon Brown. “We do need to hear where this whole policy is going to enable the real estate industry to buy into it, engage and collaborate.”
“Knowing what tax breaks might be available, knowing what funding might be available will – to a degree – help developers and investors understand what they need to do in a particular region, what’s going to work in a region and what ’is going to help the community,” she said. “I’m not suggesting that the real estate industry sits on its hands for potentially years on end and does nothing until there is a policy and we know exactly what funding is available. But I think it would be helpful to know where central government is going with this in terms of building regional city plans.”
“The industry stood ready to get behind levelling up,” added Sadek. “If we had been told what to do to help, we would have been in there like a shot. It was a wasted opportunity for our industry. We all put our hands up and said: ‘Look, as soon as you sort it out, we are ready to play our part,’ but they never came to us.
“There will be no levelling up without proper devolution of powers and resources. It’s as simple as that.”
The battle now, perhaps, lies not with real estate building relationships with local authorities but in central government understanding that growth comes when you devolve responsibility and power to those who care most and know best what their communities need to thrive.
To send feedback, e-mail samantha.mcclary@eg.co.uk or tweet @samanthamcclary or @EGPropertyNews
Image © Eran Menashri/Unsplash
