Andy Street: the West Midlands’ chief storyteller

“I’m merely the frontman. That’s all it is.” Andy Street is being modest. The mayor of the West Midlands is one of the most senior politicians in the country, presiding over nearly 3m people and a GVA of £70bn across seven authorities, centred on England’s second city, Birmingham. He is a key player in several of the UK’s biggest regeneration projects, a partner in more than £5bn of development and one of the few Conservative politicians who can still boast positive poll numbers. But the former John Lewis boss never intended to go into politics. Having lived in Birmingham, on and off, since he was 10 months old, Street graduated from the University of Oxford with plans of being a social worker. It was not to be. He was turned down by Birmingham City Council and, after being turned away by numerous other employers, he found himself working as a trainee in the Brent Cross branch of John Lewis. It was the start of a 31-year career with the company that would see him rise to the position of managing director in 2007. Over the next decade he oversaw a period of expansion as sales rose by 50% to £4.4bn and the number of stores doubled. But then, in 2016, he quit. Not to take the reins at a rival retailer, or to move into property development – although there were offers. Instead, he became the Conservative Party’s candidate to be the inaugural mayor of the West Midlands. “I wanted it. I really knew it straight away, because this is, after all, an executive job. It’s a leadership job,” he says. The move came as a surprise to many, even though many of those in his wide circle of friends are involved in politics. “I’ve never been selected [as an MP],” he says, “and I never wanted to do it, because I wasn’t sure that, compared with my executive career in business, I’d have been very good at it.” Street says it was his background in business that made him a strong candidate for the post. “Totally, totally,” he nods. “The skills I learned in business are more relevant to that. It’s a storytelling job. That’s what we do when we go and sit in the boardroom of an investor or a developer.” But while the story is important, so is the person telling that story. Extra firepower “Developers do deals with those in whom they have confidence,” he states. Indeed, it is sometimes hard to have confidence in a local authority that has recently declared effective bankruptcy, as Birmingham City Council did earlier this month. Similarly with central government. “Government must have trust and confidence in the authority to whom it is devolving the cash.” But large-scale regeneration requires something more than a sales pitch. The larger opportunities, especially those that cross boundaries – Street talks about them as corridors of development: “Walsall to Wolverhampton, Birmingham to Sandwell, a huge regeneration in that Smethwick corridor” – need the extra muscle of the West Midlands Combined Authority and someone to lead. Street points to Muse’s £3.2bn Arden Cross development taking place around Solihull’s HS2 station. “That is a vast undertaking,” he says – some 6m sq ft and 3,000 new homes. “The capital needed for the infrastructure to enable that site, that’s not something the local authority could have done on its own. But working with the CA, they just have extra firepower.” Particularly if you can leverage in government cash as well. The WMCA, with Street at its helm, was this year handed £1.5bn by the Treasury in one of two “Trailblazer” devolution deals – the other went to the old rival, Manchester. The funding, vitally, does not come pre-sliced and packaged according to Westminster’s preferences, and in the next spending review the WMCA will move to a single settlement. In effect, it will be funded like a government department. “That will be a real test for us,” Street acknowledges. “We have now got to demonstrate that we can make the most of what we have been entrusted with.” Street is proud of what he has achieved during his six years leading the West Midlands. The latest round of inward investment figures show the West Midlands up by 48% from the previous year, the best performance of any region. In addition, it is one of the few regions hitting, and indeed surpassing, its targets for housebuilding. And those homes are overwhelmingly being built on brownfield sites. One of the reasons for this success is the fact that each of the component parts of the WMCA – the cities, the councils, the mayor, businesses – is united in a common goal. “We have really worked hard with each of our local authorities, and they are very pro-growth,” says Street. “That is probably one of the other big differences. You don’t hear about nimbyism from our local authorities.” Government is not going to make the property investments to stimulate the economy on its own. It is the private sector that has that power Andy Street Playing hardball While getting each of your constituent authorities to agree to a direction of travel is a key role of a mayor, there is something else, too. That level of funding and support means that the mayor can play hardball. At present, any scheme to which the WMCA contributes funds or resources has to provide a minimum of 20% affordable housing. “And we’re getting it. In fact, what we are actually achieving across that whole portfolio is 33%,” says Street. There will be negotiations, “but we never negotiate it down,” he adds, a flash of steel behind the circular specs. “If you say you’re not going to blink, lo and behold, it doesn’t come to pass. And I do think that is really powerful.” He gives the example of the £450m Coventry City Centre South scheme, which is being developed by Shearer Property Group and Hill Residential. The plans as originally approved by the city council didn’t include an affordable housing proportion. “But for our cash” – the WMCA is putting in £98m – “we have demanded that 20% is affordable, and we’ve got that,” he says. “The clarity of purpose does shift things.” But for all of the achievement, Street has no illusions about the scale of what still needs to be done. “Whatever we say about the progress that has happened in the West Midlands, it is still well below where it needs to be.” The unemployment rate for the region is the highest in the UK, at 5.2%, and a recent report showed that the West Midlands had the highest level of child poverty in the UK – 38.4%, compared with 29.2% nationally. For Street, this is a challenge to be overcome. Apply the right policies, pull the right levers and strike the right deals, and there is nothing that can’t be improved. “The West Midlands is at last playing as a team and is confident, optimistic,” he says. “And please, we’re not being naive. We’ve still got some ghastly statistics on outcomes. But there is a belief that we can do better, and that by working together we will achieve that.” The key, he says, is growth. [caption id="attachment_1198822" align="aligncenter" width="847"] Andy Street speaking at MIPIM 2023[/caption] Government stimulus A little over a year ago, Street penned an article for The Daily Telegraph. “Liz Truss should be our next prime minister,” he wrote, stating that he wanted a prime minister who was “utterly devoted to levelling up” and growth. He added, in prose that has not aged well with events: “I believe she offers a bold, optimistic vision for the country. I believe she has the plan to get our economy growing again. And I believe she has the grip needed to get government firing on all cylinders to protect people’s livelihoods.” Truss’s 45 days in office instead saw the markets tank, wiping an estimated £50bn off GDP, and many of her ideas dismissed as economic illiteracy. “People bring up the Liz Truss thing very often, almost as evidence of my lack of judgement,” Street acknowledges, his voice dropping. “And let’s be honest… no point being anything other. The way in which it all was delivered was extremely poor, and I’m afraid the end became inevitable.” But that is not to say she was wrong, he insists. “Let’s just be clear what attracted me to Liz Truss. There was something important in what she was saying. The only way that we can achieve the standard of public services that we all love to enjoy in this country is by getting the top-line growth of our economy going. And the only way you are going to do that is by being… bolder, in terms of the role of government in stimulating new business.” So, is the West Midlands the last bastion of Trussonomics? The place where her policies are being truly tested? “Are we learning from that?” His brow crinkles. “I wouldn’t necessarily say that it’s Trussonomics. It certainly isn’t. And that became horribly discredited. But we are trying to pick up that exact point.” Street’s economic strategy includes a Plan for Growth – a focus on eight sectors in which the region is already strong and has the potential to become even stronger, including advanced manufacturing, electric vehicles, advanced logistics, medtech and health tech and aerospace. “We are doubling down in those sectors,” he says. And then there are the investment zones. Street is an ardent supporter of “the idea that you could focus some of these sectors in specific places with the right public sector support, which then clusters in private sector investment”. Truss wanted hundreds of them, scattered across the UK like a patchwork quilt of deregulation. Street is just happy that he has one of the remaining dozen in his back yard. “Some of the principles behind what she was doing I totally endorse,” he says. “The way it was then delivered and the complete failure to understand some of the optics around politics, of course, I don’t endorse. But there was sense behind some of her diagnosis.” Private sector cash For Street, the most vital part of Truss’s philosophy, and indeed his chief reason for being a Conservative, is his adamant belief that the most important part of the equation is not the public sector, or Westminster, or even the mayor, but the private sector. “Everyone in politics gets obsessed with the public sector’s investment and government,” he says. He points to the interest surrounding the recent Trailblazer deal, which handed the West Midlands a record amount of Treasury money. “Brilliant as it was, it was worth £1.5bn. In one deal last year with L&G, we managed to get £4bn agreed. So there is something that everyone in politics has to remember. It’s the private sector that has the cash.” And the cash is needed. He picks a simple example. The West Midlands needs to retrofit 300,000 homes to reach its net-zero target in 2041. Currently, it has enough cash – £44m – to retrofit 3,000. “It’s blindingly obvious that there is no way we can multiply £44m by 100 and think the public sector is going to pay for it,” he says. “The only way it will get to scale is if there is a public-private partnership and the financial institutions come to actually drive this.” In fact, Street is currently in open discussions with “any banker, think tank or anyone else“ who can find a model for the private sector to get involved in this area. For Street, it is simple. “It’s the private sector that has the cash. It is they that will make the property investments.” It is the job of the public sector to enable that. His job. “That’s why I am such a believer in the investment zone, enterprise zone model. Because you create the stage in which the private sector then invests, but you do not buy. Government is not going to make the property investments to stimulate the economy on its own. It is the private sector that has that power.” It is the role of the mayor, in Street’s view, to harness that power, to lure the private sector in and show it how its money can work. Someone has to tell the story to the private sector. And after all, Street is just the frontman. “I’m slightly underplaying my hand,” he smiles, “because one of the roles of the mayor is to be the champion. You have to go out and tell that story. And yeah, it is me who goes and sits in the chairman’s office at Tata and talks about their investments here. It is me who goes and sits with the property developer in Hong Kong. So there is something about being the frontman, but you have to have the structure behind it.” To send feedback, e-mail piers.wehner@eg.co.uk or tweet @PiersWehner or @EGPropertyNews Photos: Main image © West Midlands Combined Authority MIPIM 2023 image © Loïc Thébaud