Music to Birmingham’s ears

Sweet harmonies are always promised when professional firms merge. Yet the purchase by Arcadis of the eight-strong team at Birmingham’s Brooke Smith Planning comes with more musical promise than most. Louise Brooke-Smith, founder, former RICS global president and Birmingham planning eminence, is a cellist. Her relationship with Arcadis brings the melodious prospect of a client list that stretches from Swiss bankers to fellow cellist Julian Lloyd-Webber’s £57m new Birmingham Conservatoire of Music. The conservatoire is an interesting case. Brooke-Smith supervised a tricky planning negotiation and came away a winner. Now an equity partner of the UK LLP, she will be hoping she can make similar music for Arcadis. Brooke-Smith joins as UK head of town planning and head of social value. This merger comes as the devolution agenda, the accelerating progress with the High Speed 2 rail line, and a series of high-profile relocations from HSBC to the RICS, combine to push Birmingham centre stage. For Brooke-Smith, the move came after 23 years of happy independence and several proposals of business marriage, all of which she rejected. Talks with Arcadis began in March 2016 and took a year to complete. Arcadis needed to beef up its planning operation and the deal comes as the battle for planning talent reaches a crisis point – with local authorities trying to recruit to speed up planning times at the same time as the private sector is expanding. “It all came about because of the way my practice grew, and our client base, some of which we shared with Arcadis,” says Brooke-Smith, pointing to regular clients such as the Central Co-operative, much of whose vast property portfolio across the East and West Midlands is being turned over to residential development. Potential suitors The courtship was smooth and stately. “We had been approached by other potential suitors over the years but we liked Arcadis for its ethics and the breadth of its work. “It wanted to expand its planning offer, and we wanted what it wanted, so it all came together very nicely,” she says. Speaking in March at the time of the merger announcement, Andy Limage, Arcadis managing director, environment, said: “This is a really significant move for Arcadis here in the UK. “Adding the expertise and vast experience of such a well-respected town planning consultancy to our existing offering is good news for our clients and our business.” Brooke-Smith’s impressive client base includes the asset management arms of most big banks and pension funds, the HS2 project, the Homes and Communities Agency and a clutch of housebuilders, including Persimmon and Taylor Woodrow. Cross-selling The appeal for both sides is the cross-selling. Arcadis is strong in environmental planning, including infrastructure and utilities – services that nicely complement Brooke-Smith’s town planning expertise. But both parties come with a long address book of investment clients looking for good advice on how best to exploit their portfolios and an equally long list of local authority contacts. In the nicest, most ethical way possible, the partnership is about putting these pieces together. Brooke-Smith’s network in the asset management sector represents a glittering prospect to Arcadis. The key growth area is likely to be masterplanning the larger sites, both in town and out of town, an area both Brooke-Smith and her new partner see as ripe for growth. “This will be about the big masterplans, working alongside local authorities on area regeneration but also bringing in the blue chip clients and Far East money who want the right consents on their sites,” she explains. “Through the addition of our practice, the town planning offer to the marketplace from Arcadis has immediately trebled and serves the environmental, construction, building, real estate, infrastructure and utilities sectors. But most importantly, it will be growing to reflect increasing demand.” Brooke-Smith adds: “The marketplace is increasingly looking for commercially astute, problem-solving planning expertise and that’s what we have always offered. “If you get the right planning in place then the rest of the development process runs far more smoothly.” Brooke-Smith will combine her town planning role with responsibility for Arcadis’s social value function. “It means looking at the wider public benefits, sustainability and community benefits of what we do,” she says of the potentially wide-ranging set of responsibilities. A full rundown of what social value means, and what it will involve, is awaited – she is working on it now – but she stresses it is not simply a grander vision of corporate social responsibility. “We are thinking things like the consequences of land remediation,” she explains. The full strategy will explain all. Mergers do not always produce beautiful music. Frequently they produce a short period of harmony, followed by long episodes of dissonance. Fortunately, the early noises from the Arcadis/Brooke-Smith deal sound surprisingly good. Making music… Birmingham Conservatoire’s £57m teaching and performance facility is due to open this year, hailed as the first of its kind in the digital age. The 100,000 sq ft teaching, rehearsal and performance space is next to Millennium Point in the Eastside district. The opening follows four years of planning advice from Louise Brooke-Smith. “The problem was that this is a tight site, made more complicated, financially, by the fact the conservatoire’s old site was being compulsorily purchased. “There was obviously a deal to be struck here on things such as public realm, where the council wanted more than the conservatoire could possibly afford,” she explains. “There were also design issues with planning implications. For instance, it’s in the nature of the building that it doesn’t have many windows for reasons of acoustics.” The design – by architect Feilden Clegg Bradley – has been likened to a cheesegrater or an Oxo cube. Brooke-Smith says the conservatoire’s director, cellist Julian Lloyd Webber, is “delightful” but she has yet to ask him for a cello lesson. When she began trading in 1994, she celebrated her first pay cheque by buying a cello. “I wanted something to remember the occasion,” she says. “And I still get it out. I’m hoping for a lesson but still haven’t asked.” New faces, new offices… Arcadis bought Birmingham-based town planning firm Brooke Smith Planning in March. It will join the rest of the Arcadis Midlands team in 25,000 sq ft of newly prelet office space at Bruntwood’s Cornerblock scheme in Birmingham, a site formerly known as 2 Cornwall Street. Bruntwood undertook a redevelopment of the site to create a 110,000 sq ft building after buying it for £10m in 2015. Arcadis is the first tenant to take space at the scheme and will occupy two floors on a 10-year lease. The firm was represented by Colliers. CBRE and Savills are letting agents for the Cornerblock. Louise Brooke-Smith joins after a career that began in local government with Birmingham and Coventry councils. She then moved on to surveyors Debenham Tewson Cheshire, which became part of DTZ.