Deborah McLaughlin was at the forefront of the government drive to speed up land delivery and housebuilding for nearly a decade.
Now the former North West executive director at the Homes & Communities Agency has crossed over to the private sector, running GL Hearn’s Manchester office.
However, she insists her priorities are still the same. “That is focusing on place-making, delivery, and housing supply,” she said.
The planning specialist arm of Capita Real Estate currently has a 25-strong team in Manchester, but she is recruiting for a range of roles from graduate to senior positions with the target of doubling the size of the team.
“Our offer is a broad real estate and infrastructure offer and so we want to work with clients on buying land, on planning services, on allocating land and housing but also on infrastructure, and on design, engineering,” McLaughlin said.
She is also involved in Capita’s new estate regeneration unit, designed to offer an “end-to-end” service delivery model for developers, housing associations and local authorities.
Accelerating housebuilding remains a key focus of her work.
“I think if we are going to get to the numbers that we need to deliver, we have to look at a different way of delivering homes,” she said. “So while the HCA has been challenging local authorities and housebuilders to do more, government has been challenging the volume housebuilders and still we are not able to get to the numbers that we need.
“We know there is a skills shortage. So to really accelerate delivery I think we need to start looking at different methods of construction.”
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