Dealing with death threats and development, Sherin Aminossehe on the road from Whitehall to Lendlease

Portrait by Tom Campbell

Sherin Aminossehe is not one to shy away from a challenge.

Confronted by a death threat from community members opposed to a development she was advising on as a Farrells masterplanner in her late 20s, she and her team chose to continue with an engagement event even as police surrounded the town hall to prevent a potential arson attack.

“We went in preparing for the worst, and there were some clearly unhappy people there,” recalls Lendlease’s newly appointed head of offices. “But part of it was down to misunderstanding and miscommunication at the time. We spent a good three hours going through things, answering all of the questions, and we had many other sessions after that; and actually it was then much easier to deal with the community.”

Aminossehe is reminiscing from the comfort of Lendlease’s London headquarters at 20 Triton Street, NW1, where she is four months into the job, having left her powerful Whitehall post as chief executive and chief operating officer of the Government Property Unit, overseeing management of the UK’s largest real estate owner. Her role is Europe-wide (Lendlease has two major office developments in Milan), but she will be UK-focused and reports to Jonathan Emery, managing director of property in Europe.

Confident and composed, Aminossehe seems completely at ease with the prospect of encountering more incendiary anti-development rhetoric in her unusual dual role of growing Lendlease’s offices business and overseeing its social impact work across all ventures, including some of London’s most controversial regeneration projects.

There has always been anxiety in communities about changes and developments. But it’s got to be part of our skills to be able to handle that in the right way and bring the community with us

The Australia-listed group is involved in two highly contentious schemes in the capital: the redevelopment of the Heygate Estate in Elephant & Castle, SE1 and the £2bn Haringey Development Vehicle in north London, which aims to deliver 5,000 homes and a new town centre, in partnership with the local authority. In February it was selected as a development partner for the regeneration of the 54 acres above and around Euston Station, NW1 – a complex project that will need the approval of joint venture partners Network Rail and HS2, as well as Camden Council.

But Aminossehe is optimistic that public-private partnerships in the capital can still be successful, even as regeneration becomes an increasingly toxic subject and councillors demand greater accountability and reject a higher number of planning applications.

What next for the £2bn Haringey HDV?

“There has always been anxiety in communities about changes and developments,” she says. “But it’s got to be part of our skills to be able to handle that in the right way and bring the community with us.”

Lendlease was appointed by Haringey Council in February 2017 as 50:50 joint venture partner for the housing development vehicle, which has an estimated gross development value of £2bn.

However, a Momentum- backed campaign against the partnership, which has seen some campaigners label the HDV a “£2bn council land sell-off” has thrown its future into doubt and prompted the departures of Labour council leader Claire Kober and cabinet member for regeneration Alan Strickland.

Aminossehe says Lendlease is still committed to the HDV, despite the election of a Momentum member to lead the council in May’s local elections. “We remain committed to the process,” she says. “We now have a new group of councillors and we look forward to having a conversation with them.”

Would she have gone about the consultation process differently? She says she can’t comment on the process as it predates her involvement. However, as someone who has significant experience with both the public and private sector she does have a view on how the industry could improve its engagement.

“For me, openness and transparency is a really important part of consultation,” Aminossehe says. “Sometimes there’s a perception on both sides that there are things happening behind closed doors that either side is not aware of.”

One of the programmes Aminossehe led at the GPU was the One Public Estate, a government initiative to help local authorities streamline their property portfolios. Part of that involved helping local authorities and the private sector understand each other’s motives. “I always used to say when I was back in government that the time at the beginning of a joint venture is the most critical,” she says.

“The public sector client needs to be a really strong, intelligent client to function and on the other side, the private sector developer or investor needs to actually think and say, what is important about the site? What made me excited about it? Was it just bringing a development out of the ground, or was it actually because those buildings will improve the area? Spending time consulting on what the community wants is what is best for the area and the local authorities.”

Regeneration anxiety

As a UCL-trained architect who has spent much of her career practising in London, what does she think is behind the surge in anti-development rhetoric?

“London has changed a lot and not everyone is comfortable with change,” she says. “But I don’t think it’s a recent phenomenon, people have always been anxious about change. But there’s more development because there’s more capital available, so it’s probably become clearer to people recently.”

Born in Tehran, Aminossehe’s parents, an architect and civil engineer, sold their share in their development business and moved from Iran to London when she was six, having won a lottery for one of the last visas to get out of the country after the Iranian revolution.

“I know from my own perspective, having come in from a different country, how important the concept of home and your local area is to you,” she says. “So I totally understand peoples’ anxiety about that kind of change, but I also know how important it is to deliver houses at a time where house prices are actually quite high and not affordable to a great number of people.”

She reiterates that consultation is the solution to community anxiety. “It’s the same principle to when your next-door neighbour decides to dig a basement. If you go and speak to your neighbour, talk through it, usually the experience is a lot better. I’m using a small-scale example, but the same applies for a large-scale development.”

Euston

Developing the 133-acre station site at Euston, NW1, to create a new commercial and residential district will require expert consultation skills to appease joint venture partners Network Rail and HS2, along with Camden Council and the local residents. Aminossehe says she is already familiar with the refugee community in the area from her days as a student interpreting in Farsi, Dari, and French.

“It’s important to think it’s not just a development project,” she says. “It’s actually about stitching part of London back together. You look at the old maps, particularly the 18th century and 19th century before the railway came, and the urban grid is really different, but the station was put in and it’s slightly split up. So you’ve got the community very much around it, but we need to bring that back and stitch it back together, while linking it in with a live transport hub that is going to increase the speed of going to Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool.”

Lendlease is working through the business plan with Network Rail and HS2, making sure the assumptions previously made by the partners still stand. It is also starting to prepare the initial planning application. Aminossehe, who worked on the planning of the nearby Francis Crick Institute at HOK, sees the up-to 3m sq ft of commercial space due to be delivered as becoming a hub for the life sciences sector.

Lendlease will look at bringing in partners for the project down the line and will consider creating a Euston fund, similar to the model used by the King’s Cross Central Partnership to deliver its nearby regeneration project.

Offices expansion

Aminossehe says she is keen to see diversification and growth of the offices business, which is at present focused on regeneration projects in London including Euston and The International Quarter, Stratford. She says the company will start looking to invest more in stand-
alone office buildings or medium-sized projects in London or in other UK cities.

She is also overseeing the workplace offering at its developments, a sector on which she has a strong view, having studied the occupier experience through government, London’s largest occupier.

“If you look at the hospitality industry or you look at retail, they have a totally different way they treat people and I think it’s time that as an office business – I’m not talking about Lendlease but industrywide – we start treating people differently.” She adds: “It’s not just about 25-year institutional-length leases; it’s about maintaining that flexibility in lease terms but also in the office environment.”

Diversity challenge

One key difference Aminossehe is likely to find between the public and private sector is encountering fewer women in senior positions. At the GPU, the five-strong leadership team was made up of four women and one man. Lendlease has a number of women in senior positions, including Victoria Quinlan, who heads its investment management business; Lisa Gledhill, project director for IQL; and Selina Mason, director of masterplanning.

However, Aminossehe recognises that there is an industry diversity problem. “There’s a wider issue out there and I think it starts right from the very outset,” she says. “Lego about a year ago brought out those pink Lego sets that are supposed to appeal to girls and I have to say that does slightly depress me. Then there was Architect Barbie and her pink finery. There’s nothing wrong with pink, but the fact that manufacturers feel they have to make those gender differences is for me slightly sad.”

It’s one of the few careers where you can influence the physical environment you’re in; and that’s really special because you get something tangible at the end, which will outlive you

She says the industry needs to promote the possibilities of a career in property to people from different backgrounds, and show them it’s not just for “a certain type of person who might have gone to a certain type of school”. She adds: “It’s one of the few careers where you can influence the physical environment you’re in; and that’s really special because you get something tangible at the end, which will outlive you.”

Aminossehe herself, an architect of Iranian descent with extensive public sector experience, represents something of an anomaly in the commercial property sector.

She thinks the industry would do well to look beyond the traditional surveying background for new recruits. “We need to be open-minded about how we can transfer skills and not be too set in our ways,” she says.

Our interview comes days after WeWork, London’s second-biggest occupier, announced it had appointed an architect to its top team, with BIG founder Bjarke Ingels taking on the role of chief architect to advise on the design of the company’s expanding workplace and community-focused ventures. The parallel hints at a growing trend in the capital for commercial developments with a social conscience.

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Lendlease in London