With the EU referendum showing that the UK is clearly not a united kingdom, a test being undertaken on whether we will operate in a united Europe, and a too‑difficult‑to‑call vote due in the US, the need for collaboration has never been greater. Estates Gazette, with partner Mishcon de Reya, gathered together leading figures from the private, public and tech sectors to discuss the power and potential of partnerships. Photographs by Kalory Photo & Video
In a world where barely anything seems certain, there is one belief that remains steadfast: that collaboration is key. To improve housing supply, create jobs and develop cities that people and businesses want to be a part of, the public and private sectors have got to get considerably better at working together.
“We firmly believe the only way forward for London now and the issues confronting London around new housing and development is to work in collaboration with local authorities, the GLA and public utilities,” says Capital & Counties managing director and chief investment officer Gary Yardley.
Mishcon de Reya partner Susan Freeman agrees: “To take anything forward, we need collaboration between the public and private sectors.”
But working together in a positive and productive way is not as easy as putting two parties in a room. True collaboration takes time, compromise and a new way of doing things.
Pat Hayes, executive director of regeneration and housing at the London Borough of Ealing, says his council wants to bring more jobs and new homes to the borough but is not able to do so on its own.
“Instead of hoarding up the site and banning people from entering, we brought in a railway carriage, opened a café and became part of the community”
“Local authorities, as a result of austerity, need to drive revenue into the organisation,” says Hayes. “Development is a way of doing that because potentially it can give us a long-term revenue stream.
“We have got to work with the development industry,” he adds. “We have also got to work with other parts of the public sector, most significantly the GLA. It is about us being an entrepreneurial municipality that wants to work with people directly. It is about getting overseas investment in. It is about us working directly with lenders. We are increasingly taking a role that is much more akin to that taken in the private sector and that local authorities used to have in the time when we used to deliver enough housing and provide enough jobs.”
But working too closely with the development community can cause issues for the public sector.
“There is a negative use of the word collaborator,” admits Hayes, “and that is a challenge we often get – that we are collaborating with the private sector to help them get rich.”
For U+I chief executive Matthew Weiner, early and open communication with local people was key to getting over the negative connotations of public/private collaborations.
“We can’t just land our spaceships in the middle of communities and hope that they are successful,” he says. “We have to ingrain ourselves into the communities in which we work.”
Weiner uses the example of U+I’s regeneration of Deptford High Street in Lewisham, south-east London. The £47m public-private partnership started back in 2008 and reached practical completion in March this year.
“For us it was about finding the right way of delivering a scheme that met both community needs and the local authority’s need to bring revenue back to Deptford High Street,” says Weiner. “So, instead of hoarding up the site and banning people from entering, we opened it up, brought in a railway carriage, opened up a café and really became part of the community. That was long before we even submitted a drawing. We welcome the community into our sites, run events, make them feel part of the scheme. Then we concentrate on process.”
Ben Brown, senior vice-president of acquisitions at Brookfield Properties, says his company did the same during its redevelopment of the 8m sq ft Brookfield Place in Lower Manhattan, New York.
“Spending time informing residents helped get them on side and be productive with us and the development,” says Brown. “We spend a lot of time trying to educate the public community around our projects. The biggest hurdle is when you have opposition, but that can be because they don’t understand what you are trying to do.”
“It’s really important that we are very open with the local community, that the council is very open with the local community and there is a clear understanding of the goals and objectives from both sides from the outset,” adds CapCo’s Yardley. “There has to be an understanding of the risk that private capital is taking. London needs developments such as [Brookfield’s] 100 Bishopsgate if we want to remain the capital of the world and do all the things we want to do. It is easy to criticise and complain, but what is the alternative? Yes, we do it for a return for our shareholders, but we want to do it in a responsible and acceptable way.”
“This is the maxim that we test every day,” says Weiner, “about quality and profitability and that they are not mutually exclusive. The challenge of collaboration is to prove that and to deliver great, quality places and good risk-adjusted returns for our shareholders.”
“Developers collaborating with local communities is incredibly important,” adds Savannah de Savary, founder of proptech start-up IndustryHub. “Tech has a role to play in opening up those dialogues and making it easier for developers to communicate with communities.”
She adds: “There are a lot of great start-ups out there that are trying to facilitate collaboration – start-ups that are dealing with planning applications and planning laws, and platforms that just try to connect individuals. Tech can help bridge the gap and help the public see what is going on. If they feel engaged as a community in how their representatives are dealing with the private sector, they are likely to respond more positively.”
And if they don’t? Well, a bit of marriage counselling wouldn’t go amiss, jokes Yardley.
“There needs to be better mechanisms to let the public and private sector talk to each other and understand what each other is trying to achieve,” he says.
“We [the private sector] don’t stand for re-election every four or five years, but I do worry about being shot every day if I lose people too much money and don’t achieve what I need to do.”
With too much confusion and conflict, communication will always break down, making real collaboration impossible. However, in a world going through some tough changes in its own relationships, the panel agreed that the impetus to stop, listen and collaborate was only going to carry on growing.
