When it comes to unlocking public and private collaboration and truly levelling up the UK by allowing a diversification of investment across the country, there is an onus on the public sector to sow the first seeds of growth.
That was one of the major takeaways from an in-depth discussion, hosted at the MIPIM conference in Cannes, about how public and private partnership is vital in achieving long-lasting results for communities.
Here EG’s expert panel, which included chief executive of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority Eamonn Boylan, leader of Stoke on Trent City Council Abi Brown, chief executive of Stockport Council Caroline Simpson, and Homes England chief executive Peter Denton, share three key insights on what is needed to successfully enable private sector investment in public sector projects.
1. Public sector needs to sow the seeds
“[Regeneration] is not about trying to pile everything in and do everything at once,” says Greater Manchester’s Boylan. “It’s about understanding how you sequence investment in order to enable investment to take place in a way that makes sense. I’m not going to persuade any sensible developer to put money into a place unless they believe there is a commercial logic in doing that. A really, really important role for the public sector is to create those conditions for investment to enable it to fly.”
Homes England’s Denton agrees: “I call it the 20:80 rule, which is that you want the majority of the money to come from the private sector, but you must recognise that you have to create the environment and the approach – that first 20% – to be able to encourage the other 80% to come in.”
2. Get the narrative right, be confident
“Stoke on Trent is a polycentric city,” says Brown. “We have six town centres and we spent far too long arguing among ourselves over which of those are most important. But the reality is investors are not interested in that. They want to understand about your place on a larger scale. Stoke is the 13th largest city in the UK, really easy to get to, really well connected, lots of potential to grow. And actually, once you get people into your place, that’s when you can talk more about what will work best for them in terms of location.”
For Stockport’s Simpson, ensuring that the narrative about what the public sector is trying to achieve flows through every part of the council is essential too.
“I am chief executive of a council where every service is really thinking about regeneration, whether it’s children’s services or working with our health colleagues, on the basis of drawing everything together for the benefit of a place,” she says. “That real catalytic power of local government to convene and bring stakeholders together, to have that long-term vision, drive delivery and take shared risk, is something that I believe is really starting to take shape in Stockport.”
3. Stability and purpose are vital
“We need to be very clear that our journey to devolution can only really take place and can only really gain traction if there is stability and if there is certainly in terms of purpose in locations,” says Boylan. “One of the things that has stood Greater Manchester in good stead has been the fact that there has been an all-party consensus for decades on the things that are important for the city region.
“We will fight like cats in a sack when it comes to the election, but fundamentally will agree on the things that are important and we will work together to deliver those things. It’s really, really important that whatever the politics in place, there is a sense of shared purpose around what it is that needs to happen.”
Respecting place, understanding that, in local government at least, cross-party politics can agree on a shared purpose, is one of the key roles Homes England wants to play, says Denton.
“My view is the agency is there is to respect local democracy,” he says. “It is the local government in all the shapes and forms that understands what they need for their place.
“For us, the focus is on partnership. How one plus one plus one equals four. And how, in an ever-increasing devolved world, a national agency supports local place in its ambitions and aspirations.”
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