Birmingham City Council’s planning and regeneration lead, Waheed Nazir, is plotting a move to the private sector and has set his sights on major city regeneration.
Nazir will leave his current role as director for inclusive growth in December, the council announced this week, after a decade at the local authority. Although he has made his name in the Midlands, the long-time private sector proponent and industry ally is also eyeing the capital for fresh challenges.
“My intention is to move to the private sector,” he tells EG. “I have no plans to take up any other public sector job anywhere in the UK.
“There are lots of big, complex regeneration projects that could do with some support. There are some interesting things in London.”
Nazir says he also sees opportunity in Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield, as well as his hometown of Birmingham, and is keen to work on strategic projects around High Speed 2, housing and infrastructure.
But despite admitting he regularly fields job offers from the private sector, Nazir insists he has not yet lined up his next job. “I know that sounds really mad. I don’t think I’ll look back and think it was the best decision I made, but I really wanted a bit of space to think about what I want to do.”
Birmingham legacy
Nazir joined Birmingham City Council more than a decade ago with an agenda to deliver the city’s strategic vision via its Big City Plan.
“It was very daunting and very exciting when I first started,” he says. “The opportunity to shape a city of the scale of Birmingham and the city you were born in is quite rare.”
In the aftermath of the financial crash Nazir took a step back to restructure the team and create a new vision. Birmingham had suffered from a lack of investment in infrastructure and development, he says, and he worked to reorganise planning and regeneration to drive this forward, taking notes from the private sector.
“I took over when it was one of the most difficult economic cycles the city had experienced in my lifetime,” he adds. “While everyone was trying to recover from the crash, I took the opportunity to step back. I tried to restructure the department more as a private sector-style, multidisciplinary, outcome-focused organisation, rather than being about process and bureaucracy. That was going to be the foundation.”
He led a team of more than 1,000 people, delivering a multi-billion-pound budget, and worked to bring on private sector partners at the largest developments across Birmingham.
This saw Argent and Hermes take on the £700m Paradise scheme, Lendlease appointed at the £1.7bn Smithfield Market redevelopment in Digbeth, and IM Properties come on board at Peddimore.
Nazir also led on the Commonwealth Games development at Perry Barr and launched the city’s largest regeneration on the 153-acre Ladywood Estate, which is expected to deliver around 6,000 homes.
In deciding to move on from this role, Nazir says he told himself: “You’ve done the strategy, you’ve brought forward development, you’ve found solid private sector partners to take this forward, so now is the time to move on and let them deliver that legacy.”
He has appointed a new director of planning, to be announced in the coming weeks, and an assistant director of property, and Birmingham City Council will recruit to replace his role.
Regenerating Cities
This month, Nazir will launch his first book, Regenerating Cities, co-authored with Manchester’s Sir Howard Bernstein, Sir John Armitt, Grainger chief executive Helen Gordon, the Crown Estate’s Alison Nimmo, former Homes England chair Sir Edward Lister, Berkeley chief Tony Pidgley, Argent’s David Partridge, L&G’s Bill Hughes and Benson Elliot’s investment chief Marc Mogull.
“The principle of the book is twofold,” Nazir says. “One is to inspire the next generation and the current early professionals into the industry. The second is to pass on lessons about how these legends have delivered regeneration.”
He adds that the collaboration of authors from the investment, development, infrastructure and delivery worlds is a reflection of the variety of roles needed to deliver regeneration. And it is a fitting tribute to his time at Birmingham City Council as he prepares to make the switch to the private sector.
“You need to have all these disciplines working together to achieve that kind of transformational change. You need strong public sector leadership and private sector leadership as well.”
Waheed Nazir is a regular columnist for EG, read his latest articles here >>
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