46 BUILT ENVIRONMENT
AT THE SHARP END OF LEVELLING UP THE SUPPLY CHAIN
Gemma Cornwall, head of sustainability at AG Built Environment Consultancy Paul McNeill, director at Ball and Berry building control Robert Wood, investment director at Igloo for the Lancashire Urban Development Fund Nicky Jepson, marketing director at Workhouse Marketing
We brought representatives from Lancashire’s built environment supply chain to get their view on the levelling up agenda and what it means to them. They examined the opportunities and challenges ahead
ROBERT WOOD
Urban Development Funds are not new to the UK. There are two in the Liverpool city region, two in Greater Manchester. The Lancashire fund is a follow on from these.
The pot of £20m is targeted towards stimulating the development of new build principally, albeit we can do significant refurbishments, but mainly new built, quality, commercial employment floor space for the county.
Within that, we are targeting industrial and office development. The intention is to get developments out of the ground that the traditional lending markets are not prepared to finance.
We have a higher risk appetite; we are keen to fund speculative development that others perceive to be risky.
While we haven’t yet committed to fund anything in Lancashire, the other funds we work on in the Liverpool city region have, over a ten-year period, enabled the delivery of more than a million square feet of workspace and either created or retained more than 1,000 employment opportunities.
It is a small element in a bigger levelling up picture, but an important one. For me, progress would be successfully getting the £20m fund allocated.
If it’s not invested in the county by the end of next year it will be lost and go back to HM Treasury. If we can get all £20m retained, it becomes an opportunity to create a legacy for the county.
GEMMA CORNWALL
As a company we bring together the private investors or local councils and the local contractors and supply chain to drive projects forward.
From my point of view, the sustainability side is a massive part. The drive to develop is essential and is great, we are building a lot, but on the regeneration side, there is very little consideration is given to using what we already have.
We’ve loads of beautiful buildings in Lancashire, buildings that have been here hundreds of years. If we had an overall strategy, we could make use of them. And we don’t have to go through generating all the embodied carbon that we would through new builds.
There are lots of new parts to building regulations coming in. One of our main goals is to try and make that more accessible to people and make them more aware of what they should be doing and how they should be doing it.
Unnecessary red tape is a huge issue, the unnecessary hurdles we have to jump over. There are so many things we are trying to achieve, whether it’s to do with sustainability or improving quality or improving supply chain and solving skills shortages, so I cannot see the need to put extra hurdles in the way.
PAUL MCNEILL
When it comes to levelling up, we are right at the sharp end because we are delivering building inspector services to projects that are already on site. We are based in Preston but we are working right across the country.
We went to Birmingham a few years ago, appointed on a project by Nikal and that went very well. We were servicing it from the North West but towards the end of that project, we started to get other interest, so we decided to open an office there.
Back up here in Lancashire, Nikal have the Blackpool Central project and they have appointed us on that scheme.
The area of construction that I work in is about being part of the design team. We like to be in early, facing up to the challenges of good design. Quality and safety are key. There are challenges ahead, but the only way is working collaboratively within design teams.
The Eden Project would be a massive catalyst. We already have clients buying properties and developing sites around Morecambe and Lancaster, that’s a huge ripple effect.
NICKY JEPSON
The levelling up agenda is probably more conceptual to us. We certainly feel an increase in the county confidence and the united voice that we are starting to see now has impacted us directly.
It’s difficult to unpick all the challenges we have had in the industry over the past years, whether its Brexit, pandemic Ukrainian crisis, but they have changed buying behaviours across the board.
We’ve just picked up a client in south London and they have skipped over a thousand agencies to come to us in Ribchester. Now we have looked at things we never thought we had the confidence to go for. Suddenly they are available to us.
We are talking about placemaking and the principals of placemaking are same as the principals of brand. In its simplest form it is about making absolutely sure that you have engagement with the people on the ground from the off.
Make sure you develop the most compelling, useful, resonate opportunity for those people and make an impact to their lives.
The point of levelling up is around democracy of opportunity, making sure we all have those opportunities across the county and that we have the infrastructure and support to be able to do that.
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