IL: The workplace is where you learn from your colleagues, where you learn from your mentors, where you’re educated by interaction with people. We are a social bunch.
We don’t have a policy on homeworking, and if you need to work from home on a particular day that is no big deal. But actually we want people to be in the office because we think it is better for them, the business and clients.
How can we overcome our planning challenges?
PW: It’s properly resourcing the service and fundamentally accepting that it’s an essential service. It isn’t treated as such at the moment; it is almost seen as a necessary evil.
Most local authorities want to do their job, there’s no question about that, most officers want to do a good job. They’re hamstrung by the fact that they have a lack of resource, they have a lack of skills in some instances, an inability to call on skills that they need.
It is upskilling the whole planning process and that includes organisations like the Environment Agency, Natural England and all those quangos that exist at the moment that are a significant drag on some of the outcomes that local authorities want to deliver.
It goes to the heart of how you fund the planning process. Is it applicant funded through planning application fees or is it government funded, or is it a combination of both?
To me the fundamental drawback we have at the moment is it’s just not properly funded.
TCB: If you can have the conversations you can work through knowledge gaps. That very much comes down to public and private sector partnership working.
We pull on each other’s resources, on each other’s expertise. We pull on each other’s ability to tap into funding, to make things viable.
The best project that Neil and I could ever showcase is Northlight Mill in Briefield. We’ve worked with the local community, Burnley FC in the community, Nelson and Colne College, and we’ve phased it to deliver this brilliant project, and I hope we get some recognition as a partnership when it’s completed at the end of the year.
It would not have worked without public-private sector partnership working. It would still be a derelict mill.
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NW: It was a challenge and the public sector took a risk, it could have been a white elephant.
We had our expertise in trying to drive the processes of delivering it forward, while Barnfield, who we went into partnership with, had the development and the financial expertise, so it worked well.
But it has taken ten years, it’s a £30-odd million pound project, we’ve had to chip away at trying to get public funding.
IL: That development has the potential to lift the whole area and to slow down the brain drain, retain talent within the area, to encourage people to come and buy within the area. So, a development like that is not just a nice thing to look at, it has the potential to actually make a massive impact on the local economy.
KH: Large scale regeneration takes ten to 15 years. The public sector working with the private sector need the vision, they need the plan, and they need to hold to that.
We’re working in Preston at the moment on the Animate development in the town centre and the scheme will be great because of everything Preston has done, including securing Towns Fund money and other funding, working with the local college and schools. It is that combination that really makes a difference and having that common goal.
PW: Major schemes that are transformative can help to regenerate an area and start that whole process going. The problem is they’re the exceptions rather than rule.
You have got to deal with how the planning system operates for those who aren’t in that sphere of influence.
Without the public-private partnership, without the funding, without those things, how do you make the general system of granting planning consents, bringing forward small scale developments, how do you make that work?
That’s where I see there’s disconnect at the moment. The grand schemes, they are exemplars of how things ought to be done, but that’s not for everybody unfortunately. That is the conundrum.
IL: We’ve heard the problem around the planning process is a lack of resource and lack of expertise. Maybe the answer is put the planning fees up. People might initially balk at that, but they won’t if they get the service. If you
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can designate that fee to resourcing planning departments, then that would be fantastic.
TCB: Access to funding without a partner is not that easy for a private developer. That channel to get funding where there is a gap needs to be opened to help deliver solutions.
TH: Things we’ve seen recently that have worked really well are earlier contractor input, early cost input and the constant checking of the cost.
You need to understand the costs then you’ll know what you’re working with. Quite often you set off with a budget, the budgets change and nobody checks, you get to the end and go, ‘oh, it’s not viable’. It sounds so simple, but it just doesn’t happen.
JG: On funding for smaller scale developers there are alternatives in the marketplace, which people don’t really know about.
It is having visibility of these other non-bank lending, non-funding lending pots of money to help these developers get smaller scale projects off the mark, because that’s where tradesmen learn their skillset, and local jobs are created.
PW: The lack of available land sites allocated or otherwise is a significant drawback and it is worse in some areas than others. The particular politics around development plans and neighbourhood planning are significant. There is almost without doubt too little land that’s now identified for housing and commercial uses in the right locations.
KH: We’ve talked a lot about resources and lack of people coming through. It’s for us to talk about what a great profession we’re in.
IL: The developers and the construction industry are absolutely critical to the success of the economy. Without them the economy will slide, so they’ve got to be supported.
NH: There is massive opportunity. You look up the M6 and there’s so much land to go at from the industrial logistics point of view.
I feel like we’re through a lot of the tough times and hopefully going into 2024 it should ease or at least remain the same.
People know what they’re dealing with, and they can look to make those developments stack up and we’ll then see more activity taking place. There’s been a lot of success. The demand is there, we just need to bang the drum and keep doing the good work.
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