COMMENT Regeneration is high on the agenda of local authorities across the country. As the economy recalibrates post-lockdown, the challenge of levelling up is a shared one: focused on bringing new economic opportunity and infrastructure to some left-behind areas, and on maximising “place potential” in others to serve a new economic geography in which digital working is here to stay and quality of life is an ever-greater driver for individuals and businesses.
FuturePlaces is a new placemaking company created by Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council that will drive stewardship-led regeneration to bring a new impetus to delivering essential infrastructure, public realm and design quality to developments across the conurbation. By engaging with the local and national development and investor community in new ways, we want to accelerate delivery and leverage investment to support our vision for BCP as an outstanding south coast “city by the sea”.
The stewardship model puts placemaking and social value at the heart of the development and investment process. By focusing on placemaking and design quality, and taking a patient approach to returns on land value – married with the attraction of long-term investment – greater financial value can be secured in the medium and long term.
South coast and beyond
BCP is leading the way in demonstrating how a public sector entity can adapt the stewardship ethos to the regeneration context. In so doing, it can secure a range of social, environmental and quality-of-life benefits, in addition to financial returns, demonstrating value for money in the broadest sense.
Through shifting the emphasis from value extraction in the short term to value creation – economic, social and environmental – the FuturePlaces approach aims to show how ESG requirements can be met at the whole-place level of scale. This is becoming increasingly important as investment funds shift towards the adoption of green and social value criteria in investment decision-making.
Based on historic precedents, which helped deliver some of the most popular urban areas around the UK, the stewardship approach has started to be adopted by many greenfield land interests. BCP is at the forefront of applying this emerging approach to the municipal context to help unlock transformational developments and stalled sites. This is levelling up in the widest sense. And, as such, it is a process that sits at the nexus of our plans for Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole.
Our initial portfolio consists of 14 significant regeneration sites with a combined gross development value of more than £2.8bn, encompassing community assets, leisure, retail, public realm, hospitality, infrastructure and, importantly, new homes.
A critical issue will be finding new mechanisms to close the affordability gap in locations where there is increasing pressure on price through post-Covid inward migration and securing investment into economically driven development to secure new jobs, business investment and growth.
The stewardship-led approach we are taking needn’t be limited to the south coast. Harnessing the power of local communities with the commitment of the local authority to secure genuinely regenerative development, coupled with patient investment to deliver ambitious, high-quality places, can be applied elsewhere to drive positive change nationally.
Adopted more widely, this approach could be a crucial factor in the government’s levelling-up agenda, which is bold in its stated ambition, but which needs actions and clear-cut mechanisms to match the intent if it is not to become just another political slogan that failed to be acted on.
Ambition to achieve
At the heart of the stewardship proposition is a challenge to align interests at the earliest stage. In other walks of life, we can see that where clear goals and the ambition to achieve them are shared, almost anything becomes achievable. The levelling-up agenda throws down a gauntlet to the property industry to consider how it can meet the goal set by government on one hand and by communities on the other, to make better places around the UK to the benefit of all.
In creating FuturePlaces, BCP has recognised the role that local authorities can play in aligning these interests. BCP can be an example for what can be done elsewhere – others should follow.
Gail Mayhew is managing director of FuturePlaces
