There’s a reason everyone loves a bit of Yorkshire. It’s the straight-talking, down-to-earthness of the place. And there’s one family – one business – that personifies that. The McCabes and Scarborough Group International.
And right now, the McCabes are pissed off.
They are pissed off but they are positive, and preparing to plough ahead with a development pipeline that is almost full to bursting.
The annoyance comes from gloomy rhetoric from the new Labour government and from the failure to win a £150m claim against the firm’s long-term legal adviser Shepherd and Wedderburn over the drafting of a contract relating to Scarborough Group chairman Kevin McCabe’s ownership of Sheffield United FC. That draft ended up forcing McCabe to sell his shares in the club at a price he believed was well below value. And while the judge found Shepherd and Wedderburn to be negligent, saying its lawyers had a “poor grasp” of contractual implications and that there had been a “dereliction of duty”, McCabe’s negligence claim was thrown out.
“The case has hurt our group financially massively,” says Scarborough chief executive Simon McCabe (pictured above, right), “because it had an impact on what was a Premier League football club, and that obviously carried with it value, but it has also not enabled us to do our day job and accelerate the business as much as we would have liked to.”
He adds: “But we are very positive about 2025, and we have been working like stink to adapt and change and continue the Scarborough ethos of hard work and getting it done.”
Onwards and upwards
The hurt and frustration is clear – Kevin McCabe (above, left) even put pen to paper to write a book about the whole drama – and while it is understandable that the pair want the world to know about their experiences with Shepherd and Wedderburn, they are also ready to draw a line under it and focus on the future growth of the business.
Key projects in Scarborough Group’s 10.1m sq ft pipeline include the Forth Green Freeport in Fife, a 120-acre site where some 1.2m sq ft of development is planned. The group has already delivered 250,000 sq ft of offices on the site and is now looking to secure tenants and financing for further plots.
South of the border, the group is pushing on with its project in Kevin’s home town of Scarborough, redeveloping the 1990s-built shopping centre and bringing cinema chain Odeon back to the Yorkshire town after a 30-year absence, while in Manchester it is moving ahead with Territory B at Middlewood Locks, where more than 2,000 homes and 1m sq ft of commercial space could be delivered.
In Leeds it is buying the Old Medical School to transform it into a health-tech innovation hub that will form the first phase of a 2.2m sq ft Innovation Village surrounding the new hospital development at Leeds General Infirmary, and there is a big deal being cooked up in Harrogate that could add another 2m sq ft of mixed-used development to the group’s growing pipeline.
Partnership power
Growth for Scarborough, say both Kevin and Simon, is very much focused on the strength of the company’s partnerships – be that with the investment and construction partners they have long and growing relationships with, from Muir Construction to Singapore’s Metro Holdings, or the local authorities and, more recently, mayoral authorities in and around their beloved Yorkshire.
“We need to get to know them, and we need to let them know what we are doing,” Kevin says. “In the case of North Yorkshire, that’s a mega site for 12,000 homes, regenerating a big chunk of Harrogate and regenerating the town centre of Scarborough. We are important to them; likewise, they are to us. And that’s where you really get round the table and get to know your partners, listen to what they want, [and they can] listen to us say what we should aim for. It is as simple as that. It’s not rocket science, but you’ve got to find the energy, the desire and the determination to do it consistently.”
Growth focus
The McCabes say they are determined to grow the business. Alongside delivering its development pipeline, Simon says the group is looking at setting up its own PRS management platform, now that its residential portfolio has critical mass – Scarborough has some 3,593 flats in its portfolio, with another 1,700 in the pipeline – and expanding its flex office business, Blueprint.
There is plenty to be cheerful about, they say, putting their pissed off-ness behind them.
“I think the change of government and the belief that interest rates will come down is a stimulus,” says Kevin. “It makes organisations like ours and many others want to get on with it. But, for goodness’ sake, government – central and local – work with your partners. Let’s make things happen as quickly as possible because there has been a long period of sterilisation.”
“We are pro-UK plc,” says Simon. “We think the UK is, as ever, attractive to international investment, and despite all that noise by government, we are pretty aggressive in terms of what we want to do with regard to our development portfolio, group expansion and delivering in the weeks, months and years ahead.”
Photos © Scarborough Group
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