EDITOR’S COMMENT Between them, Grosvenor’s James Raynor and Landsec’s Marcus Geddes have close to 60 years of experience in the real estate industry, although of course you wouldn’t know it to look at either of them.
In many industries – indeed, for some of their peers in property – that would be long enough to have dulled some of the enthusiasm. But in the pair’s exclusive interview with Estates Gazette this week, coinciding with Raynor taking over from Geddes as chair of the Westminster Property Association, a 240-member trade body for real estate firms operating in the borough, neither shows any sign of cynicism.
In fact, I came away from Dom Plaskota’s piece buoyed and happy to have heard two big names in the central London property market talk with passion about what their industry can achieve and offer. At a time when businesses are facing fresh problems seemingly by the day, that can’t be taken for granted.
Raynor wants to win “hearts and minds”, he says, “communicating the benefits of our sector’s investment”. “The social value delivered through development is invariably overlooked by the public,” he adds. Or, as Geddes puts it, “No one ever sees property developers as heroes… when you’re talking about good growth, it actually is an opportunity to celebrate what the industry does.”
Geddes leaves the role with plenty to be proud of, not least his work driving ahead the association’s Mastering My Future involvement.
That initiative, backed with £255,000 from association members, provides work experience, skills and training in the sector for people aged between 14 and 25 in Westminster and Kensington.
The WPA first teamed up with the Young Westminster Foundation in 2023, with members including BEAM, Gerald Eve, GPE, the Howard de Walden Estate, Landsec, the Pollen Estate, Shaftesbury Capital and Soho Estates.
The project teaches young people about the planning and development process, including investment, social value, sustainability, technology and communications.
Those are hearts and minds worth winning, getting a head-start on filling a pipeline of next generation developers, planners, agents, surveyors and more.
“If two or three of them – of 18, which is the current cohort – ended up getting jobs and getting in the sector, that’s fantastic,” Geddes says. “That’s real change and something that we’ve actually delivered.”
Both incoming and outgoing WPA chairs will know all too well the challenges that real estate developers in Westminster and the wider West End of London face.
Last year I reported on the potential for what Geddes then called a “catastrophic decline” in office space in the area if a more appropriate approach to planning was not taken. At that time, a study by the WPA and Arup had found that major planning applications in the borough had fallen by more than 80% since 2016.
And the crunch continues: Cushman & Wakefield said this week that there is only 5.9m sq ft of top office space under construction in London and available beyond 2025 – that’s less than a year’s supply.
The risks are perhaps better understood that they were, in no small part due to the work of the WPA and the voices of Geddes, Raynor and their peers.
Image © Colin Miller
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