Adversaries no more: collaboration not confrontation at Labour conference

Property-Shapers-Labour-125 Revolution was in the air at this year’s Labour Party conference. Outside Brighton’s conference centre a cardboard cut-out of Jeremy Corbyn advertised The Policy Factor, a talent show-style policy debate. Inside the hall the shadow chancellor was promising to change “the economic discourse in this country”.

Meanwhile, “Hands off our homes” leaflets were being pressed into delegates’ hands, inviting protestors to gather outside next month’s MIPIM UK.

But if that’s the atmosphere on the streets, beneath them the mood is very different. Counter-revolutionary, if you like.

On Sunday night 20 London Labour politicians, property developers and advisers gathered in the 500-year-old cellars below the Old Ship Hotel to talk collaboration. Council leaders and the private sector alike committed themselves to an agenda whose central premise is that working together is the key to unlocking delivery in housing and urban renewal.

To say that the attitudes at the dinner, staged by Mishcon de Reya and supported by Estates Gazette, were very different to the political consensus elsewhere at the conference is something of an understatement.

But that consensus presents a problem. These are difficult times for progressive local Labour leaders dealing with regeneration. Forcing tenants to move from their homes, even when more and better housing will follow, draws controversy. A Labour council that has worked to find the “best” way forward risks not only unwelcome headlines but also a reprimand from the national party.

Keir Starmer, a backbench MP when he accepted the invitation to dinner and a Labour frontbencher by the time his starter arrived, said he was determined to remove the “blockers” to delivery. Newham mayor Sir Robin Wales presented him with three demands.

“If we do a development where we are removing people but are building more homes, we want the front bench to back it,” he said. “We should be able to borrow any money we want to build more housing. And we need a new definition of affordability.”

For Claire Kober, leader of Haringey council, London authorities in this debate are no longer identified by whether they are blue or red, but by their pragmatism. “There are those politicians who are trying to bring forward regeneration and there are those that aren’t,” she said.

Developers and politicians around the table both identified s106 and viability assessments as part of the problem. Both contribute to the adversarial relationship between the public and private sectors – “armed neutrality” in the words of Essential Living’s Martin Bellinger. Here, clearly, both sides need to commit to change.

But survive these politically treacherous times and there are opportunities.

Legal & General’s head of public sector partnerships, Pete Gladwell, said he was looking to change the way his business invested. Rather than solely put money into a housebuilder directly or into a project via a joint venture, L&G wanted to also partner with a local authority to deliver housing – “a new form of capital that drives down the middle,” he said.

Deliver that and the likes of Sir Robin Wales will listen. “There are two types of developer,” he said. “If you are in and out, I don’t care about you. But if you are here for the long term, I want to develop a relationship.”

Priorities for the next mayor of London

With London set to elect a new mayor next May – surely a head-to-head (and perhaps too-close-to-call) fight between Conservative Zac Goldsmith and Labour’s Sadiq Kahn – conversation at the dinner turned to what Boris Johnson’s successor must deliver for the capital.

“The new mayor needs to explain to people who live in the city why development makes sense,” said Tony Travers, head of the Greater London Group at the London School of Economics. “He needs to explain why density, scale and tall buildings are needed.”

The consensus was for the mayor to focus on 10 areas: