Residential and retail development are to play a larger part in British Land’s property portfolio, according to chief executive Chris Grigg.
Taking part in the Grand Debate at the IPD/IPF conference in Brighton, Grigg said that historically the REIT has done “very, very little retail development”, preferring to buy schemes.
“You will see us do more small scale development than historically we have done” he said.
Grigg distinguished between very large town or city centre schemes, which he said were very hard to drive returns without taking risks, but there was an opportunity to do “smaller scale stuff” given the lack of development finance and developers.
Separately when asked about residential, he said BL has had a long term but relatively small involvement in the London residential market which he saw increasing.
“I think on balance we will increase this somewhat. Part of that is an inevitable consequence of being a developer in the West End where if you build offices you have to include residential.”
He added that residential was “integral” to the London business, but outside of London the company had “no interest”.
bridget.oconnell@estatesgazette.com
