The private and public sectors need to recognise they “aren’t that different” if they want to maximise long-term value through partnerships, attendees at the London Real Estate Forum were told today.
Fiona Fletcher-Smith, executive of development, enterprise and environment at the Greater London Authority, said that partnerships between private and public sectors provide certainty that deliver on shared goals.
Referring to the GLA’s partnership with L&Q, which is set to deliver 20,000 homes between now and 2021, Fletcher-Smith said: “Rather than an annual grant application where it’s a little uncertain whether you’ll get the money or not, we are saying to them ‘For this period of government funding, you’ve got the money. In return, we need you to develop 20,000 homes, 60% of which are affordable.’”
She added: “What’s missing from our conversation on long-term partnerships is a changing attitude between public and private sectors. We aren’t that different.
“The boundaries are very blurred, and it’s about building trust between two sides that aren’t really two sides.”
Clive Pane, a partner on the real estate team at Deloitte, said the projects he has worked on at Old Oak Common and Euston station have shown that partnerships can become “very busy” when there are too many interests at play.
He said: “Wherever I look, there’s huge aspiration and not much money available. So you’re trying to put together a patchwork of different funding sources and it’s very complicated.
“If I ever go into a room at the moment on any of those projects, I’m met by 20 different people from the public sector. What we’re asked to do without more centralisation of powers and more clarity on bringing that together makes it a very hard operating environment.”
Meanwhile, the future of Crossrail 2 is shaky because it has not been given the certainty that partnerships have the potential for, Michèle Dix, managing director of the project, said.
“We want to be certain that we have a project. That would help. What we’re promising is 200,000 new jobs and 200,000 new homes, but we need partners to deliver those homes,” she said.
Despite having a potential £60bn land value uplift within the Crossrail area, there has been no mechanism to capture that value, Dix said.
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