Trust exercise: making regeneration partnerships work

Across the UK, local authority leaders are wrestling with the problem of how to reshape town and city centres to reflect new ways of living, working and playing. At the UKREiiF conference in Leeds, EG and Landsec brought together a group of public and private sector leaders to discuss their approaches to regeneration and the partnership that lies at the heart of successful schemes. For Jennifer Daothong, acting chief executive of Lewisham Council, there is everything to play for. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that 15-minute neighbourhoods started to be talked about in earnest during Covid, because that really has been a trigger for us to reimagine the places in which we live,” she says. “There is no longer this expectation that the way that you live is to travel a really long distance for five days a week and then do fun stuff at the weekends. It’s a real opportunity for boroughs like Lewisham, because we have been traditionally seen as a bit of a dormitory borough. There is now a chance for us to use this change in working patterns to refocus our efforts and our investment in some of the different neighbourhoods that we have across the borough.” Keeping a promise Driving some of the change in Lewisham is the team at Landsec, which owns the borough’s main shopping centre and plans to redevelop the site. Mike Hood, chief executive of Landsec’s regeneration division, says the scheme will share a sense of scale and ambition with the company’s other projects in Glasgow, Manchester, Cambridge and elsewhere in London. “There are a number of common themes – all of them are very large-scale, all of them are complex, none of them go entirely as we would plan, but the success of them is fundamentally built on partnership,” says Hood, who joined Landsec when it bought U+I. “There are three key themes,” Hood adds. “One is that they are all in partnership and need to be based on trust. The second is that we have meaningful engagement [with local communities] from the start, throughout and on an ongoing basis. And the third is that not only do we have creativity and brave solutions that perhaps U+I was known for, we also have huge technical capability and a balance sheet so that when we sit down with that community and we make a promise, we know that we can deliver it because we are a long-term investor in those cities and places and we have an alignment of interests.” He highlights Mayfield in Manchester, where the company partnered with the council, Transport for Greater Manchester and London & Continental Railways. “We completed our first project on site with the delivery of a new park there, which Manchester has lovingly adopted already,” he says. “The way we approached that project was to open the doors on day one, not put a hoarding up, and create a programme of temporary – and we hope to be permanent – activities on site that sought to engage with the community of Mayfield and the wider Manchester city centre on what would make a good solution. And that is now coming to life with the support from central government, and alignment with the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and Manchester City Council. That project is already delivering significant and important social impact for that community.” When the going gets tough Such partnerships are not easy, says Andreas Markides, vice-chairman of the Academy of Urbanism and chairman of Markides Associates, a transport planning consultancy. And the difficulty of getting everyone on the same page contributes to a lack of exemplary schemes. “What I find really puzzling is that we talk about 15-minute city principles and the concept is so easy to understand – we all believe in liveability, connectivity and all of that – but we don’t achieve it. Why do we fail to build around this principle?” There are several reasons, Markides suggests, but a key driver is a lack of an integrated approach to the work. “You have the project manager, you have the engineer, you have the architect, and they all work in silos – everybody does their own little job, but they don’t look at the project in its totality,” he adds. “This is very different to how the Europeans approach it. [In many European cities], everybody sits around a table, whether they are economists or engineers or planners, and they all put their thinking caps on and they produce a good-quality project.” Then there is time. Markides points to Freiburg in Germany, where head of planning Wulf Daseking has held his role for close to three decades, giving the city a continuity as it develops. “I’m afraid here [in the UK] we don’t have that luxury,” Markides adds. “Politics intervenes and every four or five years leaders change and they are not given the opportunity to achieve their vision.” Collaboration is key Council leaders identifying private-sector partners cannot afford missteps. Michelle Sacks, deputy chief executive for growth at the South & East Lincolnshire Councils Partnership, says collaboration is “absolutely key” as the council looks to make town centres across the region more attractive and increase visitors’ dwell time for local businesses. “It is absolutely trust and the ability to speak frankly with no fallouts,” Sacks says of what makes a good public-private partnership work. “We can only deliver in true collaboration. And it is also about remembering that while Mike and I might be having those conversations, we need to make sure we are engaging our health colleagues, our transport colleagues, our business colleagues, because they all have a part and a role to play.” Conversations should start early, Sacks adds. “If someone is interested in coming into my patch to invest and have a conversation, then I’m not going to push them through the formal planning process of a pre-app,” she says. “Come and chat to me and the wider team. We will bring who you need to speak to in order to talk through what might be a challenge. It’s an evolution of ideas from the very start. There is a collective ownership of that. Our politicians feel more connected to the result because they can see they have been able to influence the outcomes. If you don’t feel an emotional connection to a project, you’re not supporting it. You’ve got less skin in the game to make it work.” In Lewisham, Daothong wants partners who recognise that regeneration is “about empowering people to help create and forge their own destinies”. “What I’m looking for in a partner is somebody who is going to be with us on that journey, who is really going to listen to what it is that is important to us, what is important to our residents, what is important to our politicians,” she says. “And I always find in these partnerships that you understand how good they are when things get tough, because the people who are good partners will continue to talk to you and they will stick with it, even though it’s really hard. You need that when you are tackling thorny issues and difficult problems.” The panel Jennifer Daothong, acting chief executive, Lewisham Council  Mike Hood, chief executive of Regeneration division, Landsec  Andreas Markides, vice-chair, the Academy of Urbanism Michelle Sacks, deputy chief executive (growth), South & East Lincolnshire Councils Partnership In partnership with To send feedback, e-mail tim.burke@eg.co.uk or tweet @_tim_burke or @EGPropertyNews Photo © JMA Photography