Collaboration – the key to sustainable regeneration

Kerrigan Proctor, CEO of Legal & General Capital makes the case for joint working between local government and institutional investors.

This article was sponsored by Legal & General, Lead Sponsor of the 2nd Housing & Regeneration Finance Summit

The challenges for UK urban areas are increasing. There is significant pressure being placed on existing real estate, energy, transportation and social infrastructure. Strong house price growth over the past decade has made city living unaffordable for many, including workers vital to cities’ health, education and emergency response services.

These challenges are only intensifying. The needs for cities are broad, spanning from repositioning vacant and obsolete retail, to delivering low cost energy, new jobs supported by work space developments, and increasing housing provision through different housing tenures.

2nd Housing & Regeneration Finance Summit
October 31, 2019, County Hall, London

Setting the foundations for healthy and well-enabled towns and cities from the outset, and moving away from piecemeal development, is therefore becoming increasingly important. Early dialogue with local authorities and stakeholders, on how development and investment can most benefit the community, will be vital to creating healthy places of the future.

Institutions and local authorities now have a prime opportunity to work together to redesign towns and cities to meet local needs, whilst addressing the critical funding gap which has held back historic progress. At Legal & General, we believe in creating thriving cities and sustainable communities, with good employment opportunities, the provision of high quality and varied housing, alongside enhanced infrastructure, in a digitally-connected, clean and safe environment. We also believe in being flexible to local dynamics and requirements.

Take our recent partnership with Oxford University, where we will be prioritising affordable and key worker housing for the city, in line with local demands. With its world-class university, Oxford is one of the UK’s fastest growing cities and competes among the top technology clusters in the world. The city however lacks adequate housing which is essential for the university to continue to attract research graduates and retain key staff members. 

The social impact of quality housing is something which needs to be front and centre of any new scheme or large scale development. Legal & General’s house building business, for example, has made this a central part of its ethos. Its 250-acre housing community, Buckler’s Park, has implemented a Social Value Charter and Tool Kit to monitor and communicate how much value is being generated for the local community, over and above Section 106 and planning obligations. Alongside, it has placed a weighting on social capital creation on its tendering. On two contracts alone, this has created almost £3 million of social value for the local community.

But it is not just housing which needs attention and substantial funding. Air quality in urban locations is deteriorating and remains poor. Vehicle congestion, building concentration, poor design, and piecemeal heating and cooling installations have exacerbated urban microclimates. There is an urgent need to act to reverse these issues, creating healthy towns and cities for future generations to come.

The future of our energy system must be clean and more responsive to consumers, with reduced costs. Necessary infrastructure should be considered in any city plan as a matter of urgency. Though its recent investments in renewable wind and solar power – through NTR Plc and Oxford Photovoltaics – as well as electric vehicle charging infrastructure business Pod Point, Legal & General is investing long-term capital into the evolving landscape of the energy sector. Against an increasing climate crisis, never has it been more important to update technologies and accelerate progress to a low cost, low carbon economy.

The way we live, learn, work and play has evolved significant. With 83% of the UK’s population now living in urban areas, future proofing our urban environments and reshape cities is now critical to both health and wellbeing. It is time to unite those that steward the nation’s capital with those who steward place, making a positive social difference across the country.