Delivery planning and development vehicles

PRD has considerable expertise in designing, structuring and mobilising routes to delivery, working out the best way for places and partners to realise their ambitions.

We advise councils, combined authorities, national agencies, public landowners, developers and investors on how regeneration is delivered: which body holds the powers, who carries the risk, how land is brought together, and what structure gives the market the confidence to commit. We have built partnerships, assessed delivery vehicles, designed the structures that followed and guided them through establishment and into operation.

Partnerships as priority

Public bodies rarely hold everything they need on their own. Land, powers, funding and delivery capacity sit across several organisations, and the arrangement between them determines what’s possible.

For example, in Peterborough, we completed a city centre regeneration strategic review that made the case for a Growth Board, then drafted the Board’s terms of reference by bringing Peterborough City Council, the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority and Homes England around a single table. We created a city centre vision that the Board has adopted as part of its approach, and developed the scope and the brief for the Development Framework that gives the vision spatial form.

Each piece has moved the partners closer to the questions of how the ambition is delivered and by whom.

Elsewhere, we have built partnerships of a similar kind, including a public-to-public land pooling arrangement between London and Continental Railways and Worthing Borough Council to unlock stalled town centre sites, and a public sector joint venture between LCR and Leeds City Council to capture the regeneration value created by investment at Leeds Station.

Objectives first, structure second

Partners don’t always want the same thing from a delivery vehicle, and the differences are worth discussing before a structure is chosen.

In Colchester, we ran officer and member sessions to define the objectives of a potential delivery vehicle, tested the adopted masterplan against both authorities’ corporate priorities, and ranked where officers and members placed their weight. The exercise evidenced strong alignment at both officer and political level and gave the options assessment a defined standard to measure against. It also raised a hard question early: whether each authority was driven by addressing market failure, by regeneration outcomes, or by financial return.

An objective assessment of the options

One size never fits all. A development corporation, a corporate joint venture, a land pooling arrangement, a development agreement and delivery through existing powers each suit different circumstances. The right answer comes from the ownership pattern, the scale of intervention required, the powers already held and the appetite of partners to share control.

We score options against criteria agreed with our clients and record what was discarded and why. In Colchester, we fully tested an option for a local development corporation alongside a land pool joint venture and a corporate joint venture, supported by precedent case studies and a legal opinion. We set it aside: establishing a new public authority would have been costly and slow, would have vested each authority’s powers in the corporation and reduced local control, and was a cumbersome route to what those partners wanted to achieve. Our recommendation was a land pool joint venture able to transition into another structure as the programme matured.

The test applies in reverse where a corporation is the stated ambition. The Peterborough Growth Board’s terms of reference, which we drafted, identify the route towards a Mayoral Development Corporation as an objective for the partners, and the questions that follow are the same ones: whether the powers fit the constraints, what statutory steps would be required, and what geography any such corporation should cover.

Recommendations of this kind are scrutinised through boards, cabinets and committees, and the record of what was considered and set aside forms part of what they are judged on.

Structures that carry investment

Much of this work deals with what has to be in place before development can come forward: the powers to assemble land, the route through the statutory processes, and a structure that gives funders and investors something to act on.

In Runcorn, we set out the delivery route and statutory powers required for the Station Quarter, including compulsory purchase, Transport and Works Act Orders and highways powers. In Limerick, we assessed the structures capable of delivering a major regeneration programme around Limerick Colbert station involving several public owners, and updated that assessment as the programme developed. In Northstowe, we diagnosed why an enterprise zone and local centre had stalled, prepared the development partner brief and facilitated the workshop that agreed the route forward. For Be First in Barking and Dagenham, we set out strategic delivery options for Thames Road, testing how an industrial corridor could be brought forward.

From recommendation to operating vehicle

We have also taken vehicles beyond the options stage and into operation.

For Lambeth we worked on a new housing and development venture from the strategic options stage through to an operating company. That covered the appraisal of delivery routes and the transfer or lease of assets, the Part I and Part II reports that took the proposition through cabinet, the governance proposals for the group of companies, incorporation, the shadow board arrangements and the first cycle of board papers, and the application to the regulator for For-Profit Registered Provider status.

Moving from an options paper to an operating company means settling how the venture will be governed, which assets will transfer to it and on what terms, and whether and how it should register with the regulator. Our work for Lambeth took the council through each of those decisions.

We have also prepared business plans for new entities, including the Global Centre of Rail Excellence in Wales, setting out how a new organisation would operate, what it would need and how it would sustain itself.

– To discuss how we can help with your partnership or venture, contact Martin Woodhouse.