Appendix 1

London Assembly Regeneration Committee - Wednesday 9 October 2019

Transcript of Agenda item 5 – Public Land Disposals and Regeneration

Tony Devenish AM (Chairman): We have quickly moved on to the most substantive item today.

I welcome each of our guests: working from my left to right, Peter Lewis, Interim Chief Finance Officer, Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC); Matthew Punshon, Interim Director of Estate Strategy, Service (MPS); Sue Budden, Director of Corporate Services, Fire Brigade (LFB); from our home team James Murray, Deputy Mayor [for Housing and Residential Development], and Justin Carr, Assistant Director [of Public Land, Authority (GLA)]; David Gooch from Network Homes; Martin Rooney from the National Health Service (NHS); and Lester Hampson from (TfL). Welcome.

All right. Shall we start with the questions? Let us go straight into it. Each of you - MOPAC, the LFB and the NHS - can answer in turn. Could you briefly describe the estate ownership structure in your public body and the mechanism you have in place to identify and bring surplus land to market, please? Who would like to kick off? Sue?

Sue Budden (Director of Corporate Services, LFB): I can do [that]. We are probably the simpler of the organisations [in terms of estates] in front of you. The majority of our estate now is fire stations and so our estate is operational, owned by the (LFC), Dany Cotton. The governance structure above that is through the Deputy Mayor [for Fire and Resilience] to the Mayor. Any acquisitions or disposals to have to be prior approved by the Deputy Mayor [for Fire and Resilience] before the LFC takes the final decision. That is our structure.

Our estates strategy is much more about refurbishing and the quality of the estate to make it fit for operational purposes rather than disposals. We did go through a disposal process following our Fifth London Safety Plan but we do not have any further plans at the moment to close stations or dispose of land.

Tony Devenish AM (Chairman): I will not ask you the first part of the next bit of the question, but could you provide an indication of the potential for disposal and delivery over the next three to five years? Is there anything coming forth?

Sue Budden (Director of Corporate Services, LFB): We have a couple of tiny sites that have masts on them and there is an underground toilet in Brompton. They are really de minimis sites now. We do not have anything coming up.

Tony Devenish AM (Chairman): Thank you. The MPS, please?

Peter Lewis (Interim Chief Finance Officer, MOPAC): Perhaps if I can take the first part of the question, Chairman, in terms of the structure, the land holding is via MOPAC. It is responsible for the property portfolio and clearly a very similar structure to the LFC in the sense of decision-making through the Deputy Mayor [for Policing and Crime] as appropriate. Identification of operational requirements feeds into that.

Perhaps if I can ask my colleague Matthew to talk to you about how surplus sites are identified, you will get a fuller answer.

Tony Devenish AM (Chairman): Thank you.

Matthew Punshon (Interim Director of Estate Strategy, MPS): Thank you, Chairman. We have over the last 10 years had two sets of estate strategies focusing on the agenda of reduction. The first part of the estate strategy was looking really at rationalising the estate and pushing people into corners where we could create space. The second part, which is the more critical part, over the last three years has been focused on an operational transformation that has been happening within the MPS. Once we sold New Scotland Yard, we raised enough cash to start buying the mobile technology that we needed to have, which fundamentally changed the way that we operate and enabled us to consolidate into a larger set of buildings.

We start out with a requirement from the operations. The Estates Team then focuses on where that requirement will land into the estate and then the utilisation of that estate, meeting utilisation targets, standard government property agency type targets, which throws up a series of surplus properties, generally the smaller properties around but not necessarily all smaller properties. We have sitting at the moment in our disposal list about 75 properties for disposal. The three big ones are Paddington Green and two sites at Hendon still.

The question at the moment is that we are revising our entire estate strategy in the light of the Prime Minister’s [The Rt Hon MP] announcement of the uplift of 20,000 police officers. As you may be aware, the Mayor has asked for 6,000 officers from that, which will also include between 1,000 and 2,000 additional staff. That requires a fundamental look at the estate. That being said, the strategy does not change that much because the consolidation down into larger buildings and having more mobile offices is the key. If you look at our estate over the next 10 years, there may be a few sites that we will retain that are currently on the disposal list, but the bulk – my guess at the moment and it is still under review – will remain on the disposal list.

To give an indication of size, apart from the big ones we spoke about – Paddington Green and Hendon are about 50% of our estate with about 1,200 expected units to be built on those two sites – the rest are spread across the other 70-odd sites with a rough average of 20 to 25 units per site.

Tony Devenish AM (Chairman): Great, thank you. The NHS?

Martin Rooney (Director of Partnerships, Strategic Estates Planning Service, NHS): Hello. I am here as a representative of the national Strategic Estates Planning Team in the NHS and so some of my observations are based on the national picture. I am happy to do my best to answer London-specific queries.

In relation to our ownership structure, it is possibly fair to say that it is more complex than some of the descriptions you have already heard today. Across almost 30 individual NHS trust organisations and NHS Property Services, there are a whole series of different estate ownership models and plans in place.

The question was around how sites are potentially identified as surplus and taken forward for disposal. There is an NHS-wide policy called the Estates Code, which defines how sites are identified, brought forward and ultimately disposed of in order to secure best value.

I guess the key message in relation to the question is that at the moment in the NHS we are trying to drive and derive surplus land and efficiency through estates management on the back of a clinically led and service-led

change to NHS services. We are doing that across five sustainability and transformation partnership (STP) level estate strategies. In each of those estate strategies, there is an efficiency drive and a disposable plan and pipeline. Ultimately, because of the requirements of the Estates Code that I mentioned a minute or two ago, organisations are required to bring forward sites that are known to be surplus. Once they are declared surplus, they go through a fairly well-established process of advertising sites for other public sector use first before releasing them onto the open market.

I am happy to elaborate a little bit further on that as part of the discussion. Does that answer the question?

Tony Devenish AM (Chairman): Yes, for now. James, you have been in post now for three years and you are working to your main target of building the houses you need to build, but how have you worked with each of these three bodies to simplify the process and try to drive forward the disposal of sites and more mixed developments and particularly housing?

James Murray (Deputy Mayor for Housing and Residential Development): We found very clearly when we came into office that, although public sector landowners might know where some of their land holdings are, the really hard bit is to work out which are surplus or to actually make them surplus by consolidating, reorganising and changing how services are delivered. That is actually the really hard work. Finding the ownership is not the easy bit and I do not want to imply that any of it is easy, but the real hard work lies in working out which sites are surplus and which can be brought forward for housing.

We have been having very much close working relationships with the individual public sector landowners, whether that is the NHS trusts across London. Rather than going in right at the top and trying to get an agreement from the Secretary of State or someone at the to order an NHS trust to do something, we have found it much more effective to be working with the NHS trusts more from the bottom up to work out what their strategies are for their sites.

A good example is working with the mental health trust around the St Ann’s Hospital site in Haringey. We came to a really good solution there, whereby the mental health trust got the capital receipt that it needed for its new health facilities and we got control of the site, which is now out to tender on the London Development Panel.

Another good example is the Whittington Health Trust, which is at a much earlier state of progression, but we are working with the Whittington Health Trust and look at all of the operations on its estate to see whether at some point there will be some land that can be used for housing in a way that we might support. There is an ongoing relationship there.

I have found that there is no shortcut to it. It is just a lot of hard work on behalf of the people both in the services and from the GLA Housing Team to support them to work out which sites can be brought forward. It is not one way you can click your fingers and it all happens because these are complicated sites. We want to be careful what we do with them because they are in public ownership. It is hard graft, but we can see in terms of what we have achieved over the last few years that we are making progress.

Tony Devenish AM (Chairman): Thank you.

Navin Shah AM (Deputy Chair): My question is with regards to NHS land availability. We found it very difficult to get an idea of what disposable land is available and so we ended up writing to the Health Minister. We had a reply this week to confirm that up-to-date information on available NHS land could not be released

due to commercial sensitivity. He has directed us to surplus land data on NHS Digital, which is updated only on an annual basis. That really is very unhelpful to say the least.

A question to you is: can you tell us whether the NHS follows the 2015 Local Government Transparency Code? It says that “commercial confidentiality should not in itself be reason for local authorities not to be transparent.” Do you agree with the statement made by the Government. The question, therefore, is: why is the NHS not being transparent?

Martin Rooney (Director of Partnerships, Strategic Estates Planning Service, NHS): I do not believe there is an effort to not be transparent and to not comply with best practice in terms of transparency. It is fair to say that, with regard to freedom of information legislation, there will at times be certain pieces of information that are commercially confidential.

However, when it comes to the strategic estate planning and disposal of surplus land agenda, there are a whole raft of factors that make the conversation for the NHS and the partners that we work with an ongoing conversation and something that is worth engaging with and we do that at an officer level on a frequent basis. Service change, clinical models and other things mean that it is sometimes difficult to be very clear on exactly when it is the right time to speak very openly about a piece of surplus land. We have very strict governance arrangements that mean that until land is formally declared surplus either by the board of the owner or the commissioning organisation in relation to where the services are delivered from, it is probably inappropriate to publicise the information.

Of course, we are trying to comply with the ongoing and existing obligations around public consultation requirements as well, which are enshrined in the rules that the regulators have in place across the NHS.

Navin Shah AM (Deputy Chair): Yes, but, you see, the problem here is that you are operating a system that is different from other public sector bodies, which are clearly more transparent. That also helps the wider community not only to have the information but must help disposal, more so in a competitive manner, of the land that they have.

Is this lack of information hampering the development of your NHS land? Surely it must do. I am still staggered that you are not following the Government code, which does not treat commercial confidentiality as a reason to hold back information on land. It is just staggering that you are acting on your own and differently than other public sector bodies.

Martin Rooney (Director of Partnerships, Strategic Estates Planning Service, NHS): OK. I will have to take that challenge away and deal with it with the support of colleagues, but in relation to our work in London and elsewhere, our STPs and Strategic Estate Plans do include lots of partner-based conversations and we are involving partners in the early stages of considering whether land is capable of being made surplus. Putting the information in the public domain is a fair challenge and it is one that we would need to respond to as a follow-up to this inquiry.

Navin Shah AM (Deputy Chair): We would very much welcome a detailed response as to your approach and whether you are, in the light of what has come about, prepared to review the position in terms of both accountability and transparency as well as something that might and should help in the long run. Also, while you do that, can you also see whether you can review your current approach of updating your surplus land data digital services, rather than on an annual basis, more on a quarterly basis? That would help as well. If you can please write to us and engage with us with all those details, that will be appreciated.

Martin Rooney (Director of Partnerships, Strategic Estates Planning Service, NHS): Yes, OK.

Navin Shah AM (Deputy Chair): If I can move on to James, the Mayor’s London Estates Delivery Unit (LEDU) was established over a year ago and that was to co-ordinate NHS estates management in London and to help accelerate the development of those NHS land packages. What difference do you think this LEDU has made to NHS land development in London?

James Murray (Deputy Mayor for Housing and Residential Development): It has started to make a really positive difference, having people who have the connections to the NHS sitting there alongside people in the GLA’s Housing Team so that connections can be made very quickly and so that people can be kept in the loop around what opportunities there might be.

As I said in my answer to Assembly Member Devenish earlier on, what really strikes me around the NHS - and this applies to other public sector landowners as well but particularly the NHS - is that it is just hard, detailed work because the publicly owned land that NHS trusts operate from provide public services. It is valuable public land and we need to make sure the services are protected.

What has been really important to me, is that we have established a way that we can engage with the NHS trusts as they develop their proposals whilst retaining a decision to be taken at some point later down the line by the GLA about whether to support those plans for changing services. There may, for instance, be changes to services that the NHS trusts come up with which we do not support. We have to have a way of interacting with them earlier on to discuss in principle what they would do and then at a later point decide whether we want to work fully with them or whether we want to say, “No, we do not agree with what you have proposed”. That is why the Mayor’s six tests or assurances are so important because they mean that we can talk to NHS trusts earlier on but everyone is fully aware that we are going to have to run any specific proposals by those assurances and make sure they are met before we work with the NHS trusts about delivering or the plans that they have. Having that understanding through the LEDU of the clinical operations is really vital because otherwise you have the NHS trusts talking effectively one language and housing professionals in the GLA talking a different language. The translator or the way to bring that together is through the LEDU.

Navin Shah AM (Deputy Chair): Could you also tell me why the LEDU has not prioritised access to information on available NHS land in London, particularly in the light of what you have just heard? It is to no one’s benefit that we find ourselves in the situation that we have with NHS land information that is out in the public domain.

James Murray (Deputy Mayor for Housing and Residential Development): In terms of the publicly available information, the GLA does not have a database of the NHS trusts’ land and exactly what their plans are. That is the work that we have to do. We might know where they own the land but we have to talk to them about what their plans are. For me it is important that once they have got to a situation where they want to propose some kind of transformation or some kind of changes, then we run them by the six assurances that I mentioned and make sure that it is all done properly and transparently wherever it needs to be done so. In a way, there is a question about how much information we would have at the GLA because we are not necessarily going to be involved in every decision the NHS trusts take, but it is making sure that when we are involved we all understand the terms on which that takes place.

Navin Shah AM (Deputy Chair): Thank you.

Tony Devenish AM (Chairman): Thank you.

Joanne McCartney AM: My question is on NHS land and so, Martin, it is to you. Sir Robert Naylor recently undertook a review of NHS estates across England1 and he said that “London has the greatest potential for disposal of NHS land but had the greatest need for the upgrade of its facilities.” What have you found to have been the major barriers to disposal of land in the city?

Martin Rooney (Director of Partnerships, Strategic Estates Planning Service, NHS): It is an excellent question and it probably has the same answer as would relate to most of the other major cities, which is that the ambition around service change, the extent of the upgrade that is often necessary to some of the older NHS estate and the ambition around releasing value are all very long-term, complex projects that require extensive local stakeholder buy-in and a whole raft of commercial skills and approaches that are not always readily available to the organisations concerned. Those tend to be the pressures that we are dealing with.

In Sir Robert Naylor’s report and the Government’s response to it, the ambition around transformational change that was properly recognised in the case of London represents a very long-term vision for transformation. As you will be aware, there were recently some announcements under a new initiative, the Health Infrastructure Plan, which releases further capital for investment. These are long-term transformation projects and they are complex, as I have said earlier, and they require a lot of buy-in from partners who need to perhaps have early detailed conversations in a way that enables that kind of scale of change.

It is complexity and long term and partnership-driven solutions, they are not always easy to deliver given those features.

Joanne McCartney AM: That might be a part answer to my next question. The scale of the housing crisis is such that the Government has given itself targets of selling off surplus Government land. For example, it has promised to sell £5 billion worth by 2020 and build 160,000 homes. It is not going to meet that target. I understand that the NHS was given a target of building 125,000 homes in London by 20282. Are you monitoring that and are you on target?

Martin Rooney (Director of Partnerships, Strategic Estates Planning Service, NHS): We are monitoring the performance both within London and nationally. It is fair to say and I probably will not surprise anybody with news that performance against those targets is behind programme.

That probably illustrates the point I was just making about the long term and the complexity. Perhaps in setting targets for housing growth and development on former public land, particularly when the services on that land are often cherished, nurtured, loved and respected by local communities, that kind of transformational change is more complex over time. I suspect that that is a key impediment to the more speedy delivery of that transformation and of that mission to bring land forward. However, in common with other comments that you have heard today, the collaboration between the GLA and the NHS and the colocation of our Strategic Estates Planning Service and the Housing and Land Team within the LEDU is evidence of our energy to work locally and within London more closely on those twin agendas of clinical service transformation and housing growth.

Joanne McCartney AM: Thank you. Chairman, it might be useful if we could ask for some data after the meeting about whether they are on track and where they are with that housebuilding programme.

1 NHS Property and Estates. Why the estate matters for patients, An independent report by Sir Robert Naylor for the Secretary of State for Health.

2 Following the meeting, Mr Rooney clarified that he did not recognise the target for the NHS of building 125,000 homes in London by 2028.

You have talked about the length of time it takes to change the delivery of services and therefore free up land. Has the possibility of a property market slowdown or decline due to Brexit factored into your proposals or discussions so far?

Martin Rooney (Director of Partnerships, Strategic Estates Planning Service, NHS): We have not done any official work that would be capable of being reported on in that regard. Certainly, in a London context I would expect that the kind of sites and the kind of opportunities we are talking about would still be very attractive in terms of development opportunities, even if values were affected in the way that you describe.

Joanne McCartney AM: There is one other issue I want to ask about. The Government promised that NHS staff would have first dibs on homes built on surplus NHS land. You may not have it now, but do you know how many NHS staff have been able to take advantage of that?

Martin Rooney (Director of Partnerships, Strategic Estates Planning Service, NHS): This is a question that was recently put to us and the LEDU and a response was provided. We have not tracked the trajectory. It was not so much first dibs for all the housing on land; there was a target around a proportion provided for either keyworkers or NHS staff. We certainly have developed a pilot focusing on five London sites and there was some feedback given recently in relation to how that has gone. We intend to track that more closely in future.

Joanne McCartney AM: OK. Perhaps you could write to us after the meeting. That would be helpful as well.

Could I quickly go to James? I know the St Ann’s site is in my constituency. There, as part of the package, you are aiming to put some homes for NHS staff. Is that right?

James Murray (Deputy Mayor for Housing and Residential Development): Yes, that is right. A variety of different sorts of affordable housing is going to be on the St Ann’s site including social rent and potentially some council housing, community-led homes and so on. Alongside that, there are going to be some London Living Rent homes and a number of those are ringfenced for NHS staff in particular. It is a good example where the London Living Rent is at a level where it could be affordable to a lot of people working in the NHS. This is one where, through a bespoke arrangement for this site, we are ringfencing them for NHS workers. Yes, it is a good example of how we can do that.

Joanne McCartney AM: Thank you.

Tony Devenish AM (Chairman): Thank you. Proposals were put forward in the 2017 Housing White Paper that best consideration restrictions should be lifted for local government and other public sector landowners. How do you see the pros and cons of such a proposal? Is it working? Perhaps, if possible, we could start with Lester on this one.

Lester Hampson (Director of Property Development, TfL): ‘Best value’ is one of those phrases. What does it mean? If you take it in its pure narrowest sense, it is just about pounds and pence, but actually it is a wider remit than that. All of us within the public sector have a remit to deliver best value in this narrow sense but also in the wider sense of how we provide that social purpose too. That is something that very much drives our approach to development.

When we build our programme, we think there are some sites that we know will bring forward at less than existing use value and we will go through a Mayoral Direction to allow us to do that. This is to allow us to deliver our programme at a 50% level, which is our commitment.

Tony Devenish AM (Chairman): Thank you. The MPS?

Matthew Punshon (Interim Director of Estate Strategy, MPS): We are slightly different in that we come under the Police and Crime Act [Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011] and we have an obligation to deliver value for money rather than best value. Our value for money is driven by the second part of our statutory responsibility, which is to deliver efficient and effective policing, and so we are wholly focused in on efficient and effective policing against raising money and value for money. That makes us a little different to your question.

Tony Devenish AM (Chairman): Thank you. The LFB?

Sue Budden (Director of Corporate Services, LFB): We are sort of similar to the police position. We have a best consideration [that is] reasonably obtainable structure. We are also constrained in what we can do as a fire brigade. We have found that the best consideration has limited our ability to be maybe as responsive as the GLA would have liked around the Homes for Londoners agenda. It would be interesting to see, if that was relaxed for us, what that would mean if we were to dispose of sites into the future.

Tony Devenish AM (Chairman): Thank you. The NHS?

Martin Rooney (Director of Partnerships, Strategic Estates Planning Service, NHS): In accordance with the Estates Code policy I mentioned earlier, the best value consideration is the key component of that, but given the London context, the Mayor’s six tests and the explanation that was given earlier, we would expect to see the best value considerations mitigated by that challenge between the GLA and trusts in relation to how sites are taken forward, declared surplus and disposed of.

Tony Devenish AM (Chairman): I should ask the person who has not had a word yet. David, what do you think from the housing association point of view?

David Gooch (Director of Development, Network Homes): If I just explain who I am in the first instance, I am Development Director for Network Homes, which is a strategic partner of the Mayor. We have an ambition to deliver around 1,000 affordable homes per year.

We have had some success of late working with an NHS trust with two significant land acquisitions, Northwick Park and Central [Hospital]. The whole issue of best consideration was very material and it did require NHS Improvement (NHSI) to take second valuation advice to make sure that it had secured best value for those sites.

What was key for those transactions was that we did have the GLA acting as a broker to make sure everything was being brought in a very transparent way to the surface and we also had co-operation from other key partners such as Brent Council and adjoining landowners. It is extremely complex and I do recognise from working with the estates team at Northwick Park that their mission was really to generate funds for clinical improvements and improvements of the estate. The fact that we were trying to maximise the amount of rented accommodation on the new proposals, there was some conflict, but through the brokerage and intermediary advice from Justin [Carr, Assistant Director, Public Land] and Nick Taylor [Head of Area - North

West] of the GLA, we were able to come to an agreed common position, which enabled those sites to go through.

We now have to go through the whole planning process before we get on to delivery, but that is a good foundation stone for future joint working with the NHS.

Tony Devenish AM (Chairman): Thank you. Sorry to ask Lester this question, but it is a separate question for Lester from everybody else in terms of you having probably more sites than anyone else in London. Have you so far had the chance to see if any of your sites are adjacent to any of the sites of the other public landowners and drive those forward?

Lester Hampson (Director of Property Development, TfL): Actually, we have all met certainly over the course of the last two years and perhaps some of us over the last year.

It is a fair call. Should we be trying to do more together? We do know each other, and we know the size of our respective programmes. We have been concentrating primarily on our own sites to deliver our 10,000 homes, but as we move into the next phase and there is creative collaboration perhaps that events like today offer us, it is something that we should all be embracing.

Tony Devenish AM (Chairman): James will be buying the coffee next month and setting something up to try to drive that forward! Excellent.

The next question is partially a repeat of what we have said already, but I would like to try to get a bit more granularity, if I can, really. What we are all saying is that at present developing public land can involve scrutiny at national, regional and local levels.

In your experience, how significant an obstacle are these layers of decision-making present in getting schemes into development? It does seem far too complicated. Is there any way we could try to simplify it down, do you believe? Who wants to start with that one?

James Murray (Deputy Mayor for Housing and Residential Development): I could just add something. It actually connects to the point you were discussing with other members of the panel about best value because of the financial thresholds that are associated with that and the fact that there is a £10 million gap or 30% of the value of the of the land that we have to get sign-off from the Secretary of State [for Housing, Communities and Local Government]. There are ways that we can help to mitigate that risk, but it does seem ridiculous that when we want to bring land forward for housing with high levels of affordable housing we have to get signoff from the Secretary of State for that.

That would feed into a broader devolution question. Yes, you could relax the financial threshold, or you could just devolve it and say, “You know what? We are going to trust you to get on with it in London. Do what you want with the land. If Londoners do not like it, they will make it known at the next election”. That would be a better way of doing it, rather than having to keep running off to the Secretary of State to get signoff for individual land parcels.

Tony Devenish AM (Chairman): Is there anything else in terms of those kinds of powers that would help the process going forward?

James Murray (Deputy Mayor for Housing and Residential Development): There are a lot of discussions we have been having with the Secretary of State’s team and with the Ministry [of Housing,

Communities and Local Government]. Just to put in context very briefly my earlier point around working bottom-up with organisations versus top-down, we are doing both. We are working with the NHS trusts and with the other public services to make sure we are working on a site-by-site level to work out what is going on. We are also continuing discussions with the Department. I suppose what I was saying earlier is that we are not relying on a national change to make things happen. We are leading on the ground at the same time.

Notwithstanding that caveat, one of the obvious points we have been making to the Ministry is around the resourcing of public sector bodies, which is something we hear quite a lot when we are talking about homebuilding generally being led by the public sector or land or development in its broadest sense. We just need more capacity. We need more resourcing to be able to acquire the land and to have the people employed to deliver it.

Another thing that should be helpful is if central Government departments could agree with us - or delegate to us even - a level of affordable housing to be delivered across public sector sites. We effectively are doing that via the , where we are saying we expect 50% to be delivered on public sector sites, but that is through planning. It would be quicker and more straightforward if that were a target as well for the public sector landowners enforced centrally and then there would not be any question and there would not be any debate around it. It would just be all agreed upfront.

I guess the one other thing I would mention as well is around giving the GLA some kind of right of first refusal when land is being disposed of. You could very quickly get into a situation where, if you had a public sector body or a central Government department identifying land as surplus, it would come straight to the GLA. You would know how much affordable housing and therefore you could find you it quite straightforwardly. “GLA, do you want it?” “Yes.” “Great. There you go.” That means the Department can then back off. It has its money and does not need to worry about it. We can take it and work with who we want to build housing. At the moment, the central Government departments end up having to stay quite involved quite far down the line and getting into housing development, which is not what they want to be spending their time on, in most cases. If it was clearer on the amount of affordable housing, if we had a first refusal and if we had the resources we need to make this operational, we could make the whole thing much quicker: the public sector agency or department finds the land, knows what the value is, sells it or hands it over to the GLA, and we build homes.

Tony Devenish AM (Chairman): Thank you. I have on my sheet that I should ask all the other guests the same question in terms of your perspectives. I doubt you all want to answer the question, but I was going to ask David if he has anything he wants to add. Do you think regional devolution would particularly help drive forward the agenda?

David Gooch (Director of Development, Network Homes): In the case of our own workings with Brent [Council], it does place a lot of risk on us as an organisation when we know there is a senior approval that is outside our normal governance arrangements. In respect of a couple of deals that did go through, it was really the last week of March that those approvals came through. If there was a structure whereby there was a London basis for the decisions, we would definitely be in support of that.

Tony Devenish AM (Chairman): How much time did it add to the process in your two deals, roughly? Six weeks? Six months?

David Gooch (Director of Development, Network Homes): It was more the risk. It was the fact that we do not have that connection with the Secretary of State, whereas we do have a connection with the London Mayor.

Tony Devenish AM (Chairman): Thank you.

Navin Shah AM (Deputy Chair): David, on a couple of occasions you mentioned the Brent scheme, which I am aware of and have had a briefing through your company and other partners fairly recently. It is an interesting partnership project involving two public sector bodies and Brent, of course, and so on, which is excellent news. That is, I believe, the right direction and the way forward. Are there any other examples or is this currently the only one?

David Gooch (Director of Development, Network Homes): We fought very hard to be a member of the Mayor’s London Development Panel. We are on that with partners. We see that as a forum where we will get access to other sites. The acquisition of the St Ann’s Hospital did secure a great opportunity in Haringey. It is one that we have looked into at a high level but we have chosen to step back from it, but that is where we think we will be spending a lot of our time working through those opportunities. We are currently a few days away from submitting a project on one of the TfL sites in Hounslow and so there is a supply coming through.

I guess one of our anxieties is that our current funding programme goes through to 2021/22 and some of the vacant possession of these sites and the buildout of these sites will go far beyond [that]. Again, the future funding programme over the next five to seven years is something that we would obviously be keen to better understand.

Justin has not spoken yet. Is there anything you wanted to say on any of the questions so far or shall I will move on?

Justin Carr (Assistant Director - Public Land, GLA: Maybe just to pick up the point about best consideration. The thing I have found working with the different Governmental departments and the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government is that there is quite a lot of different guidance that applies. Some of it applies to everybody. Some of it applies only to one body or other. You have the Treasury’s managing public money guidance and then you have the Department of Health Estates Code and there is Cabinet Office guidance also around public land disposal. They all say slightly different things about how you can deal with off-market disposals as happened, for example, with Network Homes. We have made the case that it would be really helpful if there was a single source of information that was clearer. Also, you have a different regime for the GLA and the councils, as James [Murray] was explaining, in terms of best consideration and some very specific rules about that, which are not helpful, either.

Tony Devenish AM (Chairman): OK. We will try to sort that out for the next General Election, hopefully.

Andrew Dismore AM: Thanks. Could I ask a couple of questions first about best consideration to Sue? The disposal was quite an example of that when we had the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority (LFEPA). The Mayor overruled LFEPA to try to get the disposal for less than best consideration.

Sue Budden (Director of Corporate Services, LFB): We had a [Mayoral] Direction to sell the site for a free school and we had a valuation that supported what we did.

Andrew Dismore AM: Yes. I just wondered where the Clerkenwell disposal is at? Is that bogged down because of the need for best consideration?

Sue Budden (Director of Corporate Services, LFB): Clerkenwell is quite a lengthy story, as you know. The original decision of LFEPA was to sell it unconditionally. We were unable to do that in a way that would

have satisfied the planning brief that the Council had and so all the offers we had were all withdrawn. We are now in discussion with the GLA and Islington [Council] about the future of that site, which I am hopeful will come to a good conclusion fairly soon. It has taken us a while to get to that.

Andrew Dismore AM: Would one option be to try to have more accommodation for keyworkers or is that going to get bogged down because of the best consideration rules?

Sue Budden (Director of Corporate Services, LFB): The decision was to dispose of it and not to retain it. It has a rough-sleeping meanwhile use now in there and so it is being used. On the single person’s quarters, we do that more on the stations that we continue to own, and because we had a decision to dispose of Clerkenwell, that is the route we are taking at the moment.

Andrew Dismore AM: I have some more questions about keyworker housing further on and so I will come back to that. Has the Albert Embankment been sold yet or is that still --

Sue Budden (Director of Corporate Services, LFB): That is subject to planning. We have a development agreement with a company called U+I. They have put a planning application in and we are currently expecting that at the Planning Committee. It will either be 5 or 26 November [2019]. We do not have a final date yet. Depending on what happens then, we will know whether we will be disposing of it or not.

Andrew Dismore AM: Going back to what I am supposed to be asking about, I will start with TfL on this one. What can be done to improve how our communities are consulted over decisions to dispose of local public assets, particularly decisions on future use?

Lester Hampson (Director of Property Development, TfL): For TfL, we are now working on 59 sites. We are awaiting planning consents to come through for 1,000 homes. We intend to make planning applications for between 4,000 and 5,000 homes over the next of six months.

The single biggest issue we have is the one you have raised: how to involve the communities in how we shape our plans and how we bring them through the planning process. We have been working with the Mayor’s Design Advocates to make sure that they hold us to account to produce good buildings. We have been working with the Mayor’s Design Advocate, Daisy Froud to find the best approach to community engagement. What is engagement? It is not a tick-box exercise. You really have to approach it in that you want to listen to the communities in which you are operating. You want to almost cocreate the solutions and involve them right through the process. It is not about flying in, doing a public exhibition and leaving. It has to be continual engagement right through the process.

Andrew Dismore AM: That is probably right, but it does not seem to be happening that way. We have several big sites in Barnet; we had the Golders Green one that collapsed because the public were not properly consulted; we now have the one in Colindale; we have the one in Finchley; and we have the one in High Barnet. They are all creating a lot of kickback because people think they are not being considered or listened to and that you are just going to go ahead and bulldoze things through as you usually do.

How are you going to try to reassure those people that their concerns are being taken into account in those major schemes?

As you say, there are thousands of homes involved as well, which is very important. One of the key issues, for example, is taking away all the carparking near Tube stations, which is a false economy. If the idea is to try to

get people to use more public transport, people will just drive into London if they cannot park next to the Tube stations.

Lester Hampson (Director of Property Development, TfL): If we look at Finchley Central and High Barnet by way of example, we have had a first round of public engagement and we have been listening. We will start our next round of public engagement very shortly. The public can see that our plans have been modified, taking on board some of their concerns. The first time you come out is with, “These are our crude proposals. Please feedback”. We then have to be seen to be listening and to be responding to the concerns that they raise. It is at the second and third rounds that you should see the results of consultation.

Andrew Dismore AM: You do modify the schemes?

Lester Hampson (Director of Property Development, TfL): We listen, we take on board what the public are telling us - and they are telling us - and then we have to bear in mind what our remit is, which is to produce affordable homes and to work through the Mayor’s Transport Strategy [MTS], which has a long-term plan to reduce car usage within London.

Andrew Dismore AM: Yes, but if the net result is to increase car usage? Sorry, this is getting a bit parochial now, but if you take away the carparking next to outer London Tube stations where people park and get on the Tube and come into London, and they cannot park there and they cannot get to the Tube station any other way, they are going to drive into London.

Lester Hampson (Director of Property Development, TfL): For any carpark that we are looking to redevelop - and I am very happy to take this offline as well if you want to do it in more detail - we survey all our sites to see where people are parking and where people are driving from. We find from the survey work that a large part of the carparking population are coming from beyond the immediate catchment of that carpark. They are coming to park in our carparks and go on holiday because our carparking is cheaper than elsewhere. They are coming from way outside London because coming to park at a TfL carpark is the cheapest form of carparking. We do research and survey all our carpark usage.

Andrew Dismore AM: I do not want to prolong an argument about private grievances, but Joanne [McCartney AM] is concerned about the same issue with developments in her [constituency] and so maybe we will have to have a further discussion about these schemes.

Lester Hampson (Director of Property Development, TfL): OK. I am happy to do that.

Andrew Dismore AM: It comes back to the basic problem of how you consult people and make sure their views are represented. What will tell is the extent those four schemes I have mentioned are modified in light of what people have said.

I do not know if MOPAC wants to say anything about your schemes and how you consult people because we have the same issue there around the Peel Centre.

Peter Lewis (Interim Chief Finance Officer, MOPAC): We fall into a slightly different category. In terms of, for example, public access, that is something that there is appropriate consultation on, out of which drops then the estate that is required and the footprint that is required and the disposals that may follow. Typically, as you heard from Matthew’s [Punshon] answer earlier, the sites that are being disposed of are relatively small and therefore are disposed of in accordance with all the consultation, the guidance and the initiatives that the

Mayor has in place. They are not typically developed by MOPAC or the MPS themselves. They are sold on and they are developed out and so the same level of engagement would not occur in those circumstances.

Andrew Dismore AM: Yes, but I am asking about decisions to dispose of the assets, not just necessarily develop them, because that is the other side of the same coin. The Peel Centre was a huge site. I accept that it is maybe a third to a half built out now, but there is still a lot more development going on there and you still have more sites there to dispose of, the driving school and Rowan Drive, which will no doubt end up with more intense development on them as well, bearing in mind the concerns everybody has about development in Colindale being overdevelopment.

Peter Lewis (Interim Chief Finance Officer, MOPAC): I do not know that one in detail.

Matthew Punshon (Interim Director of Estate Strategy, MPS): That is a good example. The redevelopment of the Colindale site was entirely in accordance with the approved Area Action Plan by the local authority at the time. It has since been developed out. We have been under significant pressure from housing colleagues to make sure that it is built out for housing, which it certainly is. The two extra sites will be coming in. We are working very closely with housing colleagues on those two extra sites for significant housing on those sites.

Our keen focus though, is that we are not a developer. That is a very rare site in terms of being the scale it is. In fact, it is the only one of that scale. All our sites are that much smaller and the developer is the one that will consult through as to what would happen with that site. The pressure on most of our buildings is to maximise as much housing as we can get onto each site.

Andrew Dismore AM: The other point is about keyworker housing. I think we will appreciate this. The West Hampstead one is finally happening, part of the battle being getting planning permission for listed buildings, but when we were looking at that I understand that one of the real issues was that you cannot have so-called - for want of a better word - tied accommodation anymore. There are two types of keyworker housing. There is keyworker housing in the normal sense of flats where people move in and are working for the NHS or as schoolteachers or whatever they happen to be.

One question I have is going back to some of the other things we were saying about keyworker housing. Putting aside keyworker housing on fire stations where you have to have people who are working for the LFB because of security reasons, access and all that sort of thing, what can you do about keyworker housing in other developments to try to make sure that some priority is given to them - take the NHS, for example - on the disposal of your sites?

Martin Rooney (Director of Partnerships, Strategic Estates Planning Service, NHS): I suppose the six tests and the planning permission are the key obligations in relation to the development parameters. I guess I will repeat the comment that was made earlier. We are not in the business of being a developer either. My observation earlier about lack of skills and development capability in the NHS when it comes to bringing forward land for housing is a key issue for us. Therefore, that is why we always seek to work in partnership in London with the GLA and outside London with Homes on bringing forward sites and ensuring that we have the right proportion of keyworker housing.

In relation to the previous question, our issue around public consultation is more about clinical change and changes to NHS services to get that bit right, and then bringing in experts to help with the consultation around development and the built environment solution that pertains to be the right long-term solution for the community.

Andrew Dismore AM: The reason there, for example, is the proposed disposal by Royal Free [Hospital] of the Queen Mary’s House, which presently is full of keyworkers from the NHS and teachers and so forth. It will be disposed of and they will not have any priority in the reletting or selling of what comes afterwards. Do you think that is right?

Martin Rooney (Director of Partnerships, Strategic Estates Planning Service, NHS): When you put it like that, it sounds very harsh. I would need to look into the specifics of it because I am afraid I do not know the details of what the trust is proposing exactly. Let me come back to you.

Andrew Dismore AM: It was the old nurses’ home originally.

Martin Rooney (Director of Partnerships, Strategic Estates Planning Service, NHS): That gives you a clue, then.

Andrew Dismore AM: Yes, and that is part of the problem. We have the Mayor disposing of section houses and so police cannot afford to live in London anymore. We have you disposing of the nurses’ home and so nurses cannot afford to live in London anymore. The LFB did not have that much to start with, but what there was is going. How do we deal with the need for keyworker houses - partly because they are, I suppose, caught up with the best consideration rules - to make sure that people who work in London and keep London going like emergency service workers, council workers and everybody else, can actually afford to live in the capital and provide those services?

Tony Devenish AM (Chairman): This is one for you, James, in terms of the overall strategy.

Andrew Dismore AM: Yes, I suppose it is, really.

James Murray (Deputy Mayor for Housing and Residential Development): Our approach to intermediate affordable housing has been not to restrict it to particular professions. I know there is a lot of debate around whether it is right to restrict intermediate affordable housing to particular professions or not. The settled view at the moment is that it is best not to restrict it to particular professions, in large part because you end up having a lot of debate around what professions you include in certain priorities and not, which can vary quite a lot from area to area.

What we are doing at the moment is doing a review of all of the intermediate housing that we build in London. The reason we are doing that is to feed into the next Affordable Homes Programme and to work out with councils and housing associations what is working, what could be improved and how we could do things differently. As part of that we will look at what priority could be given to keyworkers in intermediate affordable housing. It is an open question because it is not one that there is a permanently settled view on. As I say, where the view has settled at the moment is that intermediate affordable housing is not ringfenced for particular professions, but it is an ongoing debate and it is one that we need to keep checking that we are in the right position on.

Andrew Dismore AM: Do you accept that there is a problem?

James Murray (Deputy Mayor for Housing and Residential Development): I accept that there is a problem with people on low and middle incomes across the board being able to live in London. That includes people who work for the NHS, police officers, firefighters and so on. As I say, the difficulty in terms of prioritising particular professions is which professions you include within that category and which you do not.

Do you include social workers? Do you include teachers? Would you include people who work at collecting refuse? Where do you draw the line in terms of who you prioritise? At the moment, it is done by income and so it is more neutral in terms of what professions people work in, but particularly given the pressures on public services and the lack of housing for people working in them, it is a question which it is right to continue to discuss.

Tony Devenish AM (Chairman): If I wanted to push this issue on the police, I should talk to Sophie Linden [Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime] rather than you, really, should I?

James Murray (Deputy Mayor for Housing and Residential Development): You can talk to both me and Sophie.

Tony Devenish AM (Chairman): OK. Thank you. Moving on, commitments have been made in response to Mayor’s Questions on the GLA website that the London Land Commission register will be upgraded to “identify surplus brownfield land which could come forward for development”. You will remember the famous statement when Sadiq [Khan, ] was newly elected that Downing Street was in the last version and that you were going to upgrade this register, James. Do you have any update on when this is going to come out, please?

James Murray (Deputy Mayor for Housing and Residential Development): Yes. We are still on track and to, hopefully, make it publicly available this year. We have been doing the work to, as we have discussed previously, translate the dots into shapes, as it were. There is probably a better technical word for that but you know what I mean.

One of the issues is around making sure that sensitive sites, particularly from MOPAC, are not in the public domain and so we need to check quite thoroughly to make sure that what goes out publicly is all right in the public domain. GLA officers in Housing and Land are able to access this better information privately. It is not in the public domain because of those sensitivities I just mentioned. We are looking at it privately and would be happy to show Assembly Members in a private setting what it looks like. We are not making it public for the reason I just said, but if you want to look at it privately we are very happy to run you through that.

Tony Devenish AM (Chairman): Thank you. Are all the other services here involved in these discussions and in the updates? Will the LFB and the NHS all be 100% covered on the document when it is finished by the end of the year?

James Murray (Deputy Mayor for Housing and Residential Development): I will bring in Justin in on this because he has been leading on the detailed work.

Justin Carr (Assistant Director - Public Land, GLA: Yes, they should all be. We work quite closely with MOPAC and LFB particularly. There is already information that they provide on the GLA website.

The bulk of the additional information that we have used to improve the quality of the data and turn the dots into polygons is coming from the Land Registry and so it will include all public land that is registered with the Land Registry. So, some public landowners, particularly Network Rail, have property that is preregistration, but all of the NHS land will be on there.

Tony Devenish AM (Chairman): Thank you. We may take you up on the offer of a private session. Thank you for that. We will come back to you.

Moving on, we are at the three-and-a-half-year point of this [administration]. It has shot past, has it not, the last four years? We are almost there. There have been many reports from various parts of the Assembly, but one of them from the Housing Committee in 2017 undertook an investigation into TfL land management and a number of recommendations were made for TfL and the Mayor. I am sure that James and Lester can remember the whole report and every detail of it. Probably not.

Have you used the learning, though, from this investigation to inform any of your work with other public landowners? You do not have to answer that now if you rather go away and review it and come back.

James Murray (Deputy Mayor for Housing and Residential Development): Yes. A few things spring to mind that I can mention now. Otherwise, we can write to you in more detail.

Tony Devenish AM (Chairman): Yes, please.

James Murray (Deputy Mayor for Housing and Residential Development): There is a point that was made well in the report around the operational side of TfL working with the development side to make sure that operational decisions were taken in the right order and in the right way to free up land for housing and to make sure the two sides were linked up. That approach has really informed the work we have been doing with the NHS around the clinical side of it and working alongside housing. That kind of theme has very much fed through.

As well, there was a recommendation around small sites and working with other public sector landowners. We have been doing a lot of work with councils and a number of councils are now bringing forward small sites. Councils are proving to be quite a good first point of call for expanding the selection of small sites, particularly because a lot of them are doing audits of all of their land at the moment because they want to build council housing and they want to use all the land they own for other purposes. When they find little sites that they cannot build on themselves for whatever reason, the Small Sites Programme has been a really welcome option for them to bring them forward.

Those are a couple of things that spring to mind, but maybe we can write to you in more detail.

Tony Devenish AM (Chairman): That will be great. Thank you.

Navin Shah AM (Deputy Chair): Chairman, that was my very question. How are you doing on these small sites that are being brought forward by TfL? It would be good to have some idea of what opportunities and challenges you have so far had from the experience of trying to bring those forward through local authorities and stuff.

James Murray (Deputy Mayor for Housing and Residential Development): Yes. We had the first tranche, which was a pilot with TfL sites, and they were snapped up quickly. There were lots and lots of bids, many times over the number of sites that were available, which shows the appetite for it. There have subsequently been more sites from TfL. There are some from councils as well. Can I ask Justin [Carr] to give you some detail now or write to you with more detail if that would be better? As I said, councils are the obvious ones where they are likely to have a lot of small sites and they are doing all the work to do the audit of their landholdings now anyway and so it has aligned quite nicely.

Navin Shah AM (Deputy Chair): Lester, did you want to come in?

Lester Hampson (Director of Property Development, TFL): Just on what James was saying on our small sites, we have brought nine forward and nine more are coming forward, delivering towards about 400 homes. It has been a good success. We continued to trawl our sites to find more.

One of two other recommendations in relation to small sites was for us to have an identified person within TfL. We took that recommendation up and we do. The success of that is coming through with sites coming forward.

The other recommendation was something to do with working with other public bodies. An example that that would be down in Morden where we are working with the borough. If we can pool our land with their land, there is the opportunity to create 2,000 homes and a new town centre. We are working very closely with James [Murray] and his team and with the borough. Our next generation of sites will be far fewer but much larger and much more complex and involving many public bodies, especially the boroughs.

Tony Devenish AM (Chairman): Does David or anybody else on the panel have any final words?

David Gooch (Director of Development, Network Homes): In terms of housing associations, we have recently had an audience with Lester [Hampson] at the G15 group to share experiences of where they are at and what is to come. That transparent dialogue is now underway. If we wound the clock back perhaps three years, that would not have happened, but there is definitely some positive progress.

Tony Devenish AM (Chairman): Thank you. James, did you have anything you wanted to reflect on from yesterday’s conference? You had a conference yesterday with the Mayor and everything. Were there any lessons there? Could you circulate any presentations to the Committee afterwards as well, please?

James Murray (Deputy Mayor for Housing and Residential Development): Yes, there were lots of sessions there that are all going to be written up and so we can share with you all of that information about what was said. It was really an opportunity to say to the industry and say to everyone who is involved in homebuilding that our priority is building more council housing, social housing and genuinely affordable housing, and that it is absolutely essential that Londoners are put at the heart of that process and that you earn their trust. That message carried itself throughout the day.

There were lots of really interesting comments that people said back to me. One person said that there was a room with some people who are professionals in the homebuilding sector and some community representatives and they felt like they were all speaking English but actually speaking slightly different languages and were not translating. They said that that is where the problem is in some of that communication. They are talking different languages and are not communicating well enough. Another guy said to me that he is used to talking to rooms full of schoolkids and he finds it easy but talking to a group of people in suits he finds really intimidating. I said that actually talking to a room full of schoolkids I would find quite intimidating. It is getting out of your comfort zone and putting in that hard work. Everyone left, I hope, with that message ringing quite loudly in their heads.

Tony Devenish AM (Chairman): Wonderful. Final points from anyone? No. Excellent. Thank you very much. Can I thank our guests for their attendance and very helpful contributions? Please do forward any further details. We will come back with all the actions but that will be very helpful.

Thank you very much, everybody.