Our response to the Infrastructure Commission for ’s Initial Call for Evidence and Contributions

Places for People

May 2019 Places for People We welcome the opportunity to provide our contribution to the Infrastructure Commission for Scotland’s Initial Call for Evidence. Any queries with regards to our representation should be addressed to:

Richard Jennings Managing Director, CRE Places for People 1 St Andrews Square EH2 2BD

Tel: 0131 524 1430 Email: [email protected]

Places for People is one of the largest property management, development and regeneration companies in the UK. We currently own or manage more than 198,000 homes, provide services to over 500,000 people, and have assets of more than £4.2 billion. In Scotland we own and manage over 10,000 homes and over the next three years we will deliver more than 2,000 new homes across all tenures and markets. Our vision is to create places that work for everyone and our mission is to be Scotland’s leading placemaking partner. We strive to create multi tenure mixed communities within our new developments. Indeed, we have a long track record of successful multi tenure mixed community development and a solid reputation for delivering large-scale developments in towns and cities across the UK. We built more than 2,000 new homes last year and have plans for over 25,000 more over the coming years. Our approach goes much further than simply building homes; we look at what an area needs to be able to thrive - whether it is new schools, shops, leisure facilities, job opportunities, access to learning and training or specialist support services. We take placemaking seriously, and this approach enables us to create sustainable neighbourhoods which challenge the stereotype traditionally associated with many social housing communities.

OUR RESPONSE

 The Scottish Government’s aim to build 50,000 new affordable homes within the life of this parliament has led to significant investment across Scotland. If an average price of £130,000 a unit is assumed then the total investment in new housing infrastructure will exceed £6 billion pounds, over a third of which will come from private finance leveraged by the affordable housing sector. No other infrastructure programme in Scotland has the same geographical reach and potential social impact.

 The Scottish Government has set out a clear agenda for inclusive growth, with place and regional cohesion at the centre of its strategy. A bold policy response to deliver this would be to bring housing under the ambit of ‘nationally significant infrastructure projects’, or the establishment of an equivalent regime for major housing developments.

 Until the conditions are right to advance the debate on housing as infrastructure, we need to focus our efforts on integrating housing with infrastructure.

 True placemaking recognises that housing alone does not make a community. Everything that goes into a neighbourhood must add value to local communities beyond housing. That means providing supporting infrastructure, transportation, educational provision, leisure facilities, social fabric, and ready access to employment opportunities amongst others. Increasingly, our sector has a role to play in creating the full platform of services, facilities and connections that translate a housing development into a thriving and successful community.

 Our planning system needs to build infrastructure first. Communities are rightly sceptical that the new homes they agree to will come with the roads and schools needed to make them work. We need changes to the planning system to guarantee those improvements and deliver them first.

 We need a policy that prioritises housing alongside transport, broadband, energy and water. This would ensure that housing is considered on the same 30yr horizon as other key infrastructure projects and that national level targets and ambitions are set.

 As a placemaker that’s been delivering new places for more than 50 years, we know that this approach works. Our Brooklands scheme in Milton Keynes is just one example of a large development site where infrastructure came first, including a primary school and as a result, is creating a thriving community. A total of 2,500 homes are being built all supported by a raft of facilities and amenities including a new primary school, health centre, shops and acres of green open spaces for residents to enjoy.

 As housing providers, we must first and foremost establish what is needed to make a great place. That involves reaching out across the whole community, and delivering a truly representative picture of views and requirements across demographics. It also requires a scope of consultation that goes beyond housing need to deliver a granular picture of local requirements as they relate to supporting infrastructure. But we also need to understand the hopes and aspirations of local people on the character and identity of the place they will make their home. Infrastructure can be a pretty grey term, evoking pipelines and girders, and far from the vibrant social colour of schools, sports centres, community clubs and playing fields. Our shared challenge is to bring this picture to life, demonstrating the great work being done by the sector to deliver housing and infrastructure side by side and giving prominence to the social value we are working hard to create.

 Many people decide where they want to live based on their existing and potential employment opportunities. This means that increasing infrastructure delivery in places of existing successful economic activity could facilitate productivity growth by alleviating the pressures on current infrastructure. The NIC interim assessment report (2017) recognises this and highlights that ‘the UK is a network of very local housing markets, weakly connected in economic

terms’.1

 Expensive and insufficient housing holds back growth by reducing labour supply in high demand areas and diverting consumer spending onto housing that could be directed to more productive parts of the economy. Housing should be seen as vital infrastructure for our economy and society – just as energy, broadband, greenspace roads and rail lines area.

 Of course it is right that local people have the opportunity to shape the places in which they live, but we need a different approach for strategic housing that gives more weight to the long-term requirements of a local area and a voice for its potential future residents.

 Creating new places should be part of a participatory democracy. It is important to engage with all parties to influence infrastructure development, to ensure it is delivered effectively in the right places.

1 https://www.nic.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Congestion-Capacity-Carbon_-Priorities-for-national-infrastructure.pdf  An integrated approach to planning would offer a number of significant benefits. The need and impact of housing will be considered alongside other strategically important investments. The process for enabling developments will be clear and transparent, ensuring that delivery is prioritised in terms of decision making and funding. This approach could be instrumental in creating more great places and not just large volumes of new homes. Residents need to feel at home from the outset and that relies on the delivery of infrastructure right from the beginning of a development project. From transport links and community amenities through to green open spaces and play areas, there needs to be a mix of facilities matched to local needs and which can combine to create genuine and sustainable placemaking.

 Bringing housing under the national infrastructure brief could pave the way for high-quality developments, which are supported by both the right infrastructure and local communities, resulting in sustainable places that work for everyone. But it is important that not all decisions are taken out of local hands and the proposed reforms to the planning system and this route could vastly speed up delivery and help the government to develop a more strategic, national plan for development.

 Classing housing as infrastructure in the planning process may sound ambitious but without significant changes such as this, we won't come close to overcoming the housing problems we face or achieve our shared ambition for inclusive growth. No one argues for one type of development to be the only solution to meet our housing needs as a nation, we need all types of schemes from small infill developments to larger strategic sites and all sizes and types of schemes in between. Planned villages and towns do though provide an ideal opportunity to deliver infrastructure to showcase new communities. This "shop window" for well planned, well-resourced places provides the opportunity to demonstrate that new housing equals good quality places not to be feared, but welcomed.

 There is a case for more radical changes to the planning system that would result in a more proactive approach to housing development. It would mean that planning was delivered at a higher spatial level, focusing on travel to work areas and aimed to a greater extent to initiate and promote residential development rather than simply reacting to requests to agree to planning permission. This approach to planning policy would increase efficiency by providing homes for people closer to their place of work, ultimately stimulating economic development in local areas.

 This would replicate proactive planning systems seen in other countries which actively combine public sector development and planning functions (Oxley et. al, 2009), to deliver a more strategic planning-led approach to site assembly and infrastructure provision. It would mean local planning and development bodies identifying land for development and ensuring that the infrastructure is in place so that sites are ready for builders from all sectors to begin building new dwellings. We return to this theme in our conclusions and recommendations.

EVIDENCE OF PREVIOUS WORK UNDERTAKEN TO SUPPORT OUR RESPONSE Case Study: Brooklands Development, Milton Keynes

Infrastructure-led placemaking Brooklands is a 360 acre site located on the eastern edge of Milton Keynes, being developed over a 15 year period to create over 2,500 mixed tenure homes with a range of other facilities. The creation of a fully-fledged place was at the of our vision for Brooklands and profoundly informed the masterplan for the development. Places for People and Barratt David Wilson Ltd are working in partnership to deliver a fully formed place. This will include:  2,500 new homes  3 schools  1 hotel  Public square  Retail provision  100 acres of parkland  Primary infrastructure  Community facilities

‘I before E’ – Infrastructure before Expansion

Before commencing any of the aspects of the development we ensured that all the relevant infrastructure was delivered upfront, establishing the key elements of the place from the outset. This included a 10m high acoustic bund to mitigate traffic noise from the M1 motorway and a side wide SUDS solution to counteract risk of flooding. The scale of investment went well beyond the immediate needs of the first phase of new housing. Brooklands is a clear demonstration of our approach to infrastructure-led placemaking which goes far beyond simply building homes and in so doing delivers a beautiful place to live right from the outset. By making a significant investment in upfront infrastructure and public realm ahead of residents occupying their new homes, we and our partners have fostered the creation of a new community and achieved enhanced values and sales rates. Brooklands demonstrates how a creative approach coupled with early investment in the provision of infrastructure can deliver value to both the developer and the new community.

Brooklands is situated adjacent to the M1 motorway and we continue to construct a 3.5km long 11m high landscaped ridge that successfully mitigates the impact of the traffic noise and provides the added environmental benefits of diverting nearly one million cubic metres of locally sourced soil from land fill, improves biodiversity and, through a network of footpaths, creates an attractive leisure resource for residents.

Local school children were involved, helping them to be part of the Ridges creation by assisting them to bury a time capsule so that future Brooklands school children can learn about their predecessors.

To date we have delivered:  1,000 new homes with a further 1,500 to be built (expected completion 2023)  Two primary schools and one secondary school  Brooklands Community Centre  Brooklands Ridge  90 acres of parkland o Three play parks, with a further three under construction Building Communities o The Meadows, which acts as an area of parkland, flood attenuation Schools are at the heart of many and wildlife biodiversity habitat communities and so we have o The Ridge, which includes a trim- proactively worked with Milton Keynes trail and leisure route footpath and council to deliver three schools ahead of acts as a noise barrier to the M1 our planning obligations making them motorway available to the new community. o The Broughton Brook Linear Park, To achieve this we significantly which includes football and cricket advanced the delivery of road and pitches, is due to be completed in summer 2018 service infrastructure so that in 2015 the  Brooklands Medical Centre is under second primary school welcomed its construction and due to open summer first pupils and the secondary school 2018 was able to open in 2016. The decision  Brooklands Square, the commercial and to locate the community hall next to the retail heart is under construction and due primary school has enabled efficiencies to open early 2019 in design, procurement and operation. The schools will also benefit from the early planting of the sports pitches in the adjoining Broughton Brook Linear Park, due to be completed in summer 2018. Linear parks are a feature of Milton Keynes, and Broughton Brook will replicate many of the benefits offered by the Meadows Linear Park that we created in 2010 and which continues to mature and expand with a new play area currently being planned. The Meadows, like the Ridge, was delivered prior to residents moving in, and provides a beautiful park for residents while delivering flood attenuation and biodiversity enhancements to the neighbourhood.

As well as a plethora of green spaces and community facilities, Brooklands also adopts an innovative approach to the provision of the less attractive, but equally essential, utilities which are delivered by a single company thereby streamlining installation and interface management. Residents benefit from superfast fibre broadband catering for usage today and well into the future. Brooklands is very much work in progress. However, it is growing rapidly and bringing together a strong, vibrant and mixed community within one of the UK’s fastest growing cities.

Brooklands demonstrates how a creative approach coupled with early investment in the provision of infrastructure can deliver value to both the developer and the new community.

The total strategic infrastructure investment for the site is £32 million.

This is broken down by:

 £22.5m for main infrastructure and associated landscaping

 £5.3m for noise attenuation bund and associated landscaping

 £1.4m for the Meadows sustainable urban drainage system and associated landscaping

 £3.3m for public open space, playing fields and play areas