Tatton chief in ‘more co-ordination’ call for Northern Powerhous objectives
One of the largest private landowners in Cheshire has told delegates at the MIPIM property festival that it will take more than high speed rail and large house building schemes to deliver the Northern Powerhouse’s full potential.
Henry Brooks, executive director of the Tatton Estate and founder of TEM Property, is one of the key figures behind Cheshire’s deliver on the huge infrastructure investment especially around Crewe and Manchester Airport and their HS2 stations which will see nationally significant developments.
Brooks, who is planning to apply garden village principles to a number of residential developments, said at the event “ow Cheshire’s ‘Golden Triangle’ is powering the Northern Powerhouse”, that more co-ordination is needed.
“This is a unique moment with so many major projects and policies from the Housing White Paper, last week’s approval of the HS2 hybrid bill, Northern Powerhouse Rail (HS3) feasibility studies and Transport for the North’s ambitions and the recently launched Industrial Strategy green paper”, he said.
“We have here a once in a lifetime opportunity to plan, but it has all to be joined up. It’s not just housing, it’s also the wider physical and social infrastructure around it too.
“We know the national imperative is to deliver a million houses, 100,000 of which will be in the Northern Gateway Development Zone and 250,000 in and around Manchester, but it seems that no one is talking about how many schools, doctors’ surgeries, shops, parks and so on that we will need – and who will deliver them?”
He said that there are four key factors to delivering villages, towns and communities and Cheshire was ready to deliver on all fronts. Brooks said: “Firstly, scale, because you can’t deliver new schools, health centres or churches with units of 10, 15, 20 or 50 houses, so you need large developments in single land ownership.
“Secondly there is existing infrastructure – you can’t deliver all of the infrastructure from scratch quickly, if at all. So you need somewhere, like Manchester’s South West Quadrant, that has an airport, motorways and railway stations.
“Thirdly, viability. You need relatively high land values, which we have in Cheshire. In particular the Tatton Estate is able to turbocharge delivery being ready to put the land in upfront and allow for proceeds to deliver infrastructure to kick start development. The Estate’s long-term view allows it to take rental income or deferred receipts, which makes them unique delivery partners.
“Finally, ambition. We need to be passionate and stubborn. There will always be people trying to dilute your vision and we have to hold hard.”
His comments follow influential planning blogger Andrew Lainton’s assertion on Monday that, Manchester will struggle to deliver new housing developments and that creating new garden communities in Cheshire might be the answer because of the space it has to grow and with not one but two HS2 stations.
Brooks added: “TEM Property’s objective is to attract leading national and international innovators to the North West. Major manufacturers, leisure, PRS, science businesses and institutions and long-term investors such as pension funds and developers can secure exceptional quality schemes and returns here once they understand the area’s genuinely unique attributes which Andrew Lainton’s blog alluded to.”
