Whether you made it down to Worthy Farm for Glastonbury 2017, or simply soaked it all up on the BBC, you couldn’t help but be enthused by the music, the good-natured crowds who gathered there or the logistical operation that goes in to putting on the festival. It is quite a staggering operation and the helicopter shots over the entire site go some way to showing just what happens across all those fields for the five days on the site.
We were told that the whole site was something akin to the size of Sunderland or Brighton or any other substantial UK city, and as I watched, part of me felt that we should perhaps get the organisers of Glastonbury involved in the UK’s housing strategy in order to be able to produce the numbers of houses we require right across the country.
I’m not suggesting for one minute that we start establishing tented villages all over the UK but any organisation able to put that sort of operation together, probably has the logistical skill and expertise to be able to handle the building of 250,000 houses per year. I’m afraid to say that it probably wouldn’t be half as much fun as Glastonbury and, even if they have a free year in 2018, it’s unlikely to float the boat of the Eavis Family and their formidable team.
What Glastonbury does seem to show however is how the local community is brought into the operation. I suspect not everyone is happy with 250,000 people descending on their corner of England, but it seems that the organisers do all they can to smooth any discontent and there appears to be an acceptance that the good far outweighs any potential bad.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if this was the case when it came to the building of new homes, particularly how developers and local councils engage with their own local communities in order to marry up the needs of those who live there already, and the need to build more properties? We often hear about the UK’s NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) culture – and I have sympathy for those who live in areas which don’t have the necessary logistics to make new large-scale developments work – but one would hope that all stakeholders could find a way to make these types of housing projects work.
Certainly, when we deal with developers requiring the necessary finance to build or upgrade, it’s often the case that no one can quite believe that they’ve got to a point where they’re allowed to carry out the work. Such are the vagaries of the planning system – although it is now more flexible and open – that getting any project, whether it’s a big development or one property, through the system with permission granted can seem like a major triumph for all concerned.
The good news however for those clients, and their advisers, is that when it comes to development finance they have a strong market to choose from, with plenty of lender competition and a variety of terms and product options available. And slowly but surely, especially with the recognition of the low level of property supply, developers are utilising these options in order to upgrade existing property or purchase and finance new developments. This is clearly a good time to bring new supply to the marketplace because prices remain strong, and will do for the foreseeable future given the lack of overall supply.
So, while we clearly need to up the market’s game in bringing new property to market – and I suspect we are going to need to see sites the size of Glastonbury established in many areas of the country – there remains the finance to be able to develop, as long as you have the existing property and/or land to be able to do it. The government’s suggestion that it will force larger developers, who are sitting on land, to ‘use it or lose it’ may also provide an opportunity for smaller players to get projects going which might otherwise sit dormant for many years.
The message for advisers with developer clients is therefore to look at the specialist arrangements available and if they don’t currently have access to them then use an operator like ourselves who does.
Donna Wells is director at First 4 Bridging